Over the last few decades, China and India have made substantial improvements in the structural transformation of their economies by allowing foreign firms to compete  in markets from which they were previously barred. At the outset of reforms, the conditions of both economies were similar, and both were under the influence of the Soviet model, pursuing similar development strategies involving central planning and rapid industrialization. Both leaderships considered the state to be the engine of growth and suspected foreign sector development. In China, foreign investments were prohibited and the mechanism for foreign trade was monopolized by the Ministry of Foreign Trade. In India, the Foreign Exchange Regulatory Act (1974) reduced foreign equity participation from 51 to 40 percent which led to the exit of companies like IBM, Shell and Coca-Cola. Since that time, both governments have significantly liberalized their FDI regimes, however, China has been able to attract a much higher level of foreign investment. Of course, Beijing initiated the reform process much earlier than New Delhi and both countries are far more “FDI-led” than other developing countries have been in the past. Nonetheless, the experience of these two large, but strikingly different countries underlies the importance of political economy for growth and development.

The divergence of attitudes toward FDI can be easily explained by the two countries’ different political systems. China has an authoritarian regime where policy-making is generally regarded as a top-down process, and where the government is able to be flexible in its decision-making. Additionally, the Chinese leadership has a clear focus on economic growth. In contrast, the formation of policy in democratic India is much slower. Short-term political calculations dominate as there are frequent elections conducted at different levels- national, state, municipal or village. Interest groups are important constituencies for Indian parties since they have the ability to provide campaign finances and influence voting behavior. That is why for democratic, post-colonial India, allowing foreign investors to earn huge profits at the expense of domestic firms is unthinkable. Moreover, the nationalist devotion of India’s leaders translated into a suspicion of an open economy and often discouraged foreign investors. Even the Indian diaspora was perceived as hostile by New Delhi, whereas in China more than half of FDI comes from overseas Chinese.

A further part of the answer  lies in the political economy of the local state. In China, decentralization of economic responsibility and establishment of special economic zones (SEZs) was a key feature in foreign sector reform. Local authorities, responsible for the economic growth of their province, undertook many initiatives to ensure that SEZs would attract foreign investors. In India, decentralization was less ‘economic’ and more ‘political’. It began in the early 1990s only because central government lacked sufficient political power and was not able to create an efficient coalition without depending on the state governments support. Thus, local officials have no direct incentives to promote FDI and state governments heavily rely on centrally-led strategies. Hitec City- a special economic zone in Hyderabad, designed to attract investments in the IT sector, is a case in point. Every significant aspect of the project, from negotiations with investors to the design of the regulatory framework was conducted centrally with no local participation. Seen broadly, local bureaucracy in India- epitomized in this case by the license-quota-permit raj- do not perceive themselves as independent actors in terms of economic reform and oblige central government to be responsible for the implementation of development programs.

Such dependence on central government also has an impact on infrastructure. In China local governments have far greater control over local revenues than in India. Under the new fiscal system that resulted from economic decentralization, Chinese provinces entered into negotiated revenue sharing contracts with the central government. This means that local governments are allowed to keep a share of revenue that they collected before handing over a negotiated amount to the central government. The ability to extract these revenues provides them with the financial resources to build a strong infrastructural base to foreign investors and maintaining a reputation for the rapid completion of infrastructure projects. Unlike in China, the tax assignment system in India is imbalanced: most broad-based taxes have been assigned to the center, while taxes narrow in scope are assigned to the states. The impact is that central government has a greater income and less expenditure whereas state governments are collecting less and spending more. This deficit in local state budgets needs to be balanced by central funds, which in turn means greater central control of the allocation of financial resources to state governments while simultaneously laying responsibility for infrastructure development on them. Since the central government itself is running on the deficit, transfers to state governments must take second place to central consideration. This has resulted in their decline in recent years, throttling state-level infrastructure investments. State governments are not able to quickly and effectively implement these projects, thus decreasing its appeal to FDI.

Local states have a little impact on macro-policy issues but they can provide the base that is crucial for attracting foreign enterprises. And indeed, local political economy and the coherence of institutional aims provide a partial answer for the promotion of FDI in China. In India, local policy was one of change ‘within institutions’ rather than change ‘of institutions’. Existing bureaucracy had to adapt to a new circumstances within old institutional arrangements instead of following incentives created by newly established institutions.

Karolina Wysoczanska is a PhD student in the School of Contemporary Chinese Studies, University of Nottingham. 

State control over most of the national media in Russia has meant that Russian newspapers and TV today are a lot less interesting as a source of political research than they were in the 1990s. The situation regarding the internet is different. This is relatively free and online content in Russia is not directly controlled or filtered as it is in other less free or authoritarian contexts such as, for example, in China. Drives towards the development of a modern ‘information society’ under both Presidents Medvedev and Putin have led to an explosion of internet use and available web content over the past decade. Whilst only about 3 million Russians had daily access to the internet in 2003, this number grew to over 50 million – about 43% of the population – by 2013. A move towards e-government was central to Medvedev’s modernisation drive and he repeatedly called on Russian politicians and officials to create an online presence. The quality and quantity of online content quickly improved in reaction and today there is an abundance of new primary-source electronic texts on the Russian internet that is creating many new opportunities for scholars to extend existing research on political elites.

In an effort to assess the available online material and its potential for future research, Jon Sullivan and I analysed the use of new and social media by Russia’s 759 highest officials. We discovered considerable engagement, varying across institutions, and found that blogs and Twitter were particularly popular among politicians. The group of politicians that stood out from the analysis were the governors of Russia’s 83 regions. Almost 40% maintained an active Twitter account and many had also a blog and a personal homepage. This finding goes against our intuition and the standard literature on the adoption of online tools by politicians. This literature tends to focus on electoral campaigns and the uptake of social media as a means to connect with potential voters and decrease the distance between representatives and their constituents. Yet, Russia’s regional governors are not elected, rather they are nominated by the president and approved by the regional legislature.[1] According to the standard literature, therefore, one could expect the uptake of Twitter by Russian governors to be very limited. This motivated us to take a closer look at this group of politicians in order to address this apparent puzzle. Why are so many governors reaching out to citizens via social media? Were they motivated merely by Medvedev’s explicit request to officials of an increased online presence? Or is online engagement with citizens seen as an effective tool towards the end of maintaining control and ensuring the smooth running of territories?

In my recent article with Jon Sullivan, we took an in-depth look at the uses, content and purpose of the Russian governors’ Twitter use in order to gain an understanding of what, in the absence of the imperative of an electoral cycle, they were using this social media platform for. Our study showed quite substantial variation in the uses to which it is being put. Some governors clearly have their Twitter accounts maintained by their press teams and there is very little actual ‘added value’ in the information provided in their Tweets. These instances indicate that a Twitter account is maintained in order to be seen to be having one in response to Medvedev’s request. But other governors use Twitter more creatively and some use it extensively as a communication tool. A number of governors inform their readership via tweets that go beyond the mere statement of facts in raising problematic issues of concern to the region, for example. Governor Chirkunov of Perm tweets regularly about the problem of corrupt officials . Governor Kanokov of Kabardino-Balkaria frequently tweets information about acts of terrorism occurring in his region. The vast number of attacks there means that they are rarely reported in the national media and Kanakov’s emotional tweets, mourning for the victims and calling for vigilance amongst the population, are often the only published ‘official’ accounts of these tragic events.

