 "Why China should introspect and stop seeing India through Western lens")
On May 27, 2024, Global Times published an article on India-China cultural exchanges written by Liu Zongyi, a senior scholar on the Indian subcontinent at the Shanghai Institute of International Studies. Liu Lǎoshī (teacher in Chinese) argues that people-to-people exchanges between India and China have suffered due to the deteriorating state of bilateral ties. He also believes that India sees US-China rivalry as a strategic opportunity to “rise as a great power” and seeks to “please the US at the expense of China-India relations.”
According to him, “the regrettable situation in [bilateral ties], especially in terms of cultural and humanistic exchanges, is closely related to changes in India’s domestic politics [and] the rise of Hindu nationalism”. He goes one step further to criticise India’s civilisational worldview as a vishwaguru and accuses it of lacking “a tradition of real historical research and serious historical records”.
India’s critique, as per Liu Lǎoshī’s analysis, lies at three levels. Geopolitically, he dismisses India as a strategic appendage of the United States, unable to act in its own national interest. In domestic politics, he attributes right-wing populism and PM Modi’s Hindu nationalism to the pursuit of aggressive foreign policy. Civilisationally, he narrowly interprets the concept of vishwaguru as ’world teacher’ and falls into the trap of buying Western narratives of Indian civilisation.
Though he calls China “open and inclusive” and “good at learning from other civilisations”, he forgets that India has been a shruti-smriti (listening-remembering) civilisation. His accusation of India’s lack of written historical research is surprising and reflects China’s civilisational closeness to seeing others in the image of self. However, he is not alone.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsMany Chinese academics in the last five years have taken similar lines in their analysis of India-China relations, especially since the border standoff in April 2020. Instead of blanket labelling them as propagandists of the CCP, it is important to point out that they risk groupthink in their own strategic analysis of India. They must realise that it is detrimental to India-China ties and the interests of both countries.
Watching India with American Lens
After the Cold War, the dominance of the US was the single most significant factor in shaping China’s foreign policy. Strategists like Michael Pillsbury and Rush Doshi have provided detailed insights based on personal experiences and primary sources to show how China, after the 1990s, has sought to replace the US as the leading player in Asia. The Chinese strategic worldview is most receptive to how the US thinks and acts. Thus, it has also seen India in the same light in the last three decades.
Despite PM Vajpayee naming China as the reason behind India’s nuclearisation in 1998, China did not destabilise the Himalayan borders because it was still recovering from the Third Taiwan Straits Crisis and preparing the ground for the US-China Relations Act of 2000.
There were no strong objections from China to the India-US Civil Nuclear Deal (2008) because it could not risk antagonising the US amidst President Hu Jintao’s ‘Peaceful Rise’ narrative. Today, their Foreign Ministry Spokesperson reacts adversely to the smallest developments in the India-US relationship.
China’s aggressive inroads in the Indian subcontinent and the Belt and Road Initiative came only in the mid-2010s, when the Obama Administration had already decided to ‘ Pivot to Asia.’ Significant border transgressions, such as Doklam (2017), coincide with President Trump’s disruptive approach to China, and the recent border standoffs occurred when US-China relations were in their worst phase. Contrary to the conventional logic of accommodating one adversary when competing with the other, China becomes hostile to the US and India simultaneously. It is a strong indication that China wears an American lens when dealing with India and sees it as a colluder with the US.
China’s Civilisational Myopia
China is most hypocritical in its perceptions of India’s domestic policy and civilisational worldview. Responding to the West’s allegation of authoritarianism and human rights, Chinese leaders have echoed many times that countries have a right to decide their form of governance as per the needs of the people. China’s socialist system is a punching bag for the West and is often called oppressive and totalitarian. Until PM Modi suffered a setback in the 2024 general elections, India’s legitimate and democratically-elected government was also being undermined every other day by the Western media. It is duplicitous to see China extend similar treatment to India, a fellow non-Western country.
Under the Modi government, the Vishwaguru jibe is often used as a sarcastic dismissal of India’s global aspirations and quest for status. How can a mere $2,500 per capita GDP have anything to teach and offer the world? Irrespective of India’s capacity to be a vishwaguru, the Chinese would find that one need not be a teacher in the orthodox sense to guide and learn only if they could remember their own heritage. Confucius once said, “If I am walking with two other men, each of them will serve as my teacher”.
Like Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara delayed his own nirvana to help the other earthbound fellows attain the knowledge, India supplied COVID-19 vaccines to 101 countries at the cost of delaying the inoculation of its own masses. This vishwa bandhu zeal is not new. China should remember how even a colonised India sent a medical unit under Dwarkanath Kotnis to help the People’s Liberation Army in the Second Sino-Japanese War of 1938. However, the Chinese civilisation is still traumatised by the Century of Humiliation and seeks retribution from the West, particularly the US.
The ‘Three Shoulds’ and One ‘Must’
India’s global aspirations are the international manifestation of Swami Vivekananda’s words, “Strength is goodness, weakness is sin”, because, in world politics, only material strength and diplomatic boldness are respected. No one should understand this better than China.
China should know that it has to live and co-exist with India, even if it drives the US away from Asia. Ancient civilisations thought not in years but in decades and centuries, so the following Three Should’s would help China stabilise its relationship with India and attain a peaceful co-existence.
First, China should see its ties with India and the US separately. India is an autonomous power that does not subscribe to the ally-adversary dichotomy. It should also have the same regard for India’s strategic space in the subcontinent as it expects the West to do so in Taiwan and East Asia.
Second, China should realise that, like all rising powers, India’s recourse to nationalism reflects its global aspirations, fuelled by its economic prospects and aspirational youth. As it adopted Soviet-style Communism with Chinese characteristics, India would also infuse liberal democracy with its millennia-old values.
Third, as one of the two surviving ancient civilisations, China should see the Indian worldview to ensure its knowledge vacuum is not filled by superficial narratives advanced by vested interests in the West. It would only lead to strategic miscalculations and push India further away from China.
Before these ‘Three Shoulds’, there is ‘One Must’ that China needs to acknowledge if it genuinely seeks a rapprochement with India. China must realise that cultural and economic exchanges can only take place when countries do not threaten each other’s security and political stability. Therefore, maintaining peace and tranquillity at the borders is fundamental for any normalisation of India-China relations.
The author is pursuing PhD at Indiana University Bloomington and is currently a Summer Visiting Scholar at the Vivekananda International Foundation. The views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.
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