China and India: Coping with Growing Asymmetry

It is not just the GDP figure of China that has expanded to become nearly four times that of India’s; the components that constitute it reflect a picture of growing asymmetry between these two emerging Asian economies, which has deeper systemic implications. The contributions to their GDP from the agriculture, industry, and service sectors in the case of China have moved from 40:33:27 percent in 1963 to 10:44:46 percent in 2013; the shift in the case of India for the same period has been from 41:20:39 percent to 18:25:57 percent. Even by the most agreed parameters of measuring such shifts across the sectors driving a nation’s economy, these statistics clearly reveal emerging India as less developed; but, they also suggest it is distinct from rising China. Its development trajectory is following a different track with different strengths and weaknesses. (See Table 1) Accordingly, China’s armed forces personnel and nuclear arsenals may be twice those of India, but they have very distinct strategic cultures and military doctrines. Fundamentally different political systems also cast divergent images in the eyes of the world, and it is too simplistic to categorize them as strong versus weak.

Source: The World Factbook, Central Intelligence Agency, United States of America, Washington DC

Their main asset, their populations, for the same period between 1963 and 2013 has increased from 682 million to 1.357 billion in the case of China and from 477 million to 1.250 billion for India; yet, in terms of adult literacy and urbanization, China’s have evolved from 66 and 17 percent to 95 and 53 percent respectively, while India has moved from 36 percent and 18 percent to 63 and 31 percent respectively. China’s average life expectancy has moved from 46 in 1963 to 75 years for 2013, while India’s has moved from 43 to 68 years. (See Table 2) This makes India a much younger nation compared to China, which is now working hard to rectify its one-child policy of yesteryears.¹ The statistics for their foreign trade (China’s over 4.1 trillion dollars compared to India’s 1.1 trillion dollars for 2013), foreign exchange reserves (China’s 4.7 trillion dollars versus India’s 300 million dollars for 2013), and inward and outward FDI make this asymmetry all the more complicated. While China remains the manufacturing hub of the entire world, India remains far ahead in several sectors with the global presence of indigenous brands like Tata, Infosys, Mittal Steel, Bharati telecom and has greater religious, cultural and diaspora visibility around the world. All these factors influence their mutual perceptions and policies toward each other, as well as other states’ policies and perceptions towards these two emerging Asian powers. Moreover, while in history they may have survived with very limited interaction, the rise of China and India in this new age of information technology driven globalization makes it impossible for these two neighbors, with disputed boundaries and contested worldviews on their past and present, to ignore each other. Rather, they see each other’s policies and perceptions as having direct impact on their own national interests, making them partners as well as rivals at the same time.

Source: The World Factbook, Central Intelligence Agency, USA

This growing mutual consciousness in the face of their growing asymmetry is influencing their mutual policies. Indeed, it is this growing asymmetry between China and India that makes India so attractive to global powers that are not very comfortable with China’s unprecedented and unstoppable rise. It is in this context that India, as the world’s largest functioning democracy, with a bulging middle class and increasingly young workforce, and not just a state with nuclear weapons, but an attractive market for the supply of nuclear reactors and uranium, holds special significance for major powers. This also provides New Delhi some leverage vis-à-vis Beijing’s increasingly assertive policies and economic omnipresence. It is in this evolving mosaic involving contestation and cooperation, where China has moved ahead of India in several sectors, that this realization that India’s relationship with China has moved from one of “parity” to ‘”asymmetry” becomes a painful realization for India’s policy and academic circles. Hesitation to draw this conclusion leads to misplaced academic analysis and policy responses falling short of what is required, thereby leading to overreactions and repeated tensions.

Asymmetry between rising powers involves a far more complex relationship than the simple “strong-weak” of the patron-client model can explain,² and I place this analysis in the framework of asymmetry to underline the need to appreciate distinct strengths and weaknesses of two growing powers. While the “strong-weak” factor is present, this framework of asymmetry allows greater space for mutual appreciation and cooperation. Like all other asymmetric strategies, it allows for an assessment of the growing contours of India’s leverages vis-à-vis China. Some of this appreciation is visible in India’s policy responses in recent years, but such shifts have often generated unfavorable popular responses, which explains the need for wider appreciation of this growing asymmetry in order to facilitate the continuing emergence of India instead of misplaced overreactions leading to confrontation in India’s relationship with China, while also decelerating India’s rise as a major power in Asia.