In a number of cases Twitter is used as an actual working instrument to run the administration. Governor Men’ of the Ivanovo region, for example, often tweets about local problems raised by the public about issues of immediate concern, which are retweeted and passed on by him to relevant subordinate officials. To cite one example, a woman tweeted for help with problems relating to the removal of rubbish from her housing estate courtyard. Men’ retweeted the message to the head of Ivanovo’s city administration.

A high level of conversation is going on between governors and other officials, journalists and other elites. Direct dialogue with constituents and citizens is less frequent, but not entirely absent. We found that many Russian governors’ engagement with the social media platform Twitter is no more than a diet of news management and online propaganda. However, some uses we found in our research suggest potential for increasing the responsiveness of politics in Russia’s regions. Whilst this is, of course, a far cry from the more optimistic ideas about what online communication could potentially achieve, it is an interesting observation nonetheless and might come as a surprise to some observers of contemporary Russian politics.

Given the extent of the uptake of social media use by Russian politicians there has been surprisingly little research into the subject to date. Our analysis of Russia’s tweeting governors is exploratory and more interpretative work is necessary. What we clearly can conclude from our research, however, is that the online texts created by Russian politicians and officials are an interesting and potentially important window onto Russian politics and political communications. They should be used more extensively as a valuable addition to the ways in which Russian political elites are usually studied.

Bettina Renz, a Russia specialist, is Lecturer in the School of Politics and International Relations, University of Nottingham. 

China is the world’s largest autocracy. India is the world’s most populous democracy. Both economies have maintained steady GDP growth even as countries in the developed world grapple with financial and economic crises. They have conducted unprecedented market reforms and boast some of the most competitive industries and companies in the developing world. China and India’s international economic integration and success have also carried a cost to their citizens, judging by various development indicators, from infant mortality to distribution of wealth and air quality. They are also Asian neighbors positioning and jostling for regional dominance. Each side demonstrates its geopolitical power through occasional passive aggressive actions, such as crossing disputed maritime or land borders. Surely, these two countries’ varying and vastly complicated political systems alone make them developmental juggernauts to be admired and gawked at, and restive powers to be constrained, not provoked.

China and India fascinate the world but appear to provide almost no unifying road-map for industrialization, human development, or globalization. Beyond macroeconomic indicators and simple observations that these are developing countries with diverse and large populations, what is often missed is that these two countries offer two distinct yet internally variegated road maps for globalization that can provide lessons for other countries. In the post-neoliberal era where the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and other bastions of “Washington Consensus” debate the extent and scope of austerity measures and advocate some form of state intervention, the economic development trajectories of these two countries and their internal variations question conventional wisdom on the effects of state intervention, competition, and markets on innovation, economic growth, and regime stability.

Beginning in the 1980s, both China and India liberalized foreign direct investment and exposed their economies to foreign technology and knowledge transfers. Rather than one straight path out of economic misery toward industrial development, however, both countries have gone separate ways, which reflect how nation-specific ideas and norms and institutional legacies interact with the globalization of industries. In the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square Incident, China’s leaders sought to modernize infrastructure and enhance the national technology base while at the same time maintaining political stability in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party. Even as China permitted foreign investors to develop modern telecommunications networks, the government retained basic operations in the hands of competing state-owned carriers. The Communist leadership switches off network infrastructure when social unrest threatens to stir up trouble for state authorities in Tibet or when anti-Japanese protests threaten to transform their nationalist origins and incorporate social demands, mobilizing laid off workers and environmental activists. Otherwise, the Chinese blogosphere is one of the world’s most vibrant, espousing rising nationalism as well as societal discontent with corruption in officialdom.

Today, China Mobile ranks number one in the world in subscribers. Conveniently, China Mobile is also the service provider tasked to implement TD-SCDMA, China’s indigenous networking technology, developed with the initial assistance of western companies Siemens and Motorola. With telecommunications basic services in the state’s hands, the Chinese government introduced competition and encouraged and courted foreign investment in telecommunications equipment and consumer electronics. The development and success of Lenovo and Huawei represent how private individuals, doubling as, or well connected to, government and party officials, benefited from strategic liberalization to achieve state goals.

Responding to balance of payment concerns and global ideological and market pressures, the Indian government, supported by an international liberalizing coalition of Indian returnees, introduced competition and privatized previously state-owned assets in the early 1990s. The state privatized and corporatized state-owned telecommunications operators and allowed private and foreign operators to bid for licenses in telecommunications circles, which cut across Indian states and reached previously isolated rural areas. Today the British company Vodafone ranks among India’s largest mobile carriers. Value-added service providers operating with software designed by India’s IT industry have revolutionized how business is conducted.

However, cumbersome technical compliance rules and nontariff trade barriers plague the market entry of foreign telecommunications equipment makers. Overseas Indian returnee Sam Pitroda, leading the Centre for Development of Telematics, along with Rajiv Gandhi, jump started telecommunications reform in the 1980s when he introduced telephone exchanges to the rural areas. Yet, sluggish state-owned equipment makers nurtured by Nehurivan era techno-nationalist policies produce antiquated technology and never fully modernized nor moved up the value chain. Recent calls for protectionist policies in the name of national security concerns, ideals as rarely connected to Indian telecommunications as they are commonly associated with Chinese telecommunications, have highlighted not so much the internal security concerns grappling the Indian government, but just how rare it is to find an Indian manufacturer of telecommunications handsets or terminal equipment.

To the extent that India has liberalized telecommunications services, it has been slow to open up other economic sectors, such as garment and textile manufacturing and retail. This reflects the centrality of the rural and agrarian interests championed by Mahatma Gandhi in India’s struggle for independence and intense trade unionism dominated by small-scale, labor-intensive service providers and manufacturers. This is why it took years to modernize the country’s international airports and the success of resistance that delayed the entry of global retailers, such as Walmart.

In contrast, China has extensively liberalized textiles, along with other sectors deemed to have little application for national security and contribution to the national technology base. China now serves as the manufacturing center of the world from fiber processing to garment manufacturing, and emergent is a private sector, competing with foreign capital that have migrated factories to China to take advantage of lower costs and deregulation. All the same, less state intervention in these economic sectors has translated into weak regulatory capacity, as high polluting factories and questionable production practices fester alongside market saturation in easy to enter sectors with little innovation other than price-cutting strategies.

The internally variegated development witnessed in China and India reflects each country’s distinct international economic integration. It is debatable which globalization path is better placed to cope with the human costs mentioned earlier. All the same, several years ago The Economist posited that the health of companies is no longer connected to the wealth of economies, as multinationals are increasingly decoupled from the fate of countries and indebted to the global markets that they serve. The lessons of China and India’s different approaches toward market reform and subsequent re-regulation and resulting patterns of sectoral development call into question such assessments of the impact of globalization on nation-states and the private and state-sponsored companies which come from them. They further question zero sum assumptions about the ideal extent and scope of state intervention in the face of globalization.

