Chanakya and Sun Tzu: Making a pragmatic case for India-China engagement

It is time for India and China to walk the same path, with the former's wisdom and the latter's strategy converging, not clashing, to forge a new dawn for Asia, argue authors of Chanakya and Sun Tzu

CHANAKYA AND SUN TZU: A Business Lens on Trade, Thought and Travel

By R Gopalakrishnan & Nirmala Isaac

Published by Rupa

174 pages  ₹595

  This book, authored by senior business leader R Gopalakrishnan (Gopal) and human resource professional Nirmala Isaac, has encapsulated the two-millennium history of China-India relations in just 174 pages. 

What distinguishes this volume from other books on China is the writing style, which is transactional rather than academic. The authors say the “book comes from the practical mindset of an enterprise manager rather than the academic rigour of a historian, philosopher or geographer”. 

Yet the book is deeply researched and useful to academics too. The authors have suggested workable solutions for India and China to engage with each other to establish a stable global order against the backdrop of the decline of Western powers. 

They say the long history of China-India relations was marked with three Ts: Thoughts, Travels and Trade. For over 2000 years, both countries were able to maintain a “peaceable intercourse” through these Ts. “Thoughts were carried through travellers. Travel resulted in trade. Trade intensified the pursuit of ideas and thoughts,” they write. Also common were the thoughts of Sun Tzu in China’s ancient Zhou period and of Chanakya in the Mauryan Empire. 

A significant aspect of their narrative is based on practical experience of one of the authors (Gopal) who first visited China as a Tata director in the early 2000s. He was then chairman of Tata Auto Comp Ltd, which had set up a 100 per cent Tata-owned company in Nanjing (NTACO) to make plastic injection-moulded automotive components. In 2015, NTACO set up a second unit near Changshu, followed by NTACO Trading Company to trade in automotive components. 

Gopal was also a member of the Indian delegation to the World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting at Seattle in 2000 that admitted China into the world order of doing business. He had then shared the hope that the “rules-based global system would take deeper root as China would become more akin to other trading nations.”

 

That was also the hope of the Bill Clinton administration that allowed China to enter WTO. This reviewer had published a column in July 2019 on this process and how it resulted in the United States (US)  agreeing to China’s WTO entry after their National Intelligence Council (NIC) had convened a crucial meeting with prominent academics and nine US intelligence specialists. This was on September 24, 1999. The NIC then concluded that China was “unlikely to break with the United States or engage in disruptive military buildups or aggressive foreign behavior” unless “Beijing was challenged by unexpected circumstances”. Global China watchers always hold this date as the crucial milestone in the history of China’s economic rise.

 

This, together with US International Trade Commission’s report in August 1999, which felt that WTO Standardisation would benefit US companies in China and compel Beijing to adhere to WTO rules, was the reason the Clinton Administration recommended China’s WTO entry. As a result, China became the largest exporter in the world, accounting for 20 per cent of US imports, as the US Journal of International Economics  concluded in a September 2020 assessment.

 

Sure, there are voices in the Trump administration that want the US to abrogate this on the ground that China is not adhering to WTO’s rule-based global order. However, on October 20, 2025, President Donald Trump brushed aside these calls and described the relationship with China as “G-2”, a peer. The authors want this global trend to be modulated by quoting history: “Whenever India has been connected to the rest of the world, supported by its strong coastal tradition, it has brought the country great prosperity.” They strongly believe that the policy of “self-reliance,” which was the core goal of India’s Third Five Year Plan (1961) and repackaged in 2020 as “Atmanirbhar Bharat,” is neither practical nor possible.

 

Instead, “we should consider how India can leverage its position with potential partners as the world’s largest (or a major) importer of, for example, fertilisers, lentils, edible oils and hydrocarbons”. To this end, the authors suggest seven steps under “Thoughts”, five under “Travel” and six under “Trade” with this conclusion: “It is time for Chanakya and Sun Tzu to walk the same path, where the wisdom of India and the strategy of China meet, not in conflict, but in convergence, forging a new dawn for Asia”.

 

This idea might appear to be a mirage in the present context, but not impossible if we study current Sino-Vietnam relations. Hanoi, which resisted a brutal invasion by China in 1979, could settle their differences with Beijing in 2000. Hanoi even accepted the building of the 850-Km Kunming-Hanoi highway to allow land locked south-west China to use Vietnamese ports. Politically, however, it pursues a nuanced policy of “Co-operation and Struggle” — economic cooperation and resisting China’s encroachments in the South China Sea.

 

(R Gopalakrishnan is a Business Standard columnist)

 

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The reviewer is a former special secretary, Cabinet Secretariat. His latest book, India and China at odds in the Asian Century, was published by Hurst, London, and Pentagon Books, New Delhi