A Reappraisal

Over the past two decades the public in the West has become increasingly aware of what is happening in Asia. It is true, of course, that in 1980s Japan advanced to become the second-largest economic power in the world, but at the time the Europeans did not really believe that it was important, at least in geopolitical terms. The Cold War had not as yet come to an end, and the advent of an Asian century was not an issue. All this changed dramatically as a result of China’s resurgence and new world power status. Deng Xiaoping began with the economic realignment of the People’s Republic towards the end of the 1970s, but the unprecedented economic rise of China first began to become apparent as the millennium approached. After having suppressed the democracy movement at the beginning of June 1989, the Chinese leadership decided to embark on faster economic growth in order to encourage people to think about something else, and to spare China’s Communist Party the fate of the Soviet communists under Gorbachev.

Since then the political and economic situation has changed. Now the world is interested not only in China, but also in India, the other Asian country with a population of more than a billion. People have started to talk about the BRIC states, a group of rising powers consisting of Brazil, Russia, India and China; and recently Indonesia, the quiet giant in Southeast Asia, has attracted global attention. American strategists have taken to describing the Indian Ocean as the geopolitical region in which the future global balance of power will emerge and where the question of whether China will one day supersede the US as the world’s only superpower will be decided. Whereas the great wars of the 20th century were fought and decided in the Atlantic and in the Pacific, the Indian Ocean now has the dubious honour of being the most important hot spot in the global struggle for power.

It is hardly possible to cast doubt on the fact that the Chinese reformer Deng Xiaoping (1904–1997) was one of the most important and influential statesmen of the 20th century. Deng not only led China out of Mao’s Stone Age and into the modern world; indirectly he was one of the reasons why India broke out of decades of economic self-mutilation. For a variety of historical and cultural reasons Indians find it difficult to accept advice from white people in the West. One often puts this down to the racist arrogance of the British Raj (which might be translated as British king, and is the general term used to denote British colonial rule), which the older generation in particular has not quite forgotten.

However, things are quite different when it comes to the lessons taught by the Chinese with their far-reaching economic and social reforms. Even if traditionally the Indian elites and the Indian media do not take a great deal of notice of what is happening on the other side of the Himalayas, it was no longer possible to ignore the achievements of the Middle Kingdom after the Chinese reform process had turned out to be not only a success, but in fact an enduring one. Suddenly, in the light of the worldwide excitement about China, the question arose in the hallowed and convoluted corridors of power in Delhi, the Indian capital, whether or not India was in a position to do what the Chinese had done.

We now know what the answer was, or at least we know part of it. For a number of decades India’s economy made little or no progress, and until the 1980s people used to talk about the Hindu rate of growth. But shortly before the millennium the country finally began to notch up growth rates which were similar to those that the Chinese had achieved. Whilst it is true that India, especially in the area of infrastructure, still finds it difficult to keep up with China, in a whole series of economic sectors it nowadays no longer needs to hold its head in shame when people compare it with its large neighbour. International investors needed slightly longer in order to make sense of what the new India was all about, but towards the end of the first decade of the 21st century the situation was definitely beginning to change. India is now being compared quite seriously with Destination China, and with growing frequency such comparisons do not necessarily come down in favour of the Middle Kingdom. Well-known multinationals, including some from Switzerland and Germany, have substantially increased their investments in India, and in the case of new projects have even preferred India to China.

Yet the slogan “More India and less China” is directed not only at investors and managers who have come to Asia in search of profits and of markets. We are also thinking about politicians and the media, who all too frequently continue to lag behind the clearly apparent shifts of emphasis in the economy. People have always found it difficult to change their cherished views of the world. For example, if one takes a look at the history curriculum that is taught at schools in Germany and Switzerland, it is obvious that it is still dominated by the Eurocentric approach. Now that the resurgence of Asia is a fact, and seeing that most Europeans have understood that it is not a short-lived phenomenon, but an event that is helping to determine the fate of the whole of humanity, there is an urgent need to redefine the image of the world that young Europeans learn at school.

And then there are those ill-fated global trends which are blown up out of all proportion by the media, and which many people dutifully imitate, even if a reversal is already in full swing. Japan is a classic example of this. In the 1980s “Nippon Inc.” advanced to become a role model feared by the West. The speculative bubble finally burst in 1989, and led to a dramatic reversal. Since then many people have been of the opinion that Japan is a “basket case.” Pessimists see Japan stumbling inexorably from one lost decade to the next. However, both responses were exaggerated, and had little to do with the complex nature of reality in the Land of the Rising Sun.

A reappraisal or reassessment is of course always easier if one can refer to specific data. Statistics provide convincing arguments, which is the reason why, to name but one example, a change of course in the business world is often easier than among policymakers. The latter are compelled to take into account what are known as “soft factors.” These are rather difficult to quantify, since they have more to do with geopolitics, culture and history than with the gross domestic product and trade surpluses. There are geographical, historical and cultural reasons why India has not (yet) been placed on a par with China by strategic experts, and why, in contrast to the Middle Kingdom, it is not (yet) seen as a world power or even feared as a forthcoming superpower. If one wants politicians to espouse the idea of “More India and less China,” then the arguments will have to be slightly more substantial than the mere recital of the most recent growth and inflation rates.

The first thing that becomes apparent is that any project based on comparisons between China and India is rather presumptuous. After all, both are not only autonomous and sophisticated civilizations of global significance, but also countries and peoples with continental dimensions. The following remarks should thus be treated with a certain degree of caution, seeing that this is a very personal account, and in view of the fact that what is happening in India and China is far more complex than can be depicted within the framework of a short book. It should also be borne in mind that personal impressions and experiences play an important role in the assessment of facts and trends. For the sake of transparency I must explain that I have been interested in India and China for a very long time, and that I have lived and worked in both countries for a number of years. However, since my wife is Indian I of course have certain affinities to India which, as an outsider (I am one in China whether I like it or not) I cannot develop despite all the respect that I have for Chinese culture and for the Chinese as a people.

A Staunch Community of Values

“More India and less China,” the maxim of a new relationship between Europe and Germany and the two rising Asian powers, can hark back to more enduring fundamentals than short-term geopolitical or foreign policy interests. First and foremost these consist of the values which should actually form a link between the Western democracies and India, and the basis of a staunch community. They include democracy and the rule of law, to which we have alluded above. We will now turn our attention to the values of tolerance and pluralism. The widespread use of English by the Indian elite, which has already been mentioned, certainly simplifies access for foreigners. Yet over and above this we can identify common interests which do not have their origins in the British colonial rule.

This, from both a Western and an Indian point of view, also had its negative sides. British predominance certainly did not make encounters between India and continental Europe, and especially Germany, any easier. And it should also not be forgotten that, reaching back to the 19th century, in addition to the many pioneering German contributions to Indology, there are also some unpleasant legacies which derive from the German perception of India. This was taken to the extreme by the Aryan cult of the National Socialists. On the Indian side the sympathies of the ultimately unsuccessful revolutionary Subhash Chandra Bose (1897–1945) for Nazi Germany had a tactical background and were based on the principle that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. On the German side the encounter with India was imbued with some dangerous emotions and philosophical and historical misjudgements.