Multinationals operating in services and manufacturing in telecommunications and textiles in these two countries have had to adjust to their market entry and business scope according to the globalization paths of the world’s two most populous nations. Moreover, the outward globalization of Chinese and Indian companies suggest that what has led to their development at home influences their initial, if not also eventual, success abroad. No one model of development and globalization is better than another and each model solves some problems only to create other ones. What is clear is that China and India do not have to be enigmas and understanding the complexity of their globalization sheds light on their successes and whether or not those can be easily replicated.

Roselyn Hsueh is assistant professor of Political Science at Temple University in Philadelphia.  She is the author of China’s Regulatory State: A New Strategy for Globalization (Cornell University Press, 2011) and her research focuses on the politics of market reform and internationalization across industries in developing countries.

A review of The Conceptualization and Practice of Transnational Asia: China Model, Ethnic Network and International Relationship (“跨界亚洲的理论与实践—中国模式，华人网络，国际关系”，刘宏著，南京大学出版社2013 )

The on-going processes of China’s rise and transition are perhaps one of “big events” in the world history, offering opportunities and challenges for academics to understand, reflect and interpret. In relation with the tradition of disciplinary division and variety of research paradigms, on the one hand, different people have different perspectives and methodological approaches, leading to different interpretations and projections. On the other hand, we have also witnessed a trend of increasing communication, interaction and cooperation across disciplinary boundaries, leading to the establishment of some new academic disciplines, or methodological innovation within existing research campuses. If the mushrooming of Contemporary Chinese Studies (CCS) world-wide in recent years represents the former, a good example for the latter is Diaspora Chinese Studies (DCS), a small but dynamic research field focusing on all aspects of Diaspora Chinese communities world-wide and their relations with China’s development and transition. I am pleased to learn of and recommend a newly published book written by Professor Liu Hong from Nanyan Technological University, Conceptualization and Practices of Transnational Asia: China Model, Ethnic Network and International Relationship (跨界亚洲的理论与实践—中国模式，华人网络，国际关系，刘宏著，南京大学出版社2013), which this post will review.

Regarding the links between China and the world since the late 1970s, the author reminders us of a basic fact at beginning of the book: around 60% or more of foreign direct investment to China has been made by overseas Chinese. Further, the returnees of Chinese migrant scholars have become a major source of China’s science and technological research and industrial innovation. While the Chinese Diaspora has played a key role in creating and maintaining a bridge between China and outside of world, it is worth pointing out that their contribution to China’s development and globalisation has been largely ignored in mainstream academic research. The value of DCS to CCS, as suggested by the title of this book, can be justified from the new light to the debates of “China model”.

Although the earliest record of Chinese Diaspora can be traced back two thousand years and the large scale of its international migration to the West and South-East Asia about 150 years, academic reflection on Chinese Diaspora phenomenon is less than 100 years old. As a world leading scholar in this field, Professor Liu was commissioned by Routldge to conduct a systematic collection and review of nearly one thousand English articles, leading to the publication of a four volume book, The Chinese Overseas (1794 pages in total) in 2006. While the edited volumes provides a comprehensive source and review of relevant references in English, the newly published book offers readers a Chinese summary of the edited volumes. A conclusion drawn from his systematic review on the evolution of the DCS in the last century is about the nature of DCS in the terms of the combination of historicity, interdisciplinary, flexible and multi-sited ethnography.

The trend and methodological characteristics of the DCS are not unique, but shared by many disciplines and research areas, leading to a paradigm shift or the emergence of a new discipline. A good example is the new emergence and rapid development of Contemporary Chinese Studies (CCS) which is significantly differentiated from traditional Sinology focusing on Chinese linguistics, history and culture. With an emphasis on the application and development of social scientific methodology in the context of contemporary China, CCS has become an important part of area studies outside of China, which has attracted increasing attention and inputs from governments, academic scholars. As a founder and former Director of the Centre for Chinese Studies at the University Manchester, Professor Liu is able to offer his observation and insights on the development of CCS.

The central contribution of this book, in my view, is about the development of the concept “Chinese networks” in the context of globalisation, China’s rise and the mobility of Chinese people across geographic (Asian or global), social (class) and cultural (identity) boundaries. Rooted in its long history and cultural tradition, Chinese networks (or Guanxi), may not be new at all to either Chinese or non-Chinese scholars. What is interesting in this book, however, is the way that the author used the network with the nation-state as a vertical dimension and localisation and globalisation as a horizontal dimension to review or critically appraise relevant literature and debates, and to shed new light on some challenging issues in China’s development, international relationships and the integration of new Chinese immigrants in receiving countries. Reflecting the popularity of transnationalism in ethnicity studies and also the domination of Diaspora Chinese population in Asia, the author uses Transnational Asia (跨界亚洲) as the title of his book. This, however, does not mean that this book is limited to Asia only and in fact there are three chapters involving the Chinese Diaspora in the UK.

This book is organised in 12 chapters in three parts. Part One deals with theoretical evolution and methodological thinking. Not limited to DSC itself, the relationship between Chinese networks and nation-states is discussed in the context of China and neighbouring countries in Asia. In Part Two, four chapters discuss the impact of Mao’s China on Indonesian President Sukarno (1901-1970), the emergence of left-wing Indonesian literature, and interaction between Malaysian Chinese and their sending communities in south China in the 1950s and early 1960s. A comparison of social networking and integration patterns between Hakka and Chaozhounese, two major groups of south Chinese immigrants in Singapore and Malaysia is also included. Part Three is used to highlight the transnational characteristics and networks of the new wave of Chinese international migrants since the 1980s. Special attention is given to the comparison of Chinese high-skilled migrant workers which are related to migration policies in both sending country (here China) and receiving countries of the UK and Singapore, as well as new Chinese entrepreneurs in Japan and Singapore. In addition, three chapters are used to discuss other interesting issues including the political participation of Chinese Diaspora in the UK election (2010), the changing roles of Chinese Diaspora in China’s diplomatic policies and international relations, as well as Chinese women and transnational marriage.

Bearing in mind that all chapters have been published either in Chinese or foreign language before, this book contains rich information, well organised arguments, comprehensive and updated references in both Chinese and English. As a result, it is a good reference for not only DCS researchers but also scholars in the fields of Contemporary Chinese Studies, International Relations and beyond. There are, however, two limitations. The first is the necessity of two chapters about the Indonesian President and literature movement in the 1950s, which do not cohere with other chapters. The second is the limitation or boundary of transnationalism as Chinese new migrants are not homogenous in terms of values, attitudes or career plans. While some of them enjoy the global mobility, others may suffer from their international migration experience. This is particularly true for those low- or un-skilled migrant workers, to whom class consciousness may be more suitable to reflect their working conditions, labour exploitation or abuses in the workplace. In this regard, a balance is needed to take into account the voices, experiences and needs of all Chinese groups including migrant workers who are at the bottom among the Chinese Diaspora and marginalised in the process of international migration and integration.

