Time will see better China-India relations

• Source: Global Times
• [08:48 November 02 2009]
• Comments

Secondly, following the end of the Cold War bipolar system, states are no longer divided sharply on lines of ideology.

Today, states have multifaceted partnerships with multiple countries and most of these are more complementary and only rarely competitive.

Therefore, India or China's growing relationship with the US should not ideally become counterproductive automatically.

However, given the long tradition of our mutual suspicions, it remains incumbent on both New Delhi and Beijing to keep each other informed about their growing closeness to Washington.

Together these three states have important stakes in ensuring regional and international peace and justice.

The three are also states with significant capacities to work toward that dream.

Therefore, more coordination and being sensitive to each others' limitations and sensitivities remains the key to their evolving an effective partnership.

GT: On October 21, the leaders of India and China signed an agreement on fighting climate change. Do you think this might be a chance to further develop economic ties between the two countries?

Singh: Climate change debate promises to bring New Delhi and Beijing closer for a longer period of time. Both are emerging economies.

Given their rising appetite for energy and consumption, they have also become major targets for developed countries that are trying to sustain the imbalance in their carbon emissions.

This leaves very little chance for newly industrializing countries like China and India to grow without threatening the ecological balance of our planet.

Nevertheless, in total volume, even the most exaggerated quantities of carbon emissions remain but only a friction of what is emitted by advanced countries.

And they owe it to compensate the least developed and developing countries as the environment which they have polluted for the last 200 years has to be treated as a global common.

Both China and India propose that carbon emission rights should be calculated on a per capita basis as it is human beings who consume energies and should be treated as equal irrespective of whether they belong to developed or developing countries.

Consequently, in the coming five weeks of the run-up to the UN conference on climate change at Copenhagen, China and India are likely to evolve a closer relationship and develop joint strategies.

Their memorandum of understanding signed in New Delhi on October 21 seems the first important step in their growing cooperation and mutual understanding.

GT: What are the solutions to Sino- Indian problems?

Singh: Time will be the greatest healer.

This means that variables or factors that lie beneath New Delhi and Beijing perceiving and articulating their boundary dispute will continue to evolve and change ground realities.

In the school of "new" geopolitics, there are scholars who believe that in coming decades it is not territories, but, say, globalization (Thomas Friedman) or microchips (George Gilder) or geo-economics (Edward Luttwak) which will be the stronger determinants of inter-state ties.

There are scholars who believe that geography has become history as we all move to interacting in virtual space or outer-space (using satellites).

This is going to change our perceptions.

Also, as both China and India become stronger powers, their growing self-confidence will make them less obsessed with territories and more capable of making concessions and compromise.

With each new generation their mutual perceptions have also been changing. China is no longer perceived in India the way it was perceived in the 1960s or 1970s.

Plus, both sides have been and should continue to make concerted efforts which have shown results and will become more effective with the passage of time.

This is not exclusive to China and India; almost every such dispute takes decades of negotiations and dialogue and only after that a sustainable, lasting and amicable solution can be arrived at and implemented.

The greatest achievement of China and India has been that both have endured this dispute and our occasional high-pitched polemics are not allowed to derail our friendship.

It is not only New Delhi and Beijing, but our 2.5 billion people and indeed the whole world which have stakes in ensuring our friendship.