Ten slips between cup and lip

Wang Yiwei

19 Sep 2014

President Xi Jinping is visiting India, where, among other things, he celebrated the birthday of his equally strong-handed counterpart, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Public opinion expects that the visit will help usher in a new era for the Sino-Indian relationship. However, in order to realise these expectations, the misunderstandings between the Chinese and Indians must be overcome.

First, the Chinese people believe that India is taken advantage of by America and Japan to contain China, whereas the Indians think that it is China that is containing India. The self-fulfilling prophecy is only expedited as China has entered the Indian Ocean and India, on its part, has entered the South China Sea. Remarks by some Indians often give expression to their unrealistic hope of protecting their own interests while being utilised by America and Japan. Indians believe that China is encircling India, for it builds ports in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, and what they seriously take to heart is the establishment of an all-weather relationship between China and Pakistan as they believe that China by doing so is balancing Pakistan and India. Besides, Indians hold that China adopts double standards on the nuclear programmes of India and Pakistan. China opposing the nuclear capacity of India, in their eyes, is to oppose a more powerful India, whereas it gives its consent to the nuclear programme by Pakistan.

Second, the Chinese people are proud of not having the experience of being fully colonised by the West, which leads them to deeming themselves as the primary party from the Eastern world in handling the Sino-western relations or East-West relations. Indians take pride in being the largest democracy in the world, which in the view of Chinese is merely a synonym for Full Colonisation. Therefore, the Chinese are not inclined to recognise India as the spokesperson for the rise of Asia, and instead they believe it is the wish to be on an equal footing with the West that prompts India to overestimate itself.

Third, the Chinese observe India from the perspective of their own strong state-weak society mode, while the Indians examine China from the standpoint of the strong society-weak state mode. Hence the mutual misunderstandings and complaints. All the local officials from China in their visits to India have hoped to meet with Indian leaders, and confined their destinations to the Indian capital, both of which are incredibly queer to the Indians.

Fourth, the Chinese value unity over diversity, which is that the state is an integral whole while the society can be a diverse ground. They are proud of their history of “Great Unification”. The Indians on the other hand attach greater importance to diversity and uphold it all along. They are thus afraid of the unity and strength of China. The Chinese are proud of the fact that China has been unified ever since the era of Qin Shi Huang, and belittle India for its having not had a single great strongman to integrate the whole state but only numerous maharajas that tore the country apart. The Indians, however, take pride that not a single foreign tribe can rule India completely, Great Britain included. Although India is a member of the British Commonwealth, it never agrees that the queen of Britain is the head of India.

Fifth, the Indians are proud of having not been conquered by Genghis Khan, whereas Chinese take pride in that the territory of China reached its maximum during the rule of Kublai Khan, the grandson of Genghis Khan.

Sixth, the Chinese revere the Buddha from India, but are discontented with India providing asylum for the Dalai government-in-exile. On the contrary, Indians argue that society should be diverse and inclusive, and they do not only protect the Dalai Lama since many exiled governments of other nationalities are also in India. Along the southern part of the disputed border between China and India, the birthplace of the sixth Dalai Lama is located. Indians say that Buddhism originates from India, so why does it matter that his birthplace should be on the territory of India?

Seventh, the Chinese hold that ancient India is disconnected from contemporary India. They keep their respect for the civilised India while belittling the contemporary one. Indians, however, respect the contemporary China and devalue ancient China. The founding of the Republic of China in 1911 made China the first democratic country in Asia, an important reason contributing to Indian respect for modern China. The Buddhism that was later prevalent in China originated from India, so the Indians have the feeling of being culturally superior to the Chinese.

Eighth, Indians regard themselves as the largest democracy in the world to seek the approval of the West and to degrade China. The Chinese however consider the democracy of India as mere diversity and contend that India has a lack of composure and confidence in face of challenges from the West.

Indians see China from the worst case-scenario, and make the security of India the overriding priority, whereas the Chinese see India from the best case-scenario and stick strictly to the rules of what a civilisation should be. The reflection of that in real life is that Indians are always fearful of suffering losses in their exchanges with China. For instance, China became the largest trading partner of India in recent years, but half of the trade volume was the trade deficit on India’s part.

President Xi leads a hundred-strong businessman group and it is expected that in the coming five years China will make investments in India worth $100 billion. That said, India is then afraid of being subject to China economically.

The rise of India, in the eyes of Chinese, is no more than being globalised for the Western world, which indicates that India is still at a stage that is comparable to the early stage of China’s reform and opening up. Indians believe that they are catching up from behind and will be the ultimate winner of the globalisation process. 

All these misconceptions demonstrate that either China or India compares its own advantages with the other’s drawbacks, and both of them have not walked out of the influence of their respective hundred-year national humiliations in modern history. Only by ditching the Western reference can both of them get to know what they really are, resolve these misunderstandings and restore a friendly relationship.

The writer is the director of the International Affairs Institute at Renmin University of China. This article was first published in the Global Times on 16 September.