Bin WU is a senior research fellow at China Policy Institute.

In the past year, I’ve had the chance to watch two recent films made, respectively, by a Chinese and Indian director and within two years of each other. These are Feng Xiaogang’s “Aftershock” (2010) and Deepa Mehta’s “Midnight’s Children” (2012). Though much differentiates these films, a central theme also unites them: family and its relation to politics. This post offers an opportunity for me to ruminate on this theme and its implications for both family and politics in contemporary China and India.

First, some caveats. I recognize that these two films are hardly comparable. Feng’s film was made primarily for a Chinese audience, whereas Mehta’s was for an international one (it’s British-Canadian funded). Their sensibilities, then, differ dramatically. “Midnight’s Children” is based on Salman Rushdie’s critically-acclaimed 1981 novel of the same title, whereas “Aftershock” was conceived of and written as a popular film. This lends greater philosophical import to “Midnight’s Children,” since the film conveys Rushdie’s trenchant commentary on post-independence India and its national politics. “Aftershock” merely attempted to maximize returns at the box office and it succeeded in doing so handsomely. Lastly, “Aftershock” can be said to be derivative in representation and narrative, whereas, “Midnight’s Children” tells a unique story.  A pivotal scene in “Aftershock,” for example, reproduces a motif made famous by an American film, “Sophie’s Choice” (1982), namely a mother’s agonizing decision to choose between two children. One will live, the other, she thinks, will die.

Still, as mentioned above, what ties these two films together – different as they are – is a central concern with The Family. Unlike American or other Western films on similar subjects, like “The Descendants” (2011), where family matters serve up only existential issues, Chinese and Indian treatments of The Family invariably stand in for The Nation and, by extension, The State. I do not have the space to explain here how state governance in India and China has always been based on family governance, hence the connection.[1]

In brief, “Aftershock” tells of a family rent asunder by the horrific Tangshan earthquake of 1976. The father dies in the earthquake, and the mother must choose which twin – the boy or the girl – can be rescued from under the rubble. Only one can be saved and she chooses the boy [2]. The girl also survives, unbeknownst to her mother, in the ensuing chaos. A childless couple, doctors for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), eventually adopt the girl. They shower her with affection but she grows up disaffected, never forgetting her biological mother’s rejection. Later, she marries a foreigner and lives the well-off suburban life in Canada – until the 2006 earthquake in Tangshan. She cannot stay away and returns to her homeland and home village to help with the rescue effort. There, she discovers her brother, now a successful businessman with a wife and child of his own, and her mother, who has stayed in the same small house waiting for just this moment. Despite everything, the mother has kept faith that her daughter is still alive. The daughter experiences a change of heart and accepts that her family never forsook her and they are happily reunited.

I will not attempt to summarize “Midnight’s Children” for it is a far more complicated story. Nor does it unfold linearly as “Aftershock” does. Rather, what I will mention is the film’s (and the story’s) distinctive message on family. Members may be strange (e.g. possess supernatural powers), not really like one another (e.g. one sister rats on another to the authorities), take different ideological positions (e.g. Indian vs Pakistani vs Bangladeshi), and may not even be related by blood (e.g., mixed babies at birth, uncertain parentage) but, ultimately, family means love. It binds us all, no matter what.

As someone who grew up in the East and the West combined, and have experienced the Chinese version of partition through Taiwan, I view these two films with contending emotions. Though tremendously affected by “Aftershock,” particularly when the mother kneels before her estranged daughter to ask for forgiveness (unheard of in Confucian culture), I was ultimately angered by the film’s projection of traditional family values. The disaffected girl could stand in for Taiwan, whom the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) supposedly abandoned due to the tectonic demands of the civil war. Subsequently, Taiwan/girl drifted away to consort with foreigners but, ultimately, reunited with the “true” family back “home.” The mainland understanding of family that I felt upon seeing “Aftershock” needs to be updated to incorporate the notion of multiple families, multiple homes and multiple kinds of reunion, not just one. This is the hegemonic undertone to “Aftershock,” regardless of its rank sentimentality.

For this reason, I took to “Midnight’s Children” better. It explicitly critiques the notion of one, standard family. But “Midnight’s Children” also left me unfulfilled. Simply dazzling the viewer with the twists and turns of its hero to underscore the point that, ultimately, “love transcends all” leaves one dizzy, not enlightened. What can we do with this insight?

Perhaps what we need is a trans-national, trans-filmic dialogue. Indian and Chinese filmmakers could engage with one other about notions of Family, Nation, and State. Both states and peoples have plenty of experience to draw on. And, as the film-making industry in both countries increases in sophistication, funding, storytelling and audience, the opportunity is now. Let’s make the most of it. This one viewer waits eagerly for the results.

In my previous post, I examined the general nature of the current dispute between the Philippines and Taiwan and the foreign policy motivations on the Taiwan side. Yet, the behaviour of Taiwan’s government in the aftermath of the incident from May 9 that resulted in death of a Taiwanese fisherman after his boat was fired upon by the Philippines coast guard (PCG) has a strong domestic component that deserves to be discussed here separately.

On May 11, Taipei issued a 72-hour ultimatum which expired at midnight on May 14. The government demanded that four conditions be met otherwise it would introduce sanctions, including those that would affect Filipino workers seeking employment in Taiwan. When the ultimatum was issued, there was already significant pressure on the government from legislators, public opinion, and both major parties. Kuomintang (KMT) lawmakers denouncing shooting as an act of war and a Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislator burning the Philippines national flag during a protest in front of the Manila Economic and Cultural Office (MECO, the Philippines unofficial embassy in Taipei) are just some of the more jingoist attitudes on view recently in Taiwan.

This does not mean that the government should disregard the public outrage in Taiwan over PCG’s conduct. Whatever happened on 9 May in Balintang Channel, a 15-ton fishing boat with a 4-men crew does not seem to represent a threat that would justify the intensive fire that hit the boat 40-50 times according to various reports. Indeed, the investigators from the Phillipnes are contemplating that the PCG might have violated rules of engagement. Furthermore, use of force against unarmed vessels is problematic under international law. Ultimately, the video recording that was allegedly made by the PCG vessel crew may confirm Manila’s version, but since it has not been released yet, speculation mounts and the damage has been already done.

Taipei’s ultimatum has passed and a delayed apology eventually came. However, it was then rejected as insincere and the Taiwanese government’s sanctions came into effect. In two waves, the Ma Yingjeou government introduced 11 measures that include the suspension of hiring Filipino workers, a travel warning discouraging Taiwanese to travel to the Philippines, and the announcement of forthcoming military exercises in the disputed area. The DPP opposition added further oil to the fire by demanding even harsher actions. Other retaliatory measures included Taipei City Government’s retraction of an invitation to the Philippines team to compete in the dragon boat festival race and the suspension of exchanges with sister cities in the Philippines.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not show any diplomatic subtlety when it displayed pictures on its homepage in both Chinese and English bluntly accusing the Philippines of cold-blooded murder. The Philippines’ response, has not been flawless either. If the government wanted to defuse tensions, explaining absence of a formal apology by its adherence to “One China” principle, meaning that Taiwan as Republic of China is not recognized by the Philippines and thus does not deserve formal apology, is not the best way to achieve that.

