China and India: The rise of the ‘superstates’

Vince Cable’s book Eclipsing the West: China, India and The Forging of a New World is a comparative analysis of China and India.

- GUNJAN SINGH

The author terms them “superstates” and argues that the “emergence of China and India as superstates, combined with the relative decline of the US and the weakening of global rules and institutions this entails, presents some serious geopolitical challenges.” The major analysis of the predicted world order is done by invoking the Thucydides Trap and the Kindleberger Trap. A look at the expected future is attempted through an analysis of three most probable scenarios.

Mr Cable eschews the general narrative of China and India being different, highlighting instead their similarities. Their economic growth, he says, would be one of the most crucial factors in the changing geopolitical scenario. Both, he asserts, are driven by “state capitalism”, explaining that in both economies the exact share of the public and private enterprises is not very clear and they tend to overlap. Another major similarity today is ideology, which has come in handy for both governments to maintain control over large nations. The author shrewdly opines that the “Chinese one-party rule and India’s parliamentary democracy are different political animals. But crucially, what both have in common is an understanding that their ideology and its expression through a strongman ruler are difficult to reconcile with liberal democracy.”