{"id":8,"date":"2005-04-19T11:19:23","date_gmt":"2005-04-19T15:19:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/marxisminternational\/2005\/04\/19\/china-vs-india-the-view-"},"modified":"2005-04-19T11:19:23","modified_gmt":"2005-04-19T15:19:23","slug":"china-vs-india-the-view-from-the-west-april-19-2005","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/marxisminternational\/2005\/04\/19\/china-vs-india-the-view-from-the-west-april-19-2005\/","title":{"rendered":"China “vs” India: The View From the West (April 19, 2005)"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

You may have seen this morning’s op-ed rant by George Melloan<\/a> in the Wall Street Journal<\/a>.   I am
\ntalking about his piece on the “courting” of “Mother India”
\nby people he does not like.   <\/p>\n

It’s a bit churlish even by WSJ standards.  <\/p>\n

First,
\nGeorge is upset at China’s recent overtures to her western
\nneighbor.   He sniggers at last week’s visit to New
\nDelhi by the “well-tailored, charming and eager” Premier Wen
\nJiabao.   George is much more smitten with Condoleezza
\nRice’s.   Her recent trip to India, where she presumably
\nwas no less “well-tailored, charming and eager”, was an
\neffort to waltz the South Asian giant away from Beijing’s
\nembrace.<\/p>\n

The real focus though, was on Russia.   And, especially Vladmir Putin’s<\/a> attempt to bring China and India closer to Moscow in a sort of “triangulating<\/a>” manoever designed to confound US designs in Greater Asia.  <\/p>\n

“[The
\nRussian’s] are dreaming,” says George slyly, pretending to contradict
\nhis reader’s natural assumptions to the contrary: “It’s not
\nclear that either China or India wants to cast its lot…with a
\nRussia that seems to be growing more and more estranged from the
\nwestern democracies.”   <\/p>\n

But to many outside the
\nState Department and the editorial room of western financial
\nnewspapers, a China\/India\/Russia reapproachment makes
\nsense.   Beside common borders and a shared history of
\nsocialist economics, there are the matters of energy, economic
\ndevelopment, religious fundamentalism, and a general wariness of a
\nunipolar world dictated to by the US.   <\/p>\n

And
\nIndia, which finally threw off the yoke — after 100 years
\n— of the most pompously hypocritcal examplar of “western
\ndemocracies”(the English), might be loathe to take advice on who
\nthey should or should not associate with.<\/p>\n

That goes double for China.<\/p>\n

And,
\nin a larger sense, India and China are but two stars of
\nan Asian galaxy that is changing
\nrapidly.   National self-determination, the right of
\neach nation to develop along its own chosen path — a goal most
\ndefinitively and eloquently outlined by Lenin more than eighty years
\nago — is resurfacing not only in Asia but throughout
\nthe so-called “third world”.<\/p>\n

This weekend, China will join with other developing nations from Asia and Africa in Indonesia to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Bandung Conference<\/a>,
\nwhich led ultimately to the founding of the Non-Aligned Movement
\nin 1961.   It is a moment of triumph for China’s leaders.<\/p>\n

Trade
\nwith Asia and Latin America is exploding.   China’s trading
\nrelationship is now more than $20bn and will surpass that of the US in
\na few years.   Aluminum, bauxite, coal, and, especially, oil
\nare being snatched up by an energy-hungry Chinese at an unprecedented
\nrate.<\/p>\n

From Rio de Janeiro to Caracas to Johannesburg, China is clearly the nation to watch<\/a>.   She
\nis making huge inroads everywhere throughout the developing
\nworld.    Some are now even speaking of a “Chinese
\nmodel” (e.g., a planned economy, one-party state) to replace
\nthe failing neo-liberal paradigm of “free markets” and
\n“multi-party democracy” which is seen in many quarters (especially in
\nLatin America) as not doing enough to pay the rent, let
\nalone provide a viable path to national power and prosperity.<\/p>\n

