India-China comparisons are bedeviled by disregard for adequate or appropriate contextualisation. They need special attention because of the difficulty of probing the ground level situation and processes underlying macro-indicators in the case of China. A judicious mix of ‘tactical pessimism’ and ‘strategic optimism’ would well serve Indian policy-makers and analysts
In an age of instant gratification of everything, from food needs to feelings, it is scarcely surprising that news of a Western forecast of the Indian economy sizing up to the Chinese in the near future should inject some adrenalin into the Indian stock market sentiment and send the Sensex soaring. But such jubilation is juvenile, and it ill behoves a mature polity. Not because of the projections being in error — they are generally not wide off the mark — but due to their being banal. The question is not so much about their veracity, or even predictive validity, as about their true import and the significance that should correctly be attached to them.
Tangible Indicators
Growth rates (of the economy or anything) measure only the pace of change — what about the huge difference in base levels, on which the growth rates apply/workIJ On almost all indices of manufacturing and production, which are at any hand the more tangible indicators of output (than computed figures of abstractions such as GDP), China’s material assets base is substantially stronger than India’s. Even several times larger in respect of some.
This must never be lost sight of — the physical side of the picture. Of course, it has to be moderated by an accounting of the efficacy of use or utilisation of that physically produced output for end-use. And here there are fairly definitive indications of China being behind India in some key respects, capital-output ratio and energy intensity (which has a direct impact on environmental — climate — damage) above all. So the gap gets attenuated somewhat, though it is difficult to put a simple quantitative label on that factor.
likewise, on socio-economic indices — of health and well-being — which constitute the human side of the power potential contest. Here again, China has a marked lead over India — in terms of directly measured indicators such as infant/maternal mortality, nutrition levels, life expectancy etc. (and not derived figures of artificially defined concepts).
Most of all, of course, is China’s enviable record in overcoming destitution and deprivation of the extreme — dehumanising — kind, which is the arena where