Interesting discussion about India-China relationship on Indian media site ThePrint between Prof Kanti Bajpai of the Lew Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore and Prof Kishore Mahbubani, Distinguished Fellow & China scholar at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore. At the closing of the discussion Kishore Mahbubani suggested that India chose the losing side during the Cold War, and it may also have chosen the wrong side this time too, i.e., in the competition between the US and China.
I watched quite a few interviews and discussions that Kishore Mahbubani participated with various Indian media, his love-and-hate with India was quite obvious. Ambassador Kishore Mahbubani is well-known to be pro-China, but he is also ethnic Indian. So it's quite interesting to watch the his interactions with Indian media and pundits.
Prof. Mahbubani is not entirely anti India or pro China. He's a relatively unbiased (Indian Singaporean I think?) man who is also exceptionally knowledgeable, not only because of his past UN role. He is simply taking a position where I suspect he feels India is not being governed or doing what it could to progress faster and in better ways. He's an occasional proponent of China because (again I suspect) he feels China does a half decent job of showing "alternatives" to western systems of thinking and proving to Asian peoples that non-caucasians with similar starting problems as PRC to be perfectly capable of progressing and gaining all that ground within two generations.
I think part of his motivations come from a sense of identity separate from western values. He is ethnically non-western after all and probably knows how the game really works and is about (which most of us do already). Something I hope many more Indian (and Chinese too) people can eventually wake up to.
If India were ruled by intelligent and more incorruptible characters, it would never have 1. found an enemy in China back during respective nations births and 2. have had the wisdom to understand everything far more holistically than Nehru and now Modi. But the aggravations are now commonplace and so far gone even Chinese are participating in it. Which is something I am guilty of as well. It's a shame but with China, it respects ones that demonstrate ability. I think if and when India eventually develops genuine power and ability, China would consider it both a threat and equal but would not act the way western powers do when a near peer approaches. Just like how ancient Chinese had relations with Persians, Indians (or whatever group in power in the subcontinent), and anyone else it considered "ascended" civilisations of rough parity - peaceful trade. Warring with Japan goes both ways no one knows which came first and conquering Tibet and Xingjiang were done under Mongol expansionist rule. The Mongols conquered all the way through the middle east and up to European Russia so they were always about that.
Unfortunately India is ruled the way it is and its leaders do resemble close cooperatives of western agendas if not occasionally being direct policy extensions. Something the early communists long suspected, back then due more to concerns for the residual effects of colonialism India suffered through. I suspect they were correct all this time but of course, China never did much to avoid those situations. Scoring perfectly in some ways and failing miserably in others.
India is not a great performer today. It isn't taken seriously by China. This isn't to say India hasn't got potential or that it would forever be locked in some antagonistic role. It hasn't demonstrated ability that is worth great attention. If and when it does, it would receive plenty of respect and rather than being confronted with fear and anger from China, there would be Chinese leadership attempts to convert the situation into a friendly one - similar to past ways of dealing with peer civilisations. As in the CCP would not bother confronting into some Thucydides trap like the US and western ways seem to deal with this stuff. It would gradually ease tensions (with India rising in power). It's the opposite of how western powers behave. I suspect India is actually culturally similar to China in this regard. It is because that China currently does not consider India to be much, it pays little effort to make the relationship a positive one. And as much as China prefers to have working relations with the west, the west will not have it. The west beats down on a lesser China, something a little incongruous with much of Chinese thinking. We're narrow minded in our own ways.
