I was on my fourth visit to China recently. But it was the first occasion when I stayed in the country for five consecutive nights. Undoubtedly, China has successfully transitioned from being a developing country to being the second most-powerful nation on the planet in the last couple of decades.
Today, its per capita income stands at $14,875. This has seen a three-fold increase in the last five years. So, you shouldn’t be surprised if US President Donald Trump — who is usually breathing fire and threatening everyone — was unusually restrained and demure during his visit to China.
The detractors of this scintillating economic success keep harping on the fact that China has no democracy. They reap the benefits of an authoritarian government. These detractors should know better. Since the dawn of civilisation till 1772, China was the world’s leading economy while India used to be number two. After their liberation from the colonial yoke, both countries pursued their unique paths of progress. But China has taken an unassailable lead. The reason is that, since 1972, driven by the lure of cheap labour, the US has invested phenomenal resources in China’s industrialisation. The US’ and Europe’s investments of $123 billion and $1 trillion, respectively, in China are powering its economy.
India, on the contrary, always finds itself in the US’ crosshairs.
During the infamous Cold War era, India was perceived as an ally of the erstwhile Soviet Union. Moscow stood by us during the 1971 Indo-Pak War, with arms and ammunition and a veto in the UN Security Council. Pakistan’s forces, meanwhile, were backed by US tanks and fighter planes. Nevertheless, they suffered a crushing defeat on the Eastern front and more than 90,000 of the country’s soldiers surrendered in front of India’s forces. Those days, US president Richard Nixon would openly air his dislike of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
However, before the war began, an epoch-making incident happened in secret. A deal between the US secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, and Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai laid the foundation for China’s miraculous progress. Kissinger is known as the modern-day Chanakya. But his foresight was flawed. Kissinger failed to realise that he was unwittingly creating a Frankenstein that would pose the greatest existential threat to his own country in a matter of decades. Did Kissinger feel grateful towards Pakistan, a country that facilitated the US-China détente? (It was the Pakistan dictator Yahya Khan that brought the US closer to China and provided its own bases and resources for the mission).
However, after the 1971 Indo-Pak war, had the US moved away from Pakistan during those tumultuous times and helped India instead, today’s geopolitics would have looked very different.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, the entire global supply chain came to a grinding halt. At the time, people started discussing that though China was factory to the world, the globe needed a China+1 policy. India was the obvious choice for the global manufacturing giants. But the idea fizzled out the moment the pandemic ended.
Those who cite China’s success to criticise India should pause and take a moment to look around. Things aren’t as bad as they are made out to be. The Dragon opened its doors for the world after Kissinger’s visit in 1972. In this regard, India lagged behind by two decades. PV Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh initiated India economic perestroika (liberalisation and reconstruction) in 1991. The results have been encouraging.
During the last 25 years, India’s economy has grown at a rate of 6.5-7% on an average. The 2008 global economic meltdown, the pandemic, and now, the hazards of Hormuz have failed to deter it. During the same time, only China surged ahead of us with a growth rate of 8-9%. Many experts believe that the day we attain a growth rate of 7.5%, we would be able to tide over every difficulty we face.
As I mentioned earlier, people credit the dictatorial Chinese government for its success. It’s partially true. Chinese cities are saturated with cameras every few metres. You can find monitoring stations at regular intervals, minutely observing people on the streets in real time. These control rooms are connected to the mobile cellular network’s big data centre in Beijing. The belief is: Let alone a person indulging in crime, even a person looking a bit hassled will be met by police personnel within minutes.
Another important fact is that even today Chinese citizens’ access to information is severely regulated and they receive only the information that their government deems kosher. During my most recent stay, I asked many Chinese youngsters about what they knew about India. Their answers were always the same: We don’t know much about the outside world, we know what our government wants us to know.
I would like to mention apps such as Deepseek here. They don’t just turn the users into scrollers but also empower them. I found vehicle drivers using their local app for routes because they were more accurate than Google Maps.
But, let me make a distinction. Lack of global exposure isn’t making their youth intellectually poor. Actually, there’s some merit in the control. Years of discipline and increasing prosperity have made their focus progress-oriented. There’s a lesson for India. Our roads, railway stations, airports, and other public places look chaotic as compared to China. We have made progress but still need to develop social conduct and requisite discipline to move ahead quickly.
This is the reason that every time China attracts, it also appears to challenge us.
Shashi Shekhar is editor-in-chief, Hindustan. The views expressed are personal
