Two goats on a bridge

Liu Shuqing, who was China’s vice foreign minister in the late 1980s, once compared India and China to two goats on a narrow bridge. He told Dawa Tsering, Bhutan’s foreign minister, that trying to cross, the goats would stand with locked horns until one agreed to back out or was pushed off.

How long can they stand immobile? Forever it would seem. When it suited China, Deng Xiaoping had no hesitation in saying that resolution of the border could wait for the next generation. So there is no reason to assess Xi Jinping’s first visit to India as President in the context of past disappointments. Singapore offers a lesson in ignoring such hurdles. The island lost heavily on its $30-billion investment in the 288 sq.km Suzhou Industrial Park because the Chinese diverted foreign interest to another park with a similar name but which was locally owned. That has not prevented Singapore and China from being close partners.

Singapore is now China’s best friend.
I am stressing this because some policymakers in New Delhi appeared to be anxious to flaunt alternative postures on the eve of Mr Xi’s visit. Of course, India must make full use of the opportunities offered by Japanese and Australian interest. But let this not flatter Modi and Sushma Swaraj into walking into an anti-Chinese American trap that has been waiting since 50 years. It was already old in 1964 when Russell H. Fifield, a key figure in the US strategic establishment and author of South-east Asia in United States Policy, made two important predictions of which our leaders should be aware.

He proposed the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, even choosing the acronym Asean, four years before any Asian had thought of it. Second, believing that “neither India nor Japan, acting alone, is likely to become a counterweight to China”, Fifield recommended that India and Japan should cooperate not only with the yet-to-be-born Asean but also with Australia, seen as an eastern outpost of the West. London’s Institute of Strategic Studies, two Australian ministers, Paul Hasluck and Allan Fairhall, and our Morarji Desai supported the idea. Fifield’s logic was that Mao’s China threatened Pax Americana which was still committed to Chiang Kaishek. The justification now is Barack Obama’s “pivot to Asia”, Sino-American economic competition, and the security of America’s Asian allies.

India is not in the same boat as Japan, South Korea or Taiwan. We are not covered by the US nuclear umbrella like Australia. Our domestic compulsions demand different foreign policy objectives. Yes, we need Japanese aid, investment and technology. Yes, Australian uranium would help meet the desperate energy shortfall. But a trilateral strategic alliance won’t help Mr Modi address India’s main challenge which is poverty, not Chinese expansionism or Islamist terrorism.

India grovels at the bottom of every human development index in the Brics group. The WB’s estimate of 400 million Indians without electricity applies especially to villages where most Indians live. The Worldwatch Institute’s finding that dependence on agriculture rose by 50 per cent between 1980 and 2011 further emphasises that there can be no growth without special attention to rural issues. American plans to contain China will not help us cope with our daunting problems. But Chinese investment to expand India’s manufacturing sector will reduce the huge imbalance in Sino-Indian trade. Reports suggest that Beijing plans to invest overseas $500 billion of its $3.95 trillion forex reserve. India should make it attractive for the Chinese to do so here.

There are also the intangibles. India’s membership of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, the group that China, Russia and the four Central Asian nations of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan set up in 2001 to enhance regional security and combat threats posed by radical Islam from Afghanistan, is likely to inspire confidence. But constant harping on the so-called “string of pearls” policy of the Chinese and reports about President Xi’s visit to the Maldives before coming here can have the opposite effect.

This doesn’t mean there is no need to be wary of China. The border dispute remains; so does China’s occupation of a strip of Kashmir and the Chinese claim to Arunachal. But publicly talking about these problems will not solve them. On the contrary, it may prevent the realisation of economic and strategic benefits. President Xi’s presence in India is a time to stress the positive — not negative — aspects. We need not hesitate to admit India has much to learn from China with whom we enjoyed economic parity in 1980, but whose growth has outstripped India’s fourfold.

The writer is a senior journalist, columnist and author