It would certainly help if Chinese scholars and commentators broadened and deepened their understanding of India. The liberal Chinese-American scholar Minxin Pei has described how ‘ignorance, stereotyping, and latent hostility characterize the views of India held by a large segment of Chinese society’. In his view, ‘The combination of under-appreciation of India’s achievement and exaggeration of India’s role as a geopolitical rival could generate dangerous self-reinforcing dynamics that may make strategic competition between India and China more likely in the future.’
There is statistical evidence for his concerns. A 2006 Pew Global Attitudes Survey found that 43 per cent of Chinese had an unfavourable opinion of India, while 39 per cent of Indians had an unfavourable opinion of China. Looking at specific issues dividing the two countries, 63 per cent of Indians described China’s growing military power as a ‘bad thing’ for their country, while 50 per cent said the same about China’s growing economic power. A poll released in 2010 by the respected Chinese private market research firm Horizon Research, which asked respondents to rate their ‘friendly feelings’ towards twenty-five countries, has demonstrated that the average Chinese citizen views India more negatively than an average Indian views China. While Indians expressed an ‘average’ level of ‘friendly feeling’ towards China, the Chinese polled had a much lower level of ‘friendly feelings’ towards India, higher only than their traditional negativism towards Japan. Whereas more Indians viewed China as a ‘partner’ than as an ‘adversary’, Chinese respondents saw India as the number three threat, behind the United States and Japan, and as the ‘weakest’ of the four BRIC countries — Brazil, Russia, India and China.
Equally, knowledge and scholarship of China in India needs to be augmented: we need to understand China better. Exchanges of scholars and journalists, and a significant improvement in tourism between the two countries, would go a long way towards making this possible. It is striking that only 56,00 °Chinese visited India in 2008, a year in which about one million Chinese visited Malaysia. Indian traffic in the other direction is not much better — roughly 380,000 Indians visited China in 2010, fewer than travellers from Mongolia. Till very recently, there was only one non-stop commercial airline service which connects the two countries, and it flew from New Delhi to Shanghai; there was no direct flight between the two major Asian capitals. Chinese carriers have now corrected this anomaly but no Indian airline has yet undertaken a Delhi — Beijing flight. Ironically, there is a daily flight connecting New Delhi with Taipei.
If there is one assumption taken for granted by all of us familiar with Chinese sensitivities, it is that of ‘One China’—the inflexible policy adhered to by Beijing that requires the world to accept the unity and indivisibility of the Chinese nation, including not only Tibet but also Hong Kong (despite its autonomy, separate administration and currency) and Taiwan (despite its de facto, but not de jure, independence).
Taiwan has tended to go along with the assertion of One China: it still officially calls itself the Republic of China (ROC), claiming descent from the regime established in Beijing by Sun Yat-sen when he overthrew the last emperor of the Q’ing dynasty in 1911. Still, it has been a while since the world took seriously the Taipei government’s pretence of speaking for the whole country. Once seen by the majority of members of the United Nations in the 1950s as the legitimate government of China temporarily displaced by communist usurpers, Taiwan has been marginalized for decades: it was forced to surrender its UN seat to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) by an overwhelming vote in 1971, and has been largely ostracized from the global political community since.
At the same time, no one pretends that Beijing speaks for this island nation of 23 million, with its GDP of $460 billion (a per capita income of over $20,000) and its robust democracy. Taiwan has not been ruled from the mainland since 1949, and for all practical purposes it conducts itself as a separate country. Not only is it a major trade powerhouse, out of all proportion to its size, but a significant source of foreign investment. It also has a robust defence establishment, designed to ward off threats from the mainland, and a proactive foreign policy. But it is recognized as a sovereign state by only twenty-three of the 193 member states of the United Nations. As a result, the other 169 nations must deal with it by subterfuge. So the United States, India and other countries maintain quasi-diplomatic relations with Taiwan by assigning foreign office personnel to Taipei in nominally trade-related jobs. The Indian ‘ambassador’ in Taiwan is officially the director-general of the India-Taipei Association; his Taiwanese counterpart in India rejoices in the designation of representative at the Taipei Economic and Cultural Centre in India.
Seems fair enough. There’s only one catch: deal with Taiwan more formally, and China goes ballistic. Any contact that implies official recognition of a ‘state’ or a government of Taiwan provokes furious outrage and protests on Beijing’s part. Thus the president of Taiwan could not set foot on US soil as long as he was president; ministers of countries recognizing Beijing are forbidden from meeting ministers from Taiwan. Taiwanese officials are, of course, banned at the United Nations, where the PRC’s sway is confirmed by a General Assembly resolution. I remember, in my UN days, apoplectic Chinese diplomats prompting successive Secretary-Generals to bar entry to Taiwanese representatives who had been invited to address the UN Correspondents’ Association. The resultant standoff at the UN gates usually got the Taiwanese diplomats more publicity than if China had simply ignored them altogether, but the bad press was less important to Chinese officialdom than insisting on their rights to prevent the pretenders from sullying the UN’s precincts.
The strange thing, as I discovered during a recent visit to Taipei, is that these rules don’t apply to China itself. Behind the formal rejection, a thriving and almost incestuous level of contact flourishes. There are 370 flights a week between the mainland and Taiwan; some 3 million Chinese tourists came to the ROC last year. Taiwanese businesses are China’s largest investors, with an estimated $300 million pumped into their economy, and one of the largest trading partners, to the tune of over $110 billion. Some 1 million Taiwanese are either living, working or studying in China at any given time. Chinese officials, up to and including governors and ministers, travel happily to Taiwan, and are quite pleased to welcome high-ranking Taiwanese visitors in return; when I was there, the mayor of Taipei (a crucial post, since the last two mayors became the country’s presidents) was planning a holiday in China. Obviously, Beijing does not recognize the Taiwanese passport, but it is quite pragmatic and flexible when it wants to be: travel by the two sets of citizens uses informal documentation that implies no recognition of separate sovereignty by either side.
Some think this implies an extended willingness to coexist: rather than the ‘One China, Two Systems’ formula that applies to Hong Kong, this is almost ‘One China, Two Entities’. Others, more cynically, think that what Beijing is doing is enveloping Taiwan in a smothering economic embrace while continuing to isolate it politically, so that Taipei’s dependence will inevitably oblige it to submit to a Hong Kong — type merger with the PRC. And then there are the optimists, who think the increased contact will instead change China, making the PRC more like the ROC. ‘You know what these Chinese tourists do?’ a senior official asked. ‘They enjoy a day’s tourism, have dinner and then sit in their hotel rooms in front of the TV for hours, watching Taiwanese talk shows. They can’t get enough of the cut-and-thrust of our democracy.’ ‘Imagine,’ a mainlander said to me, ‘my taxi driver had an opinion on nuclear policy, as if it had anything to do with him.’ But in Taiwan, unlike in China, the taxi driver gets to vote on who makes the policy, so it has everything to do with him. Chinese citizens are learning that, and going back to the mainland infected with the taste of freedom. Soon, the optimists aver, ‘They will want to be like us. Then Taiwan will have conquered China.’