By Tarun Basu, IANS
Beijing/New Delhi : The India vs China syndrome is passé. From now, the global idiom for joint collaborative action will be India-China, says India’s Commerce and Industry Minister Kamal Nath, alluding to the growing friendship between the Asian giants.
On return from a visit to China accompanying Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Nath said the engagement with Beijing was an important milestone bilaterally as the two rising economic powers set an ambitious trade target of $60 billion by 2010 – three times the goal set just five years ago.
“The engagement was important in the global context as well,” Nath told IANS.
Much of the global discourse, on trade or climate change, has centred around the fact that the two countries were experiencing steady economic growth – China at 10 percent and India at 9 – and accounted for a third of the global population.
But the two neighbours were also seen by the world as adversarial powers with competing claims to the world’s riches, scarce resources and also global pre-eminence – a perception which Manmohan Singh’s visit sought to change.
There had also been speculation in the Western world about India lending itself to co-option as a buffer in a US-sponsored strategic plan to “contain” China’s growing military and economic ambitions.
But the Indian prime minister, himself a great admirer of China’s success story, insisted he would have no part in any alliance with the US, Australia and Japan aimed at “containing China”.
“I have made it clear to the Chinese leadership that India is not part of any so-called ‘contain China’ effort,” Manmohan Singh was quoted as saying in Beijing.
He was opting out of notions that New Delhi might, alongside Australia, the US and Japan, become a part of a new “quadrilateral” strategic pact conceived by Tokyo’s former prime minister Shinzo Abe before his resignation.
But the “quadrilateral” concept has had little traction since then, and Manmohan Singh’s rejection Sunday suggested it might be stillborn.
“Solid sustained growth of India and China was only in the nature of being an international public good,” the prime minister said, especially at a time when uncertainty gripped the world economy amid fears of recession in US and Japan.
The prime minister said growth would not only help India and China but the global economy as a whole.
Nath, a strong and influential voice for the developed world in the global trade talks, said the global economic agenda in the future could well be set by India and China – a far cry from the days when the world would say: “When America sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold”.
He said while the world viewed China and India as rivals in many respects, the two countries were pushing for energy and infrastructure projects in Africa and Latin America, and could drive the growth of these two regions in the future.
There is no doubt Manmohan Singh, who visited Beijing for the first time and saw showpiece infrastructure projects of the Olympic Games, has come back an ardent admirer of China for the way it was managing its developmental problems.
“China has become the world’s manufacturing workshop. It’s a phenomenal story and that is what development should be about,” the prime minister told the accompanying media team. “China’s achievements are quite remarkable. There is a lot we can learn.”
Nath, on his part, is convinced this was the “most successful” of official visits that Manmohan Singh had made to date since the reform-minded economist-turned-politician became the nation’s prime minister in May 2004.
“The Chinese regarded him highly, with Premier Wen Jiabao even telling him that he was the most popular of global figures among the Chinese netizens as a recent survey showed,” the trade minister said.
This was reflected in Chinese leaders breaking protocol to show their personal regard and admiration for him – like when Wen came out of the state guesthouse in the freezing cold of Beijing to see off Manmohan Singh.
Ahead of a meeting with Manmohan Singh in November 2006, Chinese President Hu Jintao had remarked: “When India and China and shake hands, the whole world will sit up and watch.” The Indian leadership now firmly believes the time for such an impact has arrived.