Screenshot of ROC’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs homepage (Accessed on 18 May 2013)

      The actions of the Ma Ying-jeou administration, the KMT and the DPP, can all be interpreted as courting  popular support. President Ma, with his 14 percent low approval rating, seized the chance to divert attention from criticism regarding his government’s handling of the economy, disregarding Taiwan’s international image in the process for the sake of domestic political posturing. This is not unusual in Taiwan’s politics, where foreign policy issues are usually not the most prominent ones for the electorate or politicians. The DPP for its part wants to take some credit for acting tough, partly compelled by the fact that the victim’s community was based in the Pingtung, an area with strong support for the DPP. In short, both sides of Taiwan’s political sphere can be blamed for heating up tensions that started with a tragic death.

   There is a darker side to the story. Many western visitors and expatriates frequently attest  to the kindness and hospitality of Taiwanese towards foreigners; something that Taiwanese themselves take great pride in saying. Yet, this courtesy appears more likely to be extended to westerners. Racist or xenophobic attitudes towards workers from Southeast Asian countries are common and the current crisis has unleashed numerous examples of this behaviour. Foreign workers are reported as being requested to reveal their nationality in markets or shops and are refused service if they are from the Philippines. Taipei Times quoted a worker from Cambodia as saying, “I’ve not been attacked, because I’m from Cambodia, but I don’t feel comfortable when people keep asking me whether I’m from the Philippines when I’m just going to buy lunch.” On 16 May, a Filipino worker was attacked by four men and beaten with iron sticks and baseball bats in Tainan. Although it appears to be isolated incident, reports about verbal harassment are more frequent. And those attitudes may be well reflected at the political level. Philip Bowring argues in his piece published in the South China Morning Post that Taiwan’s reaction is driven by Han chauvinism and adds (referring to Taipei’s displeasure with an unofficial apology) that “[For] the Han chauvinists, an apology from the president of the Philippines is not enough. The Filipinos must grovel, be reminded that they, like Malays generally, are the serfs of the region.”

Political posturing is one thing, picking on isolated vulnerable individuals just because they are from a country in dispute with their host is another. Yet, they are not disconnected. Taiwanese politicians and media that jumped on the boat of nationalist rhetoric, should understand that flexing their muscles externally may result in xenophobic actions at home. Fortunately, politicians from both sides, including President Ma and Taipei Mayor Hau, were quick to urge the public not to vent anger against the 87,154 Philippines nationals that reside in Taiwan along with almost 200,000 Indonesians, 100,000 Vietnamese and over 60,000 Thais according to official sources.

Young Taiwanese demonstrate support for Filipinos on the streets of Taipei

      Perhaps next time politicians should urge the public not to display anger at all and lead the way in the process. Both governments will eventually find a way to turn relations back to normal although some actions on Taiwan’s side make it difficult. However, damage done to person-to-person relations would be more complicated to repair if the trend continues and spirals out of control. Needless to say, Taiwan greatly benefits from the presence of Filipino workers and in the long term it would be Taiwan that would suffer. Moreover, despite displays of nationalist fervour, the situation between Taiwan and the Philippines is not as dire as when similar incidents occurred between Japan and the PRC and small acts of kindness that took place during those days in Taiwan sent a positive message.

Michal Thim is a PhD student in the School of Contemporary Chinese Studies, University of Nottingham and a Research Fellow at the Prague-based think-tank Association for International Affairs. He also owns the blog Taiwan in Perspective and tweets @michalthim

A short time ago, I praised Taiwan for reaching an agreement with Japan on fishing in the area around Diaoyutai/Senkaku islands. It was a rare occasion on which two sides reached consensus on a highly disputed issue involving sovereignty claims and resource sharing. However, the seas of East and Southeast Asia offer plenty of opportunities to get involved in neighbourly spats and ongoing tensions between Taiwan and the Philippines is one such example. This time, a quick settlement may be out of reach. Taipei’s strong reaction is mostly driven by domestic politics and, unfortunately, the way it has been managed seriously deters any show of goodwill from either side. This post will examine the foreign policy dimensions of the dispute, while domestic factors will be elaborated in a separate post in the coming days.

East and Southeast Asian waters are well known to be the subject of a multitude of territorial claims. One of many disputes that has escalated recently is conflict over Scarborough Shoal between the Philippines and China (PRC) – itself a part of larger dispute over South China Sea and tensions between Japan and the PRC over the Diaoyutai/Senkaku islands in East China Sea. These disputes do not necessarily involve physical control over specific islands, and delimitation of Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) is often times the real issue at stake. The EEZ is a 200 naval mile (nm) zone extending from coastline (or from straight baselines) within which – according to UN Convention on the Law of the Sea – the respective state has exclusive rights to exploit natural resources in the water and under the seabed. The most recent conflict between the Philippines and Taiwan, which erupted on May 9 and continues to this day, is a case of the latter. It is also evidence that despite the significance of natural resources such as natural gas and crude oil, the most common source of tension remains disputes over fishing rights.

Here is what happened: On May 9 Taiwanese fishing boat Kuang Ta Hsing No. 28 (廣大興28號) was fired upon by Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) vessel MCS-3001, resulting in the death of Hung Shih-cheng (洪石成), 65. Not surprisingly, versions of the event on both sides differ considerably. Location of the incident is less disputed: The Philippine’s Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) locates the incident 43 nm east of Balintang Island and 170 nm southeast from Taiwan’s southernmost tip Cape Eluanbi (鵝鑾鼻), while Taiwan’s Coast Guard Administration map and other sources locate the incident at roughly 170 nm from Taiwan (Google maps). PCG/BFAR claim that they intended to board and inspect two vessels suspected of fishing illegally in the Philippines’ EEZ. The Taiwanese fishermen did not respond calls to stop and prepare for boarding and Kuang Ta Hsing No. 28 allegedly attempted to ram the MCS-3001. The shooting was therefore an act of self-defense. Taiwan’s Ministry of Justice released report that claimed there is no damage to Kuang Ta Hsing No. 28 that would indicate a collision with the PCG ship (Manila does not claim there was an actual collision) and that the Taiwanese boat has 45 bullet holes, some indicating the use of heavy calibre weapons. The argument is that PCG used excessive force and that international law standards (particularly Article 73 of UNCLOS) does not justify the use of weapons against unarmed boats. President Ma Ying-jeou went as far as calling the incident “cold-blooded murder.” The situation as of 18 May is that there are two parallel investigations, Taiwan’s team is returning from Philippines without success, while the Philippines National Bureau of Investigation is yet to embark on a visit to Taiwan to examine damage to the fishing boat.