The rise of China

Beginning from the early 1990s, debates on the rise of China have been the staple diet of sinologists and other academics around the world.³ Several best sellers have been published on the China threat theory and China bubble-burst forecasts, most of them located in a scenario of a coming conflict with the United States. These have not just triggered speculation on the implications of the relative decline of the United States, but a few have also talked of China’s rise having triggered the relative decline of India and other Asian powers.⁴ China has emerged as the largest trading partner of most nation-states around the world. It is seen not just as the largest recipient of FDI for several decades, but now increasingly as a major investor abroad. Especially, its continued rapid economic rise in the face of the global economic slowdown since 2007 has catapulted China into a global player role. Starting from its successful intervention in the East Asian financial crisis of 1997, which transformed its relations with ASEAN, China has demonstrated a rapid pace of implementing various domestic and foreign modernization projects on time, attracting a global spotlight on its future.⁵ By comparison, India has maintained impressive growth rates and ordered major defense procurement with the advantage of not being yet under such global scrutiny as China is.

At the same time, using parameters such as per capita income or military modernization, China remains far behind most of the major powers. Most western elites remain skeptical about China, and this has often led to serious global critiques of its record on issues such as human rights or nuclear non-proliferation. China, therefore, carefully uses opportunities to showcase its “harmonious” rise. The success of the 2008 Beijing Olympics has come to mark a watershed year when China has since sought to project itself by no longer hiding its strengths and biding its time.⁶ China’s total medal tally over the last eight tournaments of the Asian Games and Summer Olympics respectively has risen from 222:32 to 324:88; in fact, it had the world’s highest tally of 100 medals (see Table 3) in the 2008 Summer Olympics. On the other hand, India’s sports record has been by and large dismal, moving from 32:0 to 57:6, although it has produced the world’s star players in cricket, chess, boxing, badminton, wrestling, etc. The reach of China’s films, television, and radio has also expanded exponentially in recent years. Similarly, China, which was a blank space on the world business tourism map until the mid-70s, has gradually come to be a favored destination for international travellers.⁷

*Due to dispute on its political status, China did not participate in Olympics during 1956-1980
Source: Olympic Council Asia at http://www.ocasia.org/

President Xi Jinping’s more assertive policies have come to be viewed with concern as a symbol of China’s rising power. He now talks of reviving the ancient Silk Route network, of redefining the great power relationships, and of the China dream, which have added to speculations and skepticism. Especially, in its immediate periphery, China is increasingly viewed as growing exceedingly assertive, while India has remained cautious, though it has also been making efforts to move beyond its immediate periphery. India’s last five years have witnessed cascading scandals, leading to policy paralysis slowing down what had appeared to be promising growth during the previous decade. India has also had a change of leadership from May 2014. While Prime Minister Narendra Modi is seen as assertive, he has to work within domestic political divisions and institutional checks-and-balances entrenched in India’s Westminster system, although recent months have witnessed greater faith being reposed in him, at least by investors both from inside and outside. Modi’s hyperactive foreign policy has seen him visit Bhutan, Brazil, Nepal, Japan, the United States, Myanmar, Fiji, and Australia, and host top leaders from many countries in his first six months as prime minister. In particular, hosting Xi Jinping in September 2014 was perceived as heralding a new chapter in India-China relations, and now Modi is expected to visit China in early 2015. But, this period has also witnessed a rise in their military standoffs in their long and disputed border regions.⁸ This has revived debates on their military balance and sharpened the focus on China’s increasing military cooperation and other initiatives with India’s immediate neighbors.⁹ Frequent visits lately of China’s naval vessels to Sri Lankan ports had raised alarms leading to clarifications being extended by Sri Lankan naval chief. While such matters call for urgent attention, the framework of their growing asymmetry can see these as a complex calibration of cooperation and contestation, which is normal to the expanding relationship between two emerging powers in the new geopolitics of the Asian century.

