Sunanda K Datta-Ray: Yin and yang

Indians berate China but rush to buy its goods

In some ways China is the new America for many Indians. It’s a country we hate in public, yet the rumour of a sale of Chinese goods in Calcutta’s Indoor Stadium had hordes of eager shoppers hammering at the gates long before opening time.

This dichotomy between politics and economics never ceases to amaze. Brought up on the “trade follows the flag” tenet, we might be prepared to reverse roles so that the flag also sometimes follow trade. What is baffling is the spectacle of trade booming in a political vacuum with nary a flag to be seen on the horizon. When Paul A Samuelson, the American economics Nobel laureate who died recently, said, “I don’t care who writes a nation’s laws — or crafts its advanced treatises — if I can write its economics textbooks,” he meant that economics alone determines destiny. If so, we can expect the rising tide of exports and imports to wash away the territorial disputes that bedevil Sino-Indian relations.

That may yet happen, but it would be unrealistic not to take note meanwhile of serious concerns among ordinary Indians — we know next to nothing about Chinese attitudes, and that is a grave danger — that militate against a rapprochement. It is understandable that a foreign commentator like Kishore Mahbubani should miss the historical memory that conditions Indian attitudes. It was also to be expected that our ambassador in Beijing, S Jaishankar, could not refer to it when speaking at Sichuan university. But we must not shy away from acknowledging and surmounting that psychological stumbling block if “the New Asian hemisphere” of Mahbubani’s title is to be realised.

Trade apart, we know far less about Sino-Indian economic cooperation, actual and potential, than we do about China’s supposed plans to encircle India through collusion with Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Sri Lanka. We also hear of border aggressiveness, encroachments and attempts to starve the Indo-Gangetic plain of water.

Let me say bluntly not that there is no smoke without fire but that there is no media smoke without smouldering embers in government offices. Our newspapers and TV channels have neither the interest nor the means to go foraging round Asia for news. Even without that limitation, I know well enough after half a century in the game how receptive even the most august writers are to a whispered word in North or South Block. It becomes Holy Writ when whispered over a lavish lunch at the Oberoi or Maurya Sheraton.

Manmohan Singh might insist there is room enough for India and China to grow together, and Shiv Shankar Menon argue that China’s “string of pearls” are figments of the imagination, but there are enough members of the establishment to feed irredentist sentiment with tales of wicked Chinese conspiracies. As a corollary, we are advised to take China’s growth statistics with a large dose of salt. When I mention the impressive sights I have seen as a tourist in Shanghai, Beijing and Xian, I am told not to be naïve, that those are China’s showpieces for the world.

As a member of the public, I don’t know what to believe. As a newspaperman, I chafe at the inability to access authoritative independent information. There can be no trust or understanding without far more extensive contacts. The literature suggests anxiety in China too, especially over India’s budding defence relations with the Americans. Many Chinese appear to suspect that India, Japan and Australia are parties to a grand American strategy to contain China’s legitimate evolution as the major Asian power and a force in world affairs.

Mao Siwei, China’s consul-general in Calcutta, lists other grievances. India does not offer a level playing field to Chinese companies and operatives. India also tries to put a spoke in the wheel of Chinese cooperation in countries like Bangladesh.

What is seldom mentioned is that India and China are both focused on development. Both must combat terrorism. Each must display a sensitive appreciation of what matters most to the other. They must also bury the past — the Middle Kingdom as much as Bomdila — to ensure the future.

France’s loss of Alsace-Lorraine to Prussia in the 1870-71 war is not a parallel to be followed. The statue of Strasbourg, the lost province’s main city, in the Place de la Concorde in Paris was draped in black, the mourning not removed until France regained Alsace-Lorraine after World War I.

India, China, Asia and the world cannot afford to let the stalemate drag out in hopes of such a military resolution.

sunandadr@yahoo.co.in