Familiar optimism over 'Chindia' overlooks a changed China reality

Shastri Ramachandran's book revives the optimism of the 2010s, when every India-China engagement was seen as a breakthrough

Chindia: Journey to an Asian Century

by Shastri Ramachandaran

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442 page ₹895

  There is a lot of demand for good analytical writing on India-China relations. The Indian reader still has a sense of enigma when it comes to China, and it takes the form of curiosity, awe, contempt, or neglect. The real tragedy is that information about China is available in a piecemeal manner. Quite often, it is bundled into China-threat or China-collapse narratives, or, occasionally, into overtly optimistic discourses that portray low-hanging fruit as the next big thing in bilateral relations. Few analyses combine the fact of structural symmetry with political discourse and stakeholder influence to show the big picture.

 

Shastri Ramachandaran’s recent book, Chindia, Journey to An Asian Century is another attempt to stoke a sense of optimism into an old discourse.  Mr Ramachandaran is a senior correspondent, spent several years as a journalist in China and has had a ringside view of India-China relations. The term “Chindia” itself is more than two decades old, when China was less powerful but less insecure and the power gap between India and China had not yet turned into a gulf. It is pertinent to ask whether this term has currency when China is more assertive, is overtly coercive towards India and when the discourse about China’s “managed rise” is long over. This book does not fully answer this or many other questions about India’s relations with China, including how the two countries perceive, and what they expect from, each other.

 

The book has four sections. The first is about understanding China, the second about India-China disputes and attempted collaborations, the third about the global stage and the fourth examines the idea of the “Asian Century”, which, again, is a mirage from the early years of the 21st century. In essence, this is a collection of newspaper columns written to mark important bilateral or multilateral visits, incidents and agreements. A significant amount of material in this book is verbatim from the author’s last book, Beyond Binaries, which, again, was based on newspaper columns. And once again, these arguments are not updated to the publication date.

 

The author argues, “Since India began following in 1991, what China started doing in 1978, today India is said to be at the stage where China was at the start of the millennium”. This shows that the article was written in 2013 or that the author has got his math terribly wrong in 2026, when the book is published. Similarly, the same piece talks about India’s Look East Policy but does not articulate that it was expanded to Act East Policy in 2014 under the Modi government.

 

In another section, the author says, “The vexed boundary issue has been isolated — one might say, quarantined — with a view to improving relations on other tracks, especially economic and trade”, whereas the boundary question is always at the centre of India-China discourse, even more so since June 2020. In another piece, the author writes, “Like Oli, last year, Rajapaksa had to go, among other reasons, also for being pro-China”, which in all probability refers to Mahinda Rajapaksa’s term as Prime Minister ending in 2015. This once again confirms that the book remains a collection of old pieces.

 

Also, there are pieces that coincide with various Brics, Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, and Saarc summits but are not updated with current information. In addition, the author spends a lot of time outlining the history of these organisations that feels outside the scope of the book, which is about China and India. This is a huge injustice to the claim of the book, to the subject under consideration and mainly to the reader who will not get a full picture by reading this book.

 

Occasionally, there are controversial claims. For example, the author says “it may be a blessing that India trails China in digital development” and then goes on to illustrate Chinese investments in Indian digital and e-commerce startups, which was a trend during 2016-18. He does not mention that a lot of these investments were halted after the June 2020 Galwan clashes.

 

What this book does well is to document the many starts India-China relations have had over the years. It does not go into detail as to why these failed and whether there is a chance to revive them. The truth remains that these early cooperation ideas were not thought through and there was considerable domestic resistance to them in India and in China. For example, the India-China’s CEOs’ forum was started with much fanfare but what happened to it is a mystery. Similarly, the NITI Aayog’s dialogues with their Chinese counterparts were an annual affair and so was the India China Strategic Economic Dialogue. What happened to these, what utility they served and why these forums were abandoned is never told, because no one researches these aspects.

 

Most of these short pieces were written with an overdose of optimism. This was a trend of writing about India’s relations with China in the 2010s where every meeting, visit or an agreement was seen as a breakthrough. A well-researched book on this subject would be able to tell the reader why these events did not build trust or a sustainable momentum. That space remains vacant as of now.

                

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The reviewer is professor and associate dean of Jindal School of Liberal Arts and Humanities, Jindal Global University. The views are personal