Welcome diversity, not uniformity, China tells world

Beijing indicates it's prepared to counter US efforts to contain it

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi's comments to a roomful of industrialists last week on the absence of complexity in China has received no direct mention in the Chinese press, but China's president Xi Jinping has told a gathering of the world's influential people they should welcome diversity, not uniformity.

Delivering the keynote address at the Boao Forum for Asia, the Chinese version of the Davos Track Two economic summit that is now in its 12th year at Boao, a coastal town in south China's Hainan province, on Sunday, President Xi quoted the Chinese saying, "The ocean is vast because it admits hundreds of rivers."

"We should respect the right of a country to independently choose its social systems and development path, remove distrust and misgivings and turn the diversity of our world and difference among countries into dynamism and driving force for development," Xi said.

At this year's forum, Zambian President Michael Chilufya Sata, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, Peru's President Ollanta Humala, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Myanmarese President Thein Sein will rub shoulders with Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who has spoken on 'investment for the poor', as well as investor George Soros and head of the IMF, Christine Lagarde. India is being represented by Sachin Pilot, minister for corporate affairs.

The Forum has separate panels on Africa and Latin America, signalling the new business frontiers for China, although President Xi went out of his way to assure his audience that China was a responsible nation and willing to shoulder its share of international tasks.

But the emphasis remains on building common ground for developing nations, which China still insists it is despite its rising economic prowess. By 2020, China's gross domestic product (GDP) and per capita income for urban and rural people will double those in 2010 and the building of a "moderately prosperous society" will be completed, Xi said.

By 2050, he added, China would be transformed into a modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced and harmonious. And the Chinese dream, namely, the greatest renewal of the Chinese nation, will be realised, Xi added.

Clearly, the articulation of such clear goals by the world's fastest rising power shows that it is anything but a simple nation, and India's elite, including Rahul Gandhi, might do well to come to terms with it.

In recent weeks, in the wake of the BRICS (Britain, Russia, India, China and South Africa) summit in South Africa, in which China stole the show, Indian analysts have either painted the Chinese as a dragon that the rest of the world better beware of, or have pointed to the several flaws in the Chinese growth model that implies that they are really fudging their data.

As always, the truth is somewhere in between. China's rise has been incomparable since it became a free nation in 1949. The truth is that China only measures itself by its own goals, which is the renewal of the Chinese nation.

The fierce sense of nationalism is present in its insistence that "no one should be allowed to throw a region and even the whole world into chaos for selfish gains", as Xi said during his Boao speech.

He was pointing out that China was ready to defend its interests in the South China Sea and that the US "pivot to Asia" was a strategy to contain it. Whether or not India agrees with the US on this matter, the reality is that the Chinese leadership have their goals clearly outlined.

Speculation is rife that the US will push for Indian participation in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation grouping (APEC), so far dominated by the Americans and the Chinese, as a counterweight to China. India is clearly keen because it would acknowledge its arrival on another global forum, on par with Beijing.