And
\nmany throughout these regions point out that “multiparty democracy”
\noften means little more than different elite groupings of
\ncompeting entrepreneurs all ultimately beholden to foreign capital
\nand acting in its interests, to the detriment of that of its national
\ncitizens.<\/p>\n

Too — and this is what is
\nreally upsetting to the George Melloans and Condoleezza Rices of
\nthe planet — it is now becoming increasingly
\nclear almost everywhere that America now needs Asia
\nmuch more than the other way around<\/a>. <\/p>\n

America
\nneeds raw materials, cheap labor and money.   What Asia needs
\nis increasingly being obtained from centers outside the US.<\/p>\n

And
\nthen there’s that nagging question of America’s profligate habits,
\nits inability to save, and its propensity for ever-increasing
\ndebt.   <\/p>\n

It just so happens that the two largest owners of America’s debt are in Asia.  Japan is one.<\/p>\n

China is the other.<\/p>\n

But, what of India?  And the new relationships being contemplated, especially between New Delhi and Beijing?<\/p>\n

China
\nand India virtually invite comparative study.  The modern versions
\nof these states both started from positions of revolutionary
\nchange amidst great poverty. In 1950, despite possessing together
\nnearly 40% of the world’s population, China and India’s share of world
\noutput was 5% and 3%, respectively.   Both began the latter
\npart of the twentieth century with ambitions to replicate
\nthe policies of Stalin’s<\/a>
\nSoviet Union in industrializing its economy and modernizing its
\nagriculture.   And both adopted, more or less, the
\nfoundations of a Soviet-style planned economy.<\/p>\n

Time was to treat these Asian giants quite differently.<\/p>\n

China completed its revolution.  India did not.   China, following the upheavals of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution<\/a>
\n— an experiment in social engineering unprecedented in human history
\n— created out of whole cloth a new model of third world development,
\nuntrammeled by neo-Confucian traditionalism or western capitalism.<\/p>\n

India,
\non the other hand, remained suffocated by an ancient caste system
\nand the worst features of British imperialism, its population 
\ninfused with the top-down mentalities of an insouciant and
\nbrowbeaten people.   Today, India struggles to achieve the
\nstatus of economic powerhouse, but history is stacked against it. 
\nAs Martin Wolf<\/a>
\nrecently pointed out, “[China & India] are heirs of great
\ncivilizations.   But China’s civilization is inseparable from
\nits state, while India’s is inseparable from its social structure,
\nabove all from the role of caste.”<\/p>\n

China’s exponential growth is
\nbased on high rates of savings (ten times that of India), a heroic
\ninvestment in infrastructure, universal education, a “Stalinist”
\ncommitment to rapid industrialization, and an economy friendly to
\nforeign direct investment.   India’s economic growth, on the
\nother hand, is increasingly service-based and (apparently)
\njobless.   Similarly, as Wolf notes, “Chinese politics are
\ndevelopmental, while India’s remain predominately clientelist.”<\/p>\n

People
\nlike George Melloan are paying increasingly close attention to what is
\nhappening in Asia.  They may not like what they see, but what is
\nhappening there will — to a far greater degree than is comfortable for
\nwestern democracies — determine what kind of a world emerges in
\nthe morrow.<\/p>\n

Next: Happy Birthday, Lenin!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You may have seen this morning’s op-ed rant by George Melloan in the Wall Street Journal.   I am talking about his piece on the “courting” of “Mother India” by people he does not like.   It’s a bit churlish even by WSJ standards.   First, George is upset at China’s recent overtures to her western neighbor.   He sniggers at last week’s visit to New Delhi by the “well-tailored, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1120,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1428],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marxisminternationstories"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/marxisminternational\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/marxisminternational\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/marxisminternational\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/marxisminternational\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1120"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/marxisminternational\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/marxisminternational\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/marxisminternational\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/marxisminternational\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/marxisminternational\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}