Business Can Bring India, China Closer

India and China have had close people-to-people relations for centuries.

- R GOPALAKRISHNAN

Chanakya and Sun Tzu were approximate contemporaries, a hundred years apart. India has historically excelled in relationship-building with other nations through travel, trade, and thought. The three Ts were strong glues. The Tea Horse Road carried a flourishing trade. The spread of Buddhism had a mercantile streak, as highlighted by Devdutt Pattanaik in his recent column for The New Indian Express.

Another relevant article on a syncretic vision to heal our divided world was published by this newspaper earlier this month.

When a truncated India encountered a unified China in the 1950s, the frontier politics of British India opened differences. Differences have been around for eight decades, even as soft power has influenced both sides for centuries. In future, there is potential for benefit if Chanakya and Sun Tzu can collaborate through business. For two large neighbours, that is worthwhile.

My experience of China is only through business. Trade, travel, and thoughts bring people together. A young Jamsetji Tata, the founder of Tata, went for training in Shanghai around 1860. On my first visit in 2009, I learned that Avan Villa at 458, Wulumuqi North Road in Shanghai, was owned by Bejan Dadabhoy Tata, a distant uncle of JRD Tata. As a Tata Director, I visited a subsidiary called NTACO in the Jingning Industrial Economic Zone, near Nanjing, which manufactures plastic injection-moulded automotive components. I also attended the inauguration of NTACO's second unit near Changshu in 2015. Later, a third company came up to trade in automotive components.