India and China: Partners and Rivals?

The sheer size and dynamic growth of both China and India has been fuelling the imagination of Western observers. Some have predicted a new joint superpower called "Chindia", whereas others foresee a showdown between the two Asian heavyweights over regional dominance.

The Sino-Indian reality is less dramatic, and somewhere in between those two scenarios. India and China tend to cooperate well in international organisations and conferences, and both governments have been trying to overcome snags in the bilateral relations caused by ongoing border disputes.

History of mistrust

And yet, their often-cited "strategic partnership" has not really taken off. Nor have the high-flying visions of "Chindia", based on assumptions like: Chinese hardware would be an ideal match with Indian software.

Alka Acharya, an expert on the bilateral ties at New Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University, explains:

"There is a lot of mistrust between the two countries, and this mistrust because of historical reasons translates into the two countries not being able to work in close cooperation with each other, because fundamentally there is a certain competition between them and we don’t really know what the other side is up to."

Increasing competition

China expert Rajeev Anantaram at the "Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations" says India definitely regards China as a rival in the region:

"There is no doubt about it. And they see us as a competitor, too, despite whatever they may say. They do see us as a competitor. We are competing for resources, we are competing for geostrategic influence."

India may dream of catching up with Chinese growth rates, but for the time being it is obvious that it is lagging behind China's rapid economic development. Indians do recognize the strengths of the Chinese system, for example its more efficient governance. "They can get things done faster," says Acharya. "The decisions are not contested at every level and undone. They have more effective ways of monitoring decisions from the top to the bottom."

Fear of China’s progress

Although India is proud of its democracy, there remains a certain envy of China's economic successes:

"Foreign investment does not flow to India because we are a democracy," says Acharya. "Foreign investment goes to China because the capital is obviously more confident about the kind of returns it can get from a controlled China than democratic India."

It is mainly the strategic community and the military who tend to stir up tensions. In India, they often refer to the Chinese threat in order to justify an arms build-up -- from the development of nuclear weapons to the current plans to substantially increase naval capabilities. They still remember the short Indo-China border war in autumn 1962, which ended with India's defeat.

But, as political scientist Anantaram cautions. Rajeev Anantaram says, "years of mutual suspicion can mean that we can’t be friends; but rivals need not be fratricidal! And we don’t have to be enemies!"

Author: Thomas Bärthlein
Editor: Grahame Lucas