The 1st IISS-Citi India Global Forum
India as a Rising Great Power:
Challenges and Opportunities
New Delhi, 18–20 April 2008
Fourth Plenary Session:
India and the Great Powers
The Chinese-Indian Relationship
Professor Xiaojun Heng
Vice President, China Foreign Affairs University, People's Republic of China
(Provisional transcript as delivered)
Thank you. Dear colleagues, friends, ladies and gentlemen: good morning. I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to IISS and Citi India for sponsoring this first India Global Forum and for providing me with this wonderful opportunity to share my thoughts with you. I would also like to thank all the staff members of IISS and others for all their efforts in preparation for this event. They are devoted to their work and are very professional.
Let me start my looking at the China-India relationship in a global context. The world is now undergoing tremendous change. Scientific and technological innovations have changed our ways of life. Economic globalisation and integration and the information superhighway have brought us much closer, so we are all global villages living on the same earth. The only thing that we are not changing is change itself, so we can expect that change will continue to take place, at least for the foreseeable future.
In the midst of such tremendous change and the historic social transformations, I think the world is now at a crossroads. We are faced with both opportunities and challenges, so we are faced with difficult choices. The choices that we make today will definitely exert considerable influence on future generations. Why is this? To draw an analogy, in the history of English literature there is a dramatist called Christopher Marlowe, a contemporary of Shakespeare who lived in the 16th century. He is remembered for this three plays, Tamburlaine the Great, The Jew of Malta, and The Tragic History of Doctor Faustus. In these plays Marlowe tried to depict the three types of human beings in a period of Renaissance, a period of historical transformations that Europe underwent politically and economically from the 14th to the 16th century. There are three types of human spirits: the will to power, the desire for wealth, and the thirst for knowledge. I do not know to what extent we are repeating history, but at least I can amazing similarities between these two great historical periods.
The first is the beginning of the third new millennium and the Renaissance. Let us look at the will to power in today’s world. I think our world needs order; without it, we will fall into a state of anarchy or chaos. What kind of international order or systems should we establish? How do we establish it? By means of conquest, or through dialogue? This is a debate about multilateralism and unilateralism. Two years ago, I attended another international conference held in Turin, Italy, on ‘From Global Warming to Global Politics’. In the opening statement, Mikhail Gorbachev said that unilateralism is a dead end, especially considering the fact that nowadays we are faced with a lot of non-traditional security issues: international terrorism, infectious diseases, transnational organised crime, and the energy crisis. No country is capable enough to solve all of these problems alone; it requires the joint efforts of the international community, countries whether big or small, to settle all these issues. I think our approach must be multilateralism.
Second is a desire for wealth. It is understandable that countries today try their best to develop their economies so as to improve their people’s lives and make their country prosperous. However, two other aspects are often neglected. The first one, along with economic globalisation, is economic marginalisation and the disparity between the poor and rich, between North and South. This has widened. What about environmental deterioration? We cannot develop the economy at the cost of the environment, but we cannot give up development for the sake of environmental protection. The purpose is to find the balance between sustainable development, a developed economy and environmental protection in order to achieve common prosperity.
The third is the thirst for knowledge. Everybody knows that this is the age of technological knowledge explosion; scientific and technological innovation have made our lives very comfortable. Cell phones are a very small example. High tech, especially cutting-edge high tech, can also be used to produce weapons of mass destruction. This is a double-edged sword which can be used in different ways. Suppose that a small nuclear device falls into the hands of international terrorists. This could cause global catastrophe and disaster. All in all, I think we are at a crossroads, and the choices that we are going to make will exert tremendous influence on future generations.
What are the solutions? Apart from the traditional idea of establishing strategic triangular relationship or balance of power in which one country unites another country in order to deal with a third country, I would propose a linear concept as we move forward to the future, which is represented by prosperity, cooperation, peace and a win-win result. The other way is represented by hostility, containment, conflict, confrontation and war. I think the first trend is the general trend of today’s world. This is very important.
Against such a big historical background and the global context, let us look at the Chinese-Indian relationship. I think both China and India need a very peaceful, favourable international and domestic environment for the country’s modernisation drive and in order to strengthen bilateral cooperation, achieve common prosperity and maintain regional and global peace and stability. This is a general description.
Both China and India share very ancient civilisations, both of which are very important parts of world civilisation. Our countries’ exchange dates back more than 2,000 years. Buddhists came to China from India in the 1st century AD, and in the Tong Dynasty, the Buddhist monks came from China to India in order to get Buddhist scriptures.
Both China and India have similar histories of suffering humiliations imposed by colonialism. This is why I think that both countries particularly value national independence and state sovereignty. I remember during World War II a famous doctor came all the way from India to help the Chinese fight against aggressors. Mahatma Gandhi said that both China and India are brothers who share the same sufferings, and we have a long-term friendship.
Nowadays, both China and India are faced with the common task of economic development in order to make the country prosperous, to eliminate poverty and to make their people’s lives better. I think in 1820, the economic strengths of China and India combined accounted for about 48% of the world’s total, but in 150 years China and India were left behind for various reasons known to us all. With the rapid development of both countries’ economies, now India’s GDP is growing at a rate of more than 8% in the past three years, and China’s GDP growth has been more than 10% in the past five years. Our countries’ economies are very complementary.
Both China and India are faced with common challenges. Both of us have the largest and second-largest populations in the world, and we are faced with a lot of non-traditional security issues such as how to provide better education, medical care, housing and transportation for our citizens. We have a lot in common.
Finally, China and India share many common views in international affairs and a multilateral approach to solving international disputes. Premier Zhou Enlai visited India in 1954 and proposed the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, or Panchsheel, with Prime Minister Nehru. This has become the foundation for the friendly relations between the two countries.
In 1988, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi paid a very historic visit to China, which laid a solid foundation for the future development of bilateral relations between China and India. In the next 20 years, frequent visits have been exchanged between heads of states. Premier Wen Jiabao visited in India in 2005, and the two countries established a strategic cooperative partnership oriented towards peace and stability. Early this year, Prime Minister Singh visited China, when he said that the world has space enough for China and India to cooperate and achieve common prosperity. China’s trade with India in 1991 was approximately $300 million, but in the last year it amounted to more than $37 billion. Both countries expect the volume to grow to $60 billion by the year 2010. All of this provides a solid foundation for the successful development of bilateral relations.
I thank you very much for your attention.
