 "Most Indians believe ties with China would be better without CPC in charge, finds survey")
Most Indians believe that if China were not in the clutches of the Communist Party of China (CPC), the ties would have been better, according to a survey.
Even though India and China have reached an understanding regarding the border stand-off in eastern Ladakh , the tensions in the bilateral relationships are far from over — even the border stand-off is far from over as multiple friction points remain unresolved.
Moreover, China remains India's biggest strategic challenge and containment measures, such as blocking Chinese investments, and responses, such as engagement with like-minded countries in the Indo-Pacific region under various frameworks, are not going to stop.
It is in such backdrop that Takshashila Institution conducted a survey of Indians’ perception of China.
The survey also found that Indians believe that even if Chinese President Xi Jinping is to be replaced by someone else tomorrow, the relationship would not see much change as the stressors in the relationship are fundamentally woven into the CPC-run Chinese regime.
Vast majority of Indians hold CPC responsible for poor ties: Survey
The Takshashila survey, titled ‘Pulse of the People: State of India-China Relations’, found that a vast majority of Indians at 61.5 per cent believe that if the Chinese political ecosystem were more democratic with multiple political parties, the India-China relations may well have been better.
However, as China has a single-party rule of CPC, the relations are the way they are.
The influence of the CPC is such that it goes beyond individual leaders. Even as President Xi Jinping has emerged as the most powerful Chinese leader since the foundation of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), who has bared his intention to establish China as the global hegemon, most Indians don’t believe that some other leader —who may not be as much of a hardliner as Xi— would mean that India-China ties would be better.
Only 22.9 per cent Indians believe that India-China relations would be better if someone other than Xi led China, according to the survey.
Such a finding “indicates that there is a belief that the trajectory of the relationship between the two rising neighbours is bound to be difficult regardless of the leader in power in Beijing”, noted the report’s co-authors Manoj Kewalramani, Anushka Saxena, and Amit Kumar in the report.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsWhen asked if ties would be better if someone other than Xi ruled China, 46.6 per cent could not say anything with certainty and 22.9 per cent said the relations could even be worse.
“This result may be based on the assertion that China continues to remain under CPC rule, and follow a party-state model of governance, with the supreme leader at the center of decision-making. In fact, the second-most number of respondents (30.5 per cent) argue that if another leader were at the helm of affairs, assuming the CPC continued to exercise supreme authority, India-China relations would not be more stable,” noted the co-authors.
Indians want to stand up to Chinese ‘red lines’, build ties with West
When it comes to ‘red lines’ that China does not want the world to cross, most Indians believe India should not respect Chinese concerns, according to the survey.
On Tibet, one of the biggest Chinese red lines, the vast majority of Indias at 64 per cent believe that India should defy Beijing and recognise the next Dalai Lama appointed by the Dharamshala-based Government-in-Exile of Tibet.
The view on another red line, Taiwan, was somewhat nuanced — understandably because understanding of Taiwan is still quite nascent in popular Indian consciousness.
The survey found that more than a quarter of Indians at 28.7 per cent believe India should support the United States logistically in case of China-Taiwan conflict and 54.4 per cent believe India should play the role of peacemaker, encouraging diplomacy and negotiations toward a peaceful resolution.
As for how India should deal with China, Indians overwhelmingly believe at 69.2 per cent that if forced to choose, India must align closely with the US-led West and not with China and Russia, who have increasingly formed an anti-West bloc with fellow authoritarian regimes of North Korea and Iran.
As for the way forward, the survey found that Indians favoured strengthening military posture and deterrence (41.2 per cent) and at the same time resuming high-level political dialogue (31 per cent) to manage the ties.
As for the stressors, the majority at 54.4 per cent believed the boundary dispute was the biggest stressor, followed by China’s increasing inroads into India’s neighbourhood (26.6 per cent), the trade imbalance in favour of China (9.3 per cent), the India-US close ties (4.9 per cent), and China-Pakistan nexus (4.9 per cent).
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