Take a new route to Silk

The alacrity with which the Chinese city of Hangzhou granted Ratan Tata an honourary citizenship is not surprising. It is symptomatic of the...

The alacrity with which the Chinese city of Hangzhou granted Ratan Tata an honourary citizenship is not surprising. It is symptomatic of the way ideas about India are changing in China, as apparent during a recent visit.

In Kunming, my attention is first drawn to the street. Neat, tidy, no garbage, sanitised like Singapore. I stop at a book kiosk. A glossy magazine, Cultural Geography, China8217;s equivalent to the National Geographic, has on its cover page an article on 8216;8216;God fearing India8217;8217;. A young woman with a picture of Mother Teresa stares from the cover. Odd, because the article describes India as 83 per cent Hindu. The journalist has travelled all over India, even a Haryana village confined by its caste system.

Talk of ancient India has reclaimed its historical importance, the silk routes refiguring in the imagination as modern trade routes. This is accompanied by the spreading pull of Buddhism. A taxi-driver says his mother would love to visit the Buddhist pilgrim sites in India. A young couple in a modern cafe talk of Buddhism8217;s intellectual merit and India. A young woman in the hotel8217;s business centre giggles as she says, 8216;8216;Indian women are so beautiful and so is Indian fashion8217;8217;. Of course, the Miss World pageant was held in Sanya and Miss India was one of those mobbed. Indian cinema and Indian music have always been popular. Plagiarised DVDs of Ashoka can be bought in bars of Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen and Kunming.

The intellectual impressions are more complex, positively different from the last visit five years back. There is a general sense of freedom in terms of intellectual enquiry, a great sense of relief and delight that academic access to the west and joint academic projects have now become the norm. As far as India is concerned, the change is palpable. I remember the last conversations about India as I walked around Beijing University. It was the early nineties and they were riding their first economic boom. India had clearly 8216;8216;missed the boat8217;8217;. 8216;8216;Too slow8230; democracy was an impediment to reform,8217;8217; they said then. This time around, the discourse has changed. Suddenly, India is a successful competitor. 8216;8216;India8217;s financial management is good8217;8217; , 8216;8216;India demonstrates that intellectual products don8217;t have to be manufactured in a developed country8217;8217;, 8216;8216;India is getting the low end jobs of the service industry, while we are stuck as a manufacturing base8217;8217;.

Today, trade governs China8217;s foreign policy. Deng extended his famous line about cats to include foreign policy. Loosely translated, 8216;8216;Forget border or territorial problems, push them on the back seat, trade with them instead.8217;8217; This, coupled with economic decentralisation of decision-making to provinces, has allowed them not only to compete with each other to attract investment but also to bypass diplomatic formalities. And South Asia, as the Chinese point out, has the potential to turn into the biggest trade zone in the world. The 8216;8216;New Asian Continental Bridge8217;8217; spans Sichuan, Yunnan, Burma, India, Bangladesh 8212; in other words, from the China Sea to the Bay of Bengal.

There has also been a spate of publications, especially out of Kunming on the issue of Sino-Indian trade. China and South Asia: A New Look at Economic Cooperation points out how closer trade links with India through land and sea can be beneficial to both countries and how this is the best time to build economic ties. A book on the Indian IT industry is not only detailed in its analysis and understanding of the industry in India but also keen to point out how it makes a perfect partner for China. Yunan province8217;s economic bureau especially commissioned the story. It8217;s backed up by the advantages that provinces are offering Indian companies, especially in the IT sector. These include tax incentives, land at great rates and no bureaucratic interference from the Chinese side.

According to the Chinese, between 1992-1994 alone, trade between India and China went from US 34 million to US 89 million and by 2000 had reached US 2 billion. They point out that China imports steel, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, sea products, leather and semi-precious stones from India. It exports printing paper for newspapers, construction material and electronic products among other low-end manufactured commodities. It points out how the two nations are natural trading partners, not competitors. The onus now really lies on Indian industry to pick up on this positive trade moves from the Chinese side. Deng Xiaoping was a smart guy. We need some smart guys on our side to open this southern silk route to trade, cultural intermingling and travel.

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The writer is with the Department of East Asian Studies, Delhi University