China-India: Growing power asymmetry

What makes their asymmetry especially noteworthy is that China’s surging economic power has been accompanied by its increasing military modernization initiatives. Though both had roughly 8 to 10 billion dollars of defense expenditures during the early 1990s, now outlays for India and China stand at 39 billion dollars and 132 billion dollars respectively.¹⁰ There are other agencies, like CIA, that project much higher figures for China’s defense expenditure. Such a rapid rise in the defense expenditures of India and China makes experts project very high figures of respectively 215 billion dollars and 714 billion dollars in 2050,¹¹ which are not so far-fetched when seen against the backdrop of trends over the last twenty-five years. (See Graph 1) One should add to this China’s veto power at the UN Security Council, its physical size and coastline, and its strategic and political culture to understand impact of its military prowess vis-à-vis its immediate neighbors, including India.

Graph 1: China-India Defence Expenditure 1989-2014

Source: SIPRI Military Expenditure Data
http://www.sipri.org/research/armaments/milex/milex_database

China’s sustained investments in projecting hard power through weapons platforms, such as aircraft carriers, anti-satellite and anti-ship ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, its scientific space missions, deep sea mining, and other frontier technologies, are seen as fitting well into its rising stature and credibility around the world. In contrast, a decade of neglecting the Indian military has widened the capability gap vis-à-vis the PLA exponentially.¹² (See Table 4) China not only has a standing force and nuclear stockpiles that are twice as much as those of India, its institutional set up puts all men-in-uniform, over seven million in total, directly under the command of the CCP Central Military Commission (CMC), which is headed by a man who holds three critical offices: chairman of the CMC, general secretary of the CCP and president of the PRC. India’s former chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee Admiral Arun Prakash provides a far deeper explanation to this asymmetry being rooted in India’s strategic and political culture. For him:

In India, the success of Gandhi’s strategy of nonviolence transmuted, after independence, into foreign policy concepts such as nonalignment and peaceful coexistence. This greatly reduced the role of the Indian military, which…remained focused on Pakistan as a threat, especially because Jawaharlal Nehru’s vision did not envisage a conflict with China.¹³

Consequently, says Admiral Arun Prakash: “In contrast to China’s resolute and rapid quest for nuclear and thermonuclear weapons, India debated for the next twenty-four years whether it should acquire ‘the bomb.’”¹⁴ While China had begun its search for nuclear weapons soon after liberation and formally launched its nuclear weapons program from 1955, India deliberated weaponization options for over 24 years even after it had conducted its first nuclear test in 1974, which it described to be peaceful nuclear implosion meant for scientific development instead of national defense. Even after having developed nuclear weapons, India’s draft nuclear doctrine continues to assert that general and complete disarmament is its ultimate objective, but says little about how and when it would deploy and employ these weapons. Both sides profess a “No First Doctrine,” but India does so without having developed the nuclear triad of deployment on land, in the air, and on the high seas, which is a must for making nuclear deterrence robust and credible.

Source: IHS Jane’s Weapons: Strategic 2012-2013

China has also been working hard at building its soft-power indices. At the most visible level, China not only actively participates in all global and regional forums, but seeks to host several of these to showcase and strengthen its image as a responsible state with “system shaping” capabilities. In addition to the 34 million overseas Chinese who have increasingly been actively investing in China’s rise, its ever expanding population of students studying abroad and its business and pleasure travellers are filling airports and streets around-the-world. Similarly, in addition to its diplomatic missions and offices of Xinhua news agency, China has set up over 500 Confucius Institutes around the world with a similar number of Confucius Classrooms. Chinatowns around the world are a unique asset, which no other major power can claim. China has been in the lead in both negotiating and implementing climate change mitigation strategies. In case of the common but differential responsibility (CBDR) norm in the climate change negotiations, China has clearly moved from being a norm taker to a norm maker. Conversely, with the slowing down of India’s growth rate during the last few years, there were insinuations that the letter ‘I’ in acronyms such as BRICS and BASIC should stand for Indonesia rather than India.