At this point the results of the investigation will not really matter. First, since there is no joint investigation either version can easily be refuted as being biased. Second, politicians and public discourse on both sides have already established who is “right” and who is “wrong”. Thus, even the most impartially conducted joint investigation may not be enough to challenge established narratives about the incident. Third, the truth will be difficult to establish beyond any doubt, because the witnesses directly involved on both sides have reason to distort the facts.

The nature of the dispute does not offer much space for compromise. The Philippines argue that if a Taiwanese ship is located within 43 nm from nearest Philippines territory – i.e. Balintang Island – then it is clearly operating in it’s EEZ. Moreover, there are other islands north of the incident location that are still part of Philippines (Batanes Province). Taiwan’s position is that since Taiwan has the right to establish a 200 nm EEZ (the fishing boat was within this limit) then claims overlap and in the absence of an agreement, Taiwanese fishermen can fish there. The Taiwanese boat was apparently outside of Taiwan’s temporary enforcement line, but that merely means that it was outside the area within which the Taiwanese coast guard assists Taiwanese vessels. In addition, some Taiwanese experts argue that Taiwanese fishermen have traditional rights based on UNCLOS Article 51 to operate even within Philippine archipelagic waters. Although it may be argued that Taiwan is not a signatory of UNCLOS (for  unrelated reasons connected to the disputed sovereign status of the ROC on Taiwan), the Philippines is a signatory and should not deny other states the same rights. Yet, Taiwan’s interpretation of UNCLOS provisions seems to be too relaxed: If there was an arbitration (which there will not), it is prudent to assume that the line separating Taiwan and the Philippines’ EEZ would be closer to Taiwan in Bashi channel rather than much further south in Balintang channel where the incident occurred.

In the aftermath of the incident, Taipei – hard pressed by a domestic outcry – issued a set of demands and set 72 hours ultimatum (that expired by midnight GMT+7 on 14 May) for those demands to be met. Taipei demanded that Manila

• issue a formal apology;
• compensate the victims of the shooting;
• punish the perpetrators of the killing;
• begin bilateral fishery agreement talks as soon as possible.

The last point indicates that Taiwan’s government decided to seize the opportunity and use the incident to press Manila to negotiate an agreement. The latter is reluctant to enter into talks that would provoke an angry reaction in Beijing, which would add to already problematic relations between the PRC and Philippines. Manila is in a less favourable position than Japan which can better withstand Beijing’s displeasure over making bilateral agreements with Taiwan (thus recognizing its de facto independence). Thus, Taiwan’s government seeks to kill two birds with one stone: delimitation of maritime border and a diplomatic success in confirming its de facto status.

The Philippines is reluctant to play ball. Not only does it want to avoid unnecessary confrontation with China, it lacks incentives to make such concessions. Japan’s fishery agreement with Taiwan put Beijing in the position of troublemaker, and Tokyo was therefore willing to make concessions, despite domestic opposition from Okinawan fishermen. Yet, in this case such motivation is absent on Manila’s side. Therefore, Taiwan’s attempt to push the Philippines does not have much chance of producing a desirable outcome. Unless of course, Taiwan plans to use its superior navy to force Manila into accepting de facto freedom of fishing for Taiwanese fishermen in the disputed area. However, if this is on the minds of decision makers in Taipei, they must be also aware that the U.S. would not take lightly deployment of U.S.-made arms against its treaty ally. Some more hawkish individuals may indeed consider such options but overall it should not be considered likely, because benefits (securing the fishing area) would be outweighed by the costs, i.e. an irritated U.S. and an international image of being a bully.

Michal Thim is a PhD student in the School of Contemporary Chinese Studies, University of Nottingham and a Research Fellow at the Prague-based think-tank Association for International Affairs. He also owns the blog Taiwan in Perspective and tweets @michalthim.

Additional reading:

MaxDefense: Fishingboat Shooting Incident: Is Taiwan Over-reacting?

Michael Turton’s roundups: No. 1, No. 2, No. 3, No. 4, and No. 5

Ben Goren: Why Context Matters In Taiwan-Philippines Maritime Tragedy

Uyghur activists have been working closely with Taiwanese independence-minded activists to create a Taiwan Friends of Uyghurs organization, expanding the global Uyghur national self-determination movement’s outreach to the island. This new development arrives at a time when Beijing is again tackling deadly violence in Xinjiang, accusing “Uyghur terrorists” for inciting unrest. Taiwan independence-minded activists moving closer to Uyghur exile activists would certainly displease Beijing in every way, straining China’s relationships with both Taiwan and Xinjiang.

It should be noted that Taiwan Friends of Uyghurs is not a member organization of the Munich-based World Uyghur Congress (WUC), which is the proclaimed umbrella organization of the Uyghur national self-determination movement [1]. However, one of the key figures behind the birth of Taiwan Friends of Uyghurs, Ilham Mahmut, is the head of the Japan Uyghur Association (JUA), a WUC member organization based in Tokyo.

A relatively nascent WUC branch, JUA only came into being in 2008, with Ilham Mahmut as the head of the organization. Mahmut’s initial foray into politics was greatly fostered by Hideki Nagayama, a diehard Japanese activist of the Friends of Lee Teng-Hui Association, a pro-Taiwan-independence group in Japan. Nagayama is a living example of Japan’s conservative right-wing, which is staunchly opposed to communist China. Right-wing communities in Japan are easy bedfellows for nationalist Taiwanese and the Tibet, Inner (or Southern) Mongolia, and Uyghur movements, as they all share an antipathy toward China.

As Nagayama is well-connected to the Taiwan independence movement in Japan and Taiwan, he tries to share his connections with Mahmut in the hope that the Uyghur movement in Japan can find further support in terms of resources and networks. Mahmut’s grandfather Yolwaz, known as Yolbas Khan, is a famous Uyghur.* When Yolbas Khan relocated to Taiwan in 1951, the Kuomintang government designated him chairman of Xinjiang Province should the nationalist Chinese party have defeated the Chinese communists and regain the mainland. That day never came, and he passed away in 1971 [2]. Due to this family history, Taiwan has always been in Mahmut’s mind, even before he started working as a Uyghur activist. This family connection made him interested in paying a visit to the island when Nagayama proposed to help make the connections.

In October 2011, Mahmut finally paid his first visit to Taiwan with Nagayama. During his first stay, the Uyghur activist was invited to speak to Taiwan Friends of Tibet and the Taipei Times, making his case to the wider Taiwan public and Taiwan’s English-speaking community.

In late 2012, Paul Lin and Marie Yang of the Taiwan Youth Anti-Communist Corp helped set up a preparatory group for the establishment of a Taiwan Friends of Uyghurs. During Mahmut’s most recent visit, the fifth visit to Taiwan in April and May 2013, he confirmed that Taiwan Friends of Uyghurs has a legal existence and will be officially established soon. At a conference entitled “Don’t Let Taiwan Become a Vanished Country—Implications from South Mongolia, East Turkestan, and Tibet,” Mahmut further spoke with Southern Mongolian activist Temtselt Shobstuud, Tibetan activist Lukar Sham Atsock, as well as representatives from the Taiwan Friends of Tibet, World United Formosans for Independence, Taiwan Association of University Professors, Taiwan Society, and other anti-China groups to express their respective nationalist interests against Beijing’s claims to sovereignty [3].

As Taiwan is a liberal democracy, Uyghur activists in principle can benefit from Taiwan’s open domestic opportunity structure to further their political cause. Both Mahmut and Nagayama are conversant in Chinese. This ability also makes it easier for them to communicate their political cause with potential Taiwan-based sympathizers. Although they are not the sole Uyghur-minded activists trying to reach out to Taiwan, they have succeeded in setting up an organization and securing supportive forces from Taiwan to help raise awareness of their issues among the Taiwanese audience.

In the past, leading WUC Uyghur activists such as Rebiya Kadeer have been denied entrance to Taiwan on the grounds that they are terrorist suspects and would jeopardize Taiwan’s security. This line is adopted from Beijing’s policy to depict all WUC activists as terrorists. Kadeer herself has not yet made it to the island, but with the establishment of a circle of Uyghur supporters and sympathizers in Taiwan, it is likely that activists will try to help Kadeer visit in the future.

Although the likelihood of putting the Uyghur political cause on Taiwan’s mainstream political agenda is low, this newly-formed Taiwan-Uyghur nexus will not please Beijing, adding tension to Taiwan’s relationship with China. This nascent phenomenon merits further observation.

*Correction: An anonymous reader pointed out that Yolwaz was not Mahmut’s grandfather. I called Mahmut in Japan and another Uyghur in the UK to double-check. According to Mahmut, Yolwaz was the father of his mother’s sister. His mother and his mother’s sister had different fathers. Hence, he used the term “grandfather” in a loose term. As there is a connection in the family history (albeit weak), Mahmut has respected Yolwaz as if Yolwaz were his real grandfather. As I understand, Yolwaz was buried in Taiwan. When I first interviewed Mahmut in 2011, he mentioned that he has never been to Taiwan, but would like to visit Yolwaz’s tomb if he has the chance to go to Taiwan. Later that year, Mahmut made his first visit to Taiwan, and he did find Yolwaz’s tomb and paid tribute. Mahmut admitted that he should have clarified this with me. And I apologize that I have caused this confusion.

Yu-Wen Chen is a lecturer at the Department of Government at University College Cork (UCC) and the executive editor of Asian Ethnicity. She is the author of the forthcoming book The Uyghur Lobby: Global Networks, Coalitions and Strategies of the World Uyghur Congress (Routledge 2014).

Notes

[1] The WUC is composed of member organizations located in various countries around the world, which seek to garner public and governmental support for their kindred’s rights in China. An example of the WUC’s member organizations is the Washington-based Uyghur American Association (UAA).

[2] Interview with Ilham Mahmut of the Japan Uyghur Association, in Tokyo, August 17, 2011. Tyler’s (2003: 225–6) book has an account of the life of Yolbas Khan. See Tyler, C. (2003) Wild West China: The Taming of Xinjiang, New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press.

[3] The conference was held in Taipei on May 11, 2013.

Chinese Academy of Social Sciences vice-director Li Shenming’s article in Seeking Truth, the CCP’s theoretical journal, has caused a stir in China for his assertion that “not a single person was persecuted” in the anti-rightist campaign of the late 1950s. Li acknowledges that 550,000 people were “labelled as rightists”, but apparently does not believe that the consequences of this – loss of jobs, being made the target of every other political campaign for the next 20 years, the ruination of family members’ life chances, and, for several hundred thousand, detention in the labour camps which the Chinese government, after more than 30 years of reform, has still not quite managed to abolish – amounted to persecution.

For this first generation of labour-camp prisoners, detention was indefinite; it would end when years of forced labour in harsh and sometimes dangerous conditions had “reformed” you. In practice, this meant that the rehabilitation which came for many only in the late 1970s was often posthumous, though still welcomed for the cloud it lifted from families. “Rightist” actually became part of China’s system of social control by class designation, so that the status of “rightist” could be inherited, like that of “landlord” or “rich peasant”, by the children of the original offender.

Do the “media controlled by international capital” really exaggerate the harm done by the anti-rightist campaign, as Li claims? The campaign abruptly shut down the brief period in which the open expression of critical views of CCP rule had been encouraged, the 1956-7 Hundred Flowers campaign, in which intellectuals, students, workers and peasants alike had spoken out about issues from day-to-day economic mismanagement to fundamental questions of CCP legitimacy.  As Jerome Cohen has noted, it destroyed the formal legal system that had been under development in China, condemning the country to two decades in which every citizen was vulnerable to persecution by those in power and denied legal protection of their constitutional rights, while the party centre’s “label factory” created category after category of “enemies of the people” who could be denied all basic rights.

The purge, which lasted into the early 1960s, also played a part in the rural famine which killed upwards of 30 million between 1958 and 1961, as many of the experts who might have spotted early warning signs of disaster were in labour camps, and officials still in post had learned the lesson that if they were going to make a mistake, it had better be a mistake to the left, such as excessive zeal in seeking out “hidden” food in villages, rather than one to the right, such as questioning whether a country facing starvation should still be exporting grain to the Soviet Union.

Li seems to believe that all 550,000 rightists deserved the designation, but the campaign had a quota for work-units to fulfil, having to identify 5% of their members as rightists, regardless of reality. This gave rise to the category of “toilet rightists”, chosen as their work-unit’s scapegoats only because they were the first to have to duck out of the meeting called to identify culprits in order to empty their bladders – one cup of tea too many, and you’d be felling trees in Manchuria for the rest of your (short) life.[1] The quota system ensured that injustice and excess were built into the mass campaigns of the Mao era.

And if all those labelled as rightists deserved it, why the rehabilitations at all? A case can be made that the wave of late-70s rehabilitations was politically useful to Deng Xiaoping as he established himself as China’s paramount leader, but it was also hard to resist, given the strength of popular feeling among millions who had witnessed blatant injustices in their own workplaces, schools, neighbourhoods, and families.

It is possible to believe that both the original victimization and the much later reversal of verdicts were correct; indeed, as Zhu Yufu’s 1998 poem, The Central Government is Correct, reminds us, it is possible to believe that none of the 180-degree turns in policy of the past 64 years in China has in any way represented an admission of previous error:

“All the political campaigns were carried out correctly.
A number of historical questions were appraised correctly.
It was correct to amputate the remnants of Capitalism.
It was correct to invoke the theory of Socialism’s early phase…

All the newspaper editorials are correct;
Every position paper from the Central Government is correct;
In the Anti-Rightist campaign, it was correct to be Anti-;
When they were rehabilitated, the rehabilitation was correct.

However, the amount of cognitive dissonance generated by this stance is not conducive to Li’s stated aim in his article, that of “Appropriately evaluating the periods before and after China’s reform and opening-up”. Like Bo Xilai before him, Li seems to have the knack of surveying the PRC’s pre-reform history and alighting on all the wrong elements on which to base a claim that the Mao era wasn’t all bad.

If he is looking for lessons for the present day, he might instead look to Mao’s statements from early in the Hundred Flowers campaign, where the Chairman acknowledged the many mistakes his government had made since 1949, its separation from the masses and above all its failing to make socialism benefit ordinary people, and proposed a period of open criticism and debate as an alternative to the explosion of popular discontent which was otherwise bound to occur.

Jackie Sheehan is Associate Professor in the School of Contemporary Chinese Studies.

The term rising India is a buzzword in IR discourse nowadays. Until recently, the world used to hyphenate India with Pakistan. However, with the steady rise of India’s national power, it has started re-hyphenating with its historical match, China. So as the world has discarded the prism through which it used to see India, it is interesting to investigate the Chinese strategic perspective of rising India given the fact that it had written off India as a strategic adversary by the early 1990s.

Origin of Rising India

For Chinese security planners, India’s national power has begun to rise steadily since 1998. India, led by a new nationalist government in Delhi, unleashed a slew of path-breaking initiatives  in quick succession in 1998 (and beyond). These measures can be classified under three domains, namely, military, economic and diplomatic.

Military: India’s military clout has risen steadily ever since it conducted nuclear tests in May 1998. India has emerged as the largest weapons importing country during 2006-11 as per the SIPRI report. Its current defence budget has risen to $46.8 billion which is the seventh-largest globally. Last year, it signed a deal for 126 new advanced fighters, at a cost of $ 10.4 billion, with France. From the US, it acquired defence equipment worth $8 billion and has additionally awarded defense contracts worth $9 billion to its companies. It has conducted many joint military exercises and exchanges with the US military over the last six years, and recently both sides expressed desire to strengthen defense cooperation through increased technology transfers. Also India plans to spend  $200 billion USD over the next 15 years for the modernization of its military.

Economic: In New Delhi the BJP is acting on its slogan of ‘prosperous and powerful country’, backing up military measures with economic initiatives. It signed an FTA with ASEAN in 2003 that came into effect in 2010, deepened economic ties with both the USA and China, encouraged private entrepreneurship, and boosted physical infrastructure. Its New Telecom policy of 2003 led to a telecommunications revolution in the country. Consequently India, since 2003,  has been one of the fastest-growing major economies, leading to rapid increases in per capita income, demand and integration with the global economy. It grew at an average rate of 8.7%  for the five years prior to the global financial crisis. India even outpaced China as per the IMF’s 2010 report when it grew by 10.4% whereas China grew by 10.3%.

Diplomatic: Beijing has been anxiously observing India’s omni-aligned diplomacy as opposed to non-alignment. It has two pillars, namely, improving relations with the US and Look East Policy-II. India-US ties started improving with President Clinton’s visit to Delhi in 2000. However, it was President Bush who transformed this relationship with the signing of an Indo-US civilian nuclear deal in 2008 thus ending India’s nuclear apartheid. Under Obama their ties have matured. In 2010 both countries initiated an annual Strategic Dialogue. India was described as the linchpin in the US’ pivot to Asia strategy unveiled in Jan 2012. The strategic partnership between the two, in Beijing’s view, is the revival of the anti-China alliance in South Asia seen during the Cold War– the only difference being that the US has replaced the USSR.

India’s Look East Policy, unveiled in 1992, entered its second phase with the first-ever India-ASEAN summit in 2002. It meant two things, broadening the scope of ‘East’ by including Japan, South Korea and Australia, and adding a strategic dimension. Indo-Japan ties became a major highlight of this phase when both signed a security pact in 2008 and increased naval cooperation. Japan and South Korea played a key role in India’s membership to the East Asia Summit (EAS) in 2005. India-Australia ties have also improved and Canberra even agreed to sell uranium to Delhi in 2011.

China’s response strategy

Beijing’s regional policy is based on preventing the rise of a peer competitor in Asia. So how does China deal with a rising India? I argue that China has developed a four-pronged strategy to manage the rise of India. Importantly, all the four components of this strategy are in place simultaneously.

Carrot and stick policy to sabotage growing Indo-US ties: As a carrot, China has initiated a diplomatic offensive since 2000. Li Peng in January 2001, Premier Zhu Rongji in January 2002, Premier Wen Jiabao in April 2005, President Hu Jintao in Nov 2006, Premier Wen again in Dec 2010 and defence minister Liang Guanglie in Sep 2012 have all visited India. Interestingly, each of these visits has followed a high-profile US visit to India. China has also deepened trade with India and holds a Strategic Economic Dialogue. As a stick, China keeps reminding India of its deep economic engagement with the US and their common views on global security issues like non-proliferation and terrorism, which it warns, can harm India’s interests. It continues to protract the resolution of the border dispute so as to use it as a lever to put strategic pressure on New Delhi whenever it wants. The intrusion of a Chinese platoon into the Indian territory on April 15 this year is a case in point.

Deepen ‘entente cordiale’ with Pakistan: China has intensified it defence ties with Pakistan recently. In a strategic tit-for-tat in response to the Indo-US civilian nuclear deal, Chinese companies in June 2010 signed a contract in Shanghai in relation to two 650-megawatt Chashma-3 and Chashma-4 reactors, in addition to a 2004 deal under which China supplied Chashma-1 and Chashma-2 to Pakistan. In April 2008 China promised Pakistan it would provide financial support for purchasing a Chinese 250 JF-17 Thunder jet fighter fleet and F-22 frigates. It has invested $30 billion in PoK. Beijing recently secured operational control of strategically located Gwadar port in the Arabian sea.

Military encirclement of India: China has intensified the military encirclement of India. It completed the Golmund-Lhasa railway in 2006, thereby dramatically reducing the troop deployment time on Indian borders. It completed its fifth airfield in Tibet in October 2010. Beijing has deployed state-of-the-art medium and intermediate range missiles with nuclear warheads in Tibet. It has already been constructing seaports around India in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan under the “string of pearls” strategy. The latest “pearl” in this string includes a base on the Seychelles completed in December 2011. It plans to station three aircraft carriers, one each in South China Sea, Western Pacific and Indian Ocean by 2017.

Keep India out of global and regional institutions: China remains non-committal and sometimes even obstructs India’s entry into important global and regional institutions despite its rhetoric of acknowledging India’s “great power” ambitions. China is the only P-5 nation that has not given its explicit nod to India’s candidature to the UN Security Council. China prevented India’s entry into the EAS in 2005. Though China invited India to the SCO as an observer in 2006, it did so only along with Pakistan. It tried to obstruct the NSG waiver to India in 2008 until President Bush had to personally intervene. It does not hold talks on nuclear issues with India as that will legitimize India’s de facto nuclear status. Similarly, India had secured full support from the US, Japan, and Vietnam among others to gain entry into APEC, but its inclusion was halted by Chinese reluctance at the 2007 summit to lift the moratorium on new members.

The multi-pronged strategy is to ensure that China continues to remain the only tiger on the mountain of the Asian continent.

Anil Kumar is a PhD candidate in the Department of East Asian Studies, Delhi University.