BANGALORE - Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao on Wednesday began his three-day
visit to India with a charm offensive. Among his first engagements in Delhi was
a meeting with students of Tagore International School, with whom he discussed
Chinese culture, tai chi and calligraphy.
The school has an ongoing student program with a Chinese school in Shanghai.
While Indian instructors teach yoga to
Chinese pupils through video-conferencing, their Chinese counterparts teach
Mandarin to students here.
Media in India and China are bound to dismiss this engagement as the "light"
and hence less substantial part of Wen's otherwise weighty agenda in Delhi,
which will include discussion of the longstanding boundary dispute and the
signing of trade and investment deals.
However, Wen's public outreach is not an inconsequential item on his agenda. It
is aimed at improving China's image in India, at improving cultural exchanges
and communication between the peoples of the two countries.
Although India and China are neighbors, there is little contact between their
people, and little awareness of each other's cultures and society.
Consequently, negative stereotypes of each other abound, providing suspicion
and hostile rhetoric with the perfect breeding ground when bilateral tensions
erupt.
This was evident in India last year, for instance, when alleged Chinese
"intrusions" across the Line of Actual Control in disputed border territory
took place. The issue was reported by hawks in the Indian media as signaling an
impending Chinese aggression, feeding into public suspicions of Chinese
intentions.
Clearly, memories of the Chinese invasion of India in 1962, which resulted in
China's occupation of Aksai Chin and a humiliating defeat for India, are still
raw. The 1962 Chinese aggression is perceived in India as an act of betrayal,
especially in the context of the friendship that India's first prime minister,
Jawaharlal Nehru, had extended to the Chinese during the 1950s - the Hindi-Chini
bhai-bhai (which in Hindi means Indians and Chinese are brothers) phase
in Sino-Indian relations. Cooperation with China therefore triggers unease.
Chinese public opinion of India is not positive either. Chinese harbor deep
contempt for "dirty, poverty-ridden, chaotic India" and treat with disdain
Delhi's big-power ambitions. They get annoyed by India's attempts to equate
itself with China. They cannot understand India's immense pride in its noisy
democracy and the argumentativeness of its people.
Little seems to have changed in the Chinese political establishment's
characterization of the Indian ruling elite and their foreign policy. If in the
1950s, Chinese leaders described Nehru as a "reactionary" and a "running dog of
imperialism", today they perceive India as a mere pawn in Western designs to
contain China.
Unlike India and Pakistan, whose people share linguistic and cultural bonds,
interaction between the Indian and Chinese masses has been limited historically
by the great Himalayan barrier. It is true that religious and cultural
exchanges as well as trade did exist in ancient times, but for almost one
millennium - from the 10th century until the advent of colonial rule -
interaction ceased.
Post-colonial interaction has been largely at the political and official level.
This was disrupted with the 1962 war, when diplomatic relations went into a
freeze for years. With normalization, interaction has grown to include business
and trade ties, cultural exchanges and people-to-people contacts.
Yet these remain minimal, hardly the kind of broad, multi-faceted engagement
necessary for two neighbors hoping to put behind their past enmity, resolve
their decades-old territorial dispute and boost bilateral business.
Besides the Himalayan barrier that has stood in the way of contacts between the
people on a mass level, and the repeatedly ruptured bilateral interaction,
there are other factors that contribute to the poor Sino-Indian understanding
of each other.
One is their different political systems.
Balbir Bhasin, an expert on cultural aspects of global business who teaches at
the Welch College of Business in Sacred Heart University, Connecticut, draws
attention to the different socio-cultural milieu in the two countries. Unlike
Indian society, which is deeply divided by language, religion and caste,
Chinese society, which is 95% Han Chinese, is homogenous. Besides,
"Confucianism has effectively provided for order in Chinese society since 500
BC. This has, in recent history, been reinforced by an egalitarian, highly
structured and a profoundly compliant society imposed by communism," Bhasin
said. "Naturally, the Chinese would find India chaotic, disorganized and
noisy."
Their socio-cultural differences notwithstanding, Indian and Chinese societies
have commonalities, which they can draw on to build a stronger cooperative
relationship. These shared experiences and values provide reason for them to
turn to each other, rather than the West.
"The Chinese feel a kinship for India - they too have suffered at the hands of
the exploitation of Western imperialism," points out Bhasin, who is of Indian
origin but spent many years working in the Chinese world. "They also recognize
Indian intellectualism in many areas and would prefer to cooperate and compete
against the West."
Indian analysts are often dismissive of the value of cooperation with the
Chinese. They point to the huge trust deficit and attribute it to Chinese
discomfort with India's rise in the global arena and its multi-pronged strategy
to contain India, whether it is by denying it permanent membership in the
United Nations Security Council or arming its rival Pakistan with nuclear and
missile technology. Similarly, Chinese analysts see dire implications for China
in India's new proximity to the Americans.
It is not as if suspicions have not plagued India-US relations. Like China, the
US has strong defense relations with Pakistan; yet Delhi and Washington have
worked together on issues of mutual benefit.
India and China have much to learn from the way Washington has assiduously
built for itself a powerful lobby among Indian decision-makers and
opinion-builders. Hundreds of thousands of Indian students have benefited from
scholarships to American universities, as have Indian journalists, businessmen
and politicians to funded trips to the US. They have played a huge role in
molding India-US relations.
The role that US-educated Indians have played in molding India-US relations is
enormous as is that of Indian diaspora there. Unfortunately, there is little of
either that India can draw on in the case of China and vice-versa. Very few
Indians have gone to China to study.
There are reportedly around 20,000 Indians in China; most of them are not
permanent residents and have gone there to work recently. People of Indian
origin who have been in China for decades are but a handful.
India has just one "Chinatown”, in Kolkata, and even this community's strength
has dropped to around 2,000 - a tenth of what it was - over the past few
decades. This is shocking considering the fact that India and China are
neighbors.
The Indian and Chinese governments have shown little energy or imagination in
improving public support for normalization of relations.
The Chinese approach to building a better atmosphere for stronger relations
seems to be to silence disagreeable public opinion. Alluding to the negative
reporting in India's media last year, Chinese ambassador to India Zhang Yan
called on the Indian government to "provide guidance to the public to avoid a
war of words". As for India, its inability to think big when dealing with the
Chinese stands in the way of its improving its image in China. Opening a couple
of schools that teach yoga or classical Indian dance will not alter Sino-Indian
relations the way the US improved its standing among Indians.
Recently India's Central Board of Secondary Education announced plans to
introduce Mandarin to be taught as a foreign language option in its 11,000
affiliated schools from next year. More such steps and on a larger scale are
needed if India and China want to rewrite their relations.
Improving interaction and understanding of each other's cultures, societies and
polities is often dismissed as unimportant in improving bilateral ties. They
are not. It is on a strong foundation of such understanding that difficult
political and business deals are done.
A negotiated settlement to their boundary dispute will require compromise on
both sides. India and China will have to give up some territorial claims. This
will require public support.
Delhi and Beijing will have to work harder on improving public support for
compromise in their two countries. Building public goodwill in each other's
countries cannot be delayed any longer.
Sudha Ramachandran is an independent journalist/researcher based in
Bangalore.
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