India’s Former Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran’s latest book “How China Sees India and The World: The Authoritative Account of the Indo-China Relations” delivers a clear perspective into the strategic culture of understanding the rise of China through the prism of its rich history and culture. Shyam Saran provides an intellectual and theoretical understanding of modern China’s strategic thought and foreign policy objectives drawn from long and vibrant Chinese history and traditions. The book utilises China’s ancient history and civilisational knowledge to make readers understand how historical consciousness has aided in building China’s present strategic statecraft, which is often missing from the discourse while analysing China’s rise in India.
The book is divided into eighteen chapters and narrates the emergence of a geo-strategic power – China – whose current authoritative behaviour is critically interpreted by its culture and history that shaped its ethos and worldview. It is an attempt to familiarise readers with the Chinese mind and is a step forward in further exploring the history of India and China relations.
Building his arguments on China’s ‘discourse power’, the author is cautious in ensuring that the book is not treated as a scholarly treatise of Chinese history but rather as a reflection of how these traditions can lead to learning from China’s strengths, weaknesses, and drawing lessons from them. The author categorically establishes China’s long-standing history through socio, economic and political dimensions.
This review broadly notes of strategic lessons to be drawn from the book.
Understanding Xi Jinping’s China Dream
China’s long and vibrant history has been very influential in establishing its current political identity. The optimism of Xi Jinping’s “China Dream” – the dream to rejuvenate and revive the long glory days of ancient China – is crafted in his economic and political structural reforms which brought a massive change in how Beijing perceives itself in the international political scenario.
The author notes that China feeds into its image of being the Middle Kingdom – a dominant kingdom at the centre of the known world, enjoying extended pre-eminence and power in Asia – which is further legitimised by its ambitious project like the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) which is viewed as China reviving its historical role of great trading power and reviving its Old Silk Road. Interestingly, it is noted that there is little history to support the claim that China was once the centre of the Asian universe. Rather, Beijing’s contemporary rise should be attributed to its economic reforms, military capabilities, knowledge accumulations, and mastery of science rather than history providing centrality to its claims.
The Chinese perception of the world is grounded in the Communist Party of China’s (CCP) ideals to establish its rich legacy including its acknowledgement of its greatness and humiliation under the Qing Dynasty which led to the century of humiliation where the Chinese were subjugation at the hands of Western powers and re-establish its glorious past. Overlooking how China’s current policies are driven by its past is problematic since nationalism arising from history is a catalyst for political decisions, especially when China and the United States of America head-on against each other.
Perception of India and Tibet
An expert on Indo-China relations, Shyam Saran utilises the traditions of statecraft in Chinese societies while parallelly drawing on the historical developments in the Indian subcontinent to see how perceptions bind the two countries together. He interprets how India had entered the Chinese imagination through the spread of Buddhism yet there is no sign of China in Indian consciousness throughout its long history. It is only in modern times that China emerged in the Indian mind and held itself as the country’s biggest challenge.
In Chapter fourteen titled “India as Teacher by Negative Example” the author states that China is increasingly assessing India through the prism of its fraught and worsening relations with the US. India is not regarded as someone with an independent agency. China views India as an enslaved country because of its colonial path, considered an instrument of Western imperialism. The Tibet crisis of 1959 led to negative reporting of India whose issue is at the very heart of the complex relationship between the India and China. Though China never exercised direct control over Tibet, Beijing will not rest until Tibet is not secured. Shyam Saran notes that the complex and confusing history with Tibet obscures the Chinese narrative of claiming Tibet since neither the Mongols nor the Manchus considered Tibet a part of China under their empires. The Han dynasty was never able to establish itself over Tibet. It is merely China manipulating history to serve its political needs. It thus becomes imperative even for readers to understand Beijing’s motives and attitudes which may favourable strategic discourse between the two countries even if mending the border dispute may seem like a far-sighted reality for now.
Lessons to draw from Chinese experience
The book is successful in highlighting the need to have a credible strategy to meet the Chinese challenge. The author notes that India has to build on its stable polity and inherent cultural assets. Even China’s economic success is linked to its promotion of human resources through quality education in all fields. It has heavily invested in state-of-art physical infrastructure. The author takes into account that the lesson for India is to be committed to the values enshrined in its Constitution and uphold its democratic institutions, invest in its people, and celebrate its diversity and culture to make it its strength and challenge China rather than looking the “China-Model” of authoritarianism and drawing wrong conclusions. The book certainly provides a different strategy for interpreting China’s aspirations, something which has been missing from the scholarly discourse on Indo-China relations to understand China’s rhetoric on building on its historical impetus to return to Pax Sinica.
A supplementary reading recommended with this book is How India Sees the World by Shyam Saran to understand the Indian perspective which the author brings by referencing Arthashastra and evolving Kautilya’s political thought into the present strategic thought. Another reading is a chapter from The India Way by S. Jaishankar titled ‘Krishna’s Choice’ to further understand India’s thought of statecraft through lessons from Mahabharata.
In short, How China Sees India and the World is a timely read to understand the Chinese psyche. Readers of this book will find its historical analysis of the modern Chinese state extremely thought-provoking and engaging. It is a fairly easy and simple read for those who want to dwell deep into the Chinese mind to understand the lessons India can rationally draw from the Chinese experience.
