On The Same Side Of The Future

The recent meeting of the Indian foreign minister with his Chinese counterpart in Beijing is surely a good portent.

- R Gopalakrishnan

The two nations must find an imaginative way to cooperate for their own future and that of the world. Chanakya was among India's foremost strategists, as Sun Tzu was for China. They were the original McKinsey or Bain for their societies. Can their successors come together?

In 2000, I was a member of the Indian delegation to the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle, where China was admitted into the group. I shared the hope of many delegates that the rules-based global system would strike deeper roots as China becomes more akin to other trading nations. Today, it is sobering to see that the WTO is virtually dysfunctional and the rules-based world order is breaking down. Above all, far from China becoming like others, many nations including the US are becoming like how China was.

Something must give, as the West cannot continue to dominate the world. And there are good reasons for holding this view.

One reason is that India and China have learnt selectively from the West, but not lost their civilizational underpinnings. The lessons they have learnt serve as an additional layer to their solid civilizational underframe—a 'sandwich' of strengths that is under-noticed.

George Frost Kennan, counsellor to the US state department in the 1940s, used to refer to a 'spiritual vitality' that America must rely upon to contain the Soviet Union. As subsequent events unfolded, America failed hopelessly in executing this task. India today can take heed of Kennan's view. Both India and China will claim and qualify as pre-possessing great 'spiritual vitality', whatever their views of it.