India’s coping strategies

How has India been coping with the rapidly evolving asymmetric balance? Rising China is not just India’s largest and most powerful neighbor, it is a state with which India has had a long history of disputed boundaries and where mutual suspicions and a deep-rooted trust-deficit continue to influence their perceptions and policies. Recently, “engage energetically” has become the buzzword of Prime Minister Modi’s hyperactive foreign policy.¹⁵ His initial approach toward China has been to keep a close embrace for developing an economic partnership, but at the same time to sustain a tough stance to deal with any assertive military or diplomatic posturing by Beijing. Modi has been focusing on consolidating India’s immediate periphery, which has witnessed China’s increasing influence. He seriously engages with these immediate neighbors through both bilateral and multilateral channels. Historically, this has been the basic difference between the right-wing nationalist BJP (earlier Jan Sangh), which has a strong focus on immediate neighbors compared to the left-of-center Indian National Congress, which focuses on major power global relationships.

India’s appreciation of this growing asymmetry and the consequent shift in India’s China policy is not as recent as the coming of Modi to power. It began gradually and almost imperceptibly under Congress’s leadership, when the last prime minister Manmohan Singh adopted a far more accommodating soft approach, or further back with Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s historic visit to China in December 1988, which heralded India’s engagement of China and saw a major change in India’s Tibet policy—the most sensitive concern of China.¹⁶ This policy shift could be seen in the manner in which, during three-week long military tensions on the western sector of the disputed border in April 2013, Foreign minister Salman Khurshid had called the incident “acne” on a beautiful face (that can be easily cured), ensuring that it was not blown out of proportion as a resolution was sought through diplomatic mechanisms.¹⁷ The Border Defense Cooperation Agreement (BDCA) proposed during Premier Li Keqiang’s New Delhi visit in May 2013 was signed before the end of that year. During the election campaign, the BJP leaders had described it as signed in a hurry and expressed a need to revisit it.¹⁸

Confrontation is not to be Modi’s strategy. Instead, he has sought to maintain a fine balance between carrots and stick. His China policy seems to be guided by his focus on economic diplomacy and to be operationalized by his ‘Make in India’ strategy, where he has signed investment deals with Chinese companies amounting to about 20 billion dollars mainly in India’s power and automobile industries. A sign of asymmetry, however, is that China has not given up on Pakistan and promised to invest 46 billion dollars in India’s arch rival and China’s all-weather ally.¹⁹ Even so, from the framework of asymmetry, these investments from China are welcome, as these mark a qualitative shift in China-India relations and is expected not just to boost India’s manufacturing sector and provide employment and other local inputs, but also to reduce India’s imports from China, thereby addressing the problem of their formidable, persistent trade deficit, which has cast a dark shadow on their economic partnership. From the early 1980s, India had proposed opening and expanding bilateral and border trade with China as the most reliable and agreeable pillar of their complicated relationship.²⁰ Against this backdrop of expanding economic relations, the two had also signed major confidence building agreements in 1993 and 1996. But their trade stagnated in the early 2000s, which coincided with India building a closer relationship with the United States. This may have caused Beijing’s neglect by India’s power elite that was busy with engaging the United States. But many in China see Indo-US proximity aimed at China, and it is surely suspect. It has not, though, led China to give up on building an economic partnership, which opens opportunities for India’s asymmetric strategies.

Conclusion

Analyses warning of a “China threat” or internal unrest and social degeneration in China leading to a bubble-bust of China’s rapid development do generate interest in India’s policy and academic circles, but most Indian analysts have come to treat China more as a strategic challenge and prescribe engagement as the most reliable strategy. The fringes of the spectrum of analysts do have their share of hawks and doves, but the fundamental limitation of most Indian analyses and policy prescriptions remains the habit of placing China-India relations in the prism of “parity”, which reflects nothing but nostalgia of yesteryears. A few analysts have gradually began to treat relations in the framework of asymmetry, which offers space for calibrating cooperation and contestation and treating relations more as a complex mosaic with multiple colors, where different shades reflect how the balance keeps evolving almost on daily basis. Academic assessments and policy analysis of China-India equations have to be, therefore, updated on a regular basis. China may face some serious internal challenges in its social and physical environment; yet, these need not lead to doomsday predictions. Instead, these should inform our understanding of China and how best to expand cooperation and minimize contestation to empower India and China together to pursue their development trajectories and to make critical contributions to the twenty-first century world order.

Source: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 68(4), 2012

Source: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 69(6), 2013