Though it made few headlines in the West at the time, India’s brief border war with China in 1962 brought a devastating and lasting legacy. For 40 years, the two giants of Asia were locked in mutually incomprehending hostility. There was virtually no trade between the two, no political dialogue; there were no direct flights or cultural exchanges. China backed India’s enemy Pakistan, and India partnered the Soviet Union and developed nuclear weapons that were openly acknowledged as a deterrent against China. The 2,400-mile common frontier remained sealed, with troops stationed in force along the line of actual control, the 650-mile section in dispute where each side claims huge tracts of the other’s territory.
The visit by Rajiv Gandhi to Beijing in 1988 was the first by any Indian leader since that of his grandfather, Jawaharlal Nehru, 34 years earlier. After that, the thaw made little headway until Wen Jiabao, the Chinese Prime Minister, opened a “strategic dialogue” in Delhi last year. Even today, the two countries, comprising more than a third of the world’s population and accounting for a rapidly growing share of global trade, resources and energy demands, have remarkably little interaction. At a time when Europe sees an ever growing stream of wealthy Indian and Chinese tourists, too few visit each other’s countries. And yet there are stirrings in a relationship that will inevitably be one of the most important, economically and politically, in coming decades.
The opening of a Himalayan pass, first mapped by a British expeditionary force more than a century ago, is, therefore, a significant sign that things may be changing. Bilateral trade has risen from a paltry $1 billion in 2000 to $12 billion last year. China has begun to look seriously at the Indian challenge in high technology and manufacturing as well as Delhi’s vigorous efforts to bolster trade and political links with the Association of South-East Asian Nations. And India, once fearful that it would be swamped by Chinese exports, is now confident that it can hold its own — though contemporary connections are still a far cry from the 1750s, when the two countries accounted for 57 per cent of global trade, much of it with each other.
India and China do, indeed, have a strong interest in improving links. Both are worried about terrorism and, especially, Islamic militancy. Both are competing for foreign investment and for expensive energy supplies. Both want to halt the spread of nuclear weapons — though there is little expectation that they will relax their guard against each other’s arsenals. And both see a symbiosis in greater mutual trade.
The two countries are beginning to act in Asia, in the United Nations and in world economic forums with the authority and weight appropriate to their size. To avoid any dangerous new friction, this requires a far better understanding of each other’s positions: on relations with America and the West, on Pakistan, on any potential new Asian grouping, and with Japan, a country that is belatedly focusing on India, even as its relations with China become more fraught.
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All too often, Britain and the United States are accused of imposing “Western values” on the world. India and China, individually and jointly, will inevitably embrace that which is “Western” and change the world for the better.