Lal Salaam Rising Sun Redux

 

 Lal Salaam Rising Sun Redux

 Japan,  as former Foreign Minister Natwar Singh just remarked, was nationalist India’s WWII ally during the freedom movement. And China under Chairman Mao was the inspiration for the ravages of the Naxalite movement in West Bengal fifty years ago.

Today, both linkages are in for a resurrection, a redux, rich in bonhomie, in a Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid kind of way. Japan, of course, once conquered and occupied China, much to its humiliation, and China overran India with consummate ease, much to ours.

Manmohan Singh may have been mumbling about his ‘Look East’ policy for some time past, but it is Prime Minister Modi’s Japan sojourn which is all set to yield $ 35 billion in fresh investment . This will go into infrastructure, skill development and manufacturing over the next five years. Other items of cooperation fill out the list of bilateral engagements, and include  rare-earths and defence. Nuclear cooperation will have to wait, but others, the Australian prime minister, the Russians, the French, are on their way.

India on its part, is all set to revoke the MAT and DDS taxes on manufacturing in its becalmed SEZs’ and elsewhere, and there will also be a special facilitation cell for the Japanese working out of the PMO and a hotline between prime ministers Modi and Abe.

China’s President Xi is due to visit next, and the Chinese have pointedly chosen not to take exception to being called ‘expansionist’. After all, there is little percentage in denying it. They must be making ready with proposals for investment in India instead.

Their client state Pakistan, apart from being a much smaller opportunity, has already yielded the prize of access to Baluchistan and its raw materials, a strategic port on the Gulf, and good office access to Afghanistan’s mineral riches. Pakistan  does take in a lot of Chinese arms and even nuclear power stations, but China has to finance it, pretty much on the never-never, with this spectacularly bankrupt state, living for long on drug money, terrorist shakedowns, and loads of US and Chinese grants.

Meanwhile, the roads across the Akshai Chin, the Gilgit area, and the Karkoram Pass  are also constructed. India observation posts in Pakistan occupied Kashmir have come along with Chinese aided infrastructure development. Roads and train lines have been built to the Sikkim border and also to Lhasa and beyond.  

There is not much economic percentage left in a volatile Pakistan verging on a failed state. Besides their ‘long-time ally and all-weather friend’ has not hesitated to foment Islamic terrorism in China’s Tajakhistan province!

China’s encirclement policy, the ‘string of pearls’, with regard to India is well-nigh advanced, with ports in Sri Lanka, developments in Myanmar, bilateral cooperation with Nepal and Bhutan and hard patrolling of the long borders. There is also the burgeoning blue water navy and the urge to dominate not only the South China Sea but the Indian Ocean as well. The United States has tacitly conceded the space, but let’s face it, countries like Japan and India actually live here.

But through it all, it is believable enough that China has no actual territorial ambitions  in India. It is just keen on being the undisputable top dog, and forcing India to toe its line in international affairs, including BRICS. To this end there is a carrot and stick approach with allurements of support for a permanent seat in the UN Security Council and invitations to the Shanghai Group regionally.

India on its part, meek and willing to be bullied under the UPA, is no longer keen on ignoring Chinese pressure, and is rebuilding its own bridges, in its neighbourhood, and farther afield; with Bhutan, Nepal and now Japan.  

But undeniably, there is much business to be done given the size of the Indian market. India is in a resurgence under Narendra Modi, and the $68 billion trade in China’s favour is not going to be as significant going forward as making in India, especially if other countries rush forward to do so. But, as it stands, in FDI terms, China is a laggard, with a mere $1.1 billion invested in Gujarat.

Modi’s Government seeks trillions in infrastructure and manufacturing investment in particular, and China has a great opportunity to contribute or fall behind other countries.

From Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s native Gujarati perspective, in which he claims an innate understanding of business as ‘money runs in my blood’, it makes good sense to attract substantial investment from both countries and others.

The Chinese have enunciated and adopted national interest as their foreign policy. And it is indeed in the Chinese national interest to ramp up investment in an India run by the business-friendly Narendra Modi. It will be a Lal-Salaam-Rising-Sun Redux that will benefit India, China and Japan alike.

(797 words)

September 2^nd, 2014

Gautam Mukherjee