‘Beyond Binaries: The World of India and China’ by Shastri Ramachandaran: Different take on India-China ties

Vivek Katju

Shastri Ramachandaran’s ‘Beyond Binaries: The World of India and China’ is a compilation of his writings from 2008 to 2022 on China and India-China relations. He has done stints as a journalist with the Chinese state-owned media between 2009 and 2016. He had the opportunity to visit Tibet and Xinjiang. He has continued his interest in China-related issues. His writings have been impacted by his personal experience and his reflections on these matters.

Ramachandaran’s work contains valuable insights into China’s “turbo-powered” transformation and on different aspects and incidents relating to Sino-India ties specifically, but not limited to this 14-year period. His admiration for what China has achieved is evident but he is not an entirely uncritical admirer. He also finds faults with some of India’s approaches towards China and is particularly harsh on the Indian media for being “openly hostile to China”.

The author correctly notes that China succeeded in handling the 2008 global financial crisis far better than the western countries. It experienced phenomenal growth in the first decade of this century. However, as Ramachandaran records, there was a flip side to this achievement: “appalling income disparities, rising unemployment, displacement of rural populations, pervasive corruption, criminality, massive environmental degradation, pockets of extreme poverty, social sickness, discontent of the have-nots and restive minorities in the Tibet and Xinjiang regions.” Significantly, while acknowledging this, his main focus has been on Chinese achievements in infrastructure development, both physical and intellectual. Ramachandaran could have focused more on the dark side of China over the years for achieving a fuller record.

In his writings, he, again and again, returns to the proposition that there should be more to the bilateral relationship than the border dispute. He obviously believes that it should be handled maturely and incidents should not be allowed to impede the growth of economic and commercial ties. His writings extensively covered the period when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Wen Jiabao struck a positive chord and the two countries explored areas of cooperation. What he has not examined though is Chinese intransigence in not even showing a willingness to purposefully proceed on defining the Line of Actual Control (LAC). Clearly, Ramachandaran believes that India should have shown greater flexibility on the border issue when Zhou Enlai and later Deng Xiaoping are said to have indicated a willingness on the question. What does not find mention in his writings is that all that is past history and prior to China’s great rise.

Ramachandaran is right in his assessment of the diplomatic clumsiness of how India dealt with China on the NSG issue in 2016. He correctly notes: “Personal chemistry rarely plays a role in China’s international relations, as Modi discovered to his chagrin…” Clearly, Modi wanted to take the relations in the positive direction but now after the Galwan clashes, Ramachandaran concedes: “However, developments in recent years, especially since 2020, have demolished much that Sino-Indian achievements had achieved in the last 40-45 years, raising the question: Whither India-China relations?” On why Galwan happened, he writes: “It could have been because of India’s deepening ties with the US, role in the Quad, opposition to the Belt and Road Initiative or its ambitions for supremacy in Asia; or all of these.” Surprisingly, he goes on to add: “More than any or all of these, China’s provocative military attack could well have been to establish deterrence against India. This is a possible, and plausible, reason.” Given the advantages that China has in almost all areas of the LAC, did it really think that India had aggressive intentions here or elsewhere? In the absence of any back-up evidence, Ramachandaran’s speculation can hardly be taken seriously.

What the author needs to consider is, whether over the past four decades, when, as he says, India and China made some achievements, did China acknowledge that India had legitimate interests in South Asia and beyond? And, was it prepared to respect them? Indeed, Ramachandaran’s accounts of Chinese activism in Nepal, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and further afield in Africa show that it did not. And, he does not go into details of how China has built Pakistan as its cat’s paw against India since the early 1960s. Hence, is a romanticisation of the years when both countries sought areas of convergence warranted?

Ramachandaran’s warnings that the US and China have an economic interdependence and compete, but the former wants to use some countries in this competition have to be heeded. In the game of nations, every country looks at its own interests. Naturally, as India looks on how to handle China in the post-Galwan era, it has to be completely conscious of this reality.

India’s China experts and the general reader alike should read Ramachandaran’s work for he, more often than not, departs from the conventional line of thinking on India-China relations. That is a thought challenge that marks a solid, if not popular, contribution to our consideration of India’s foremost foreign and security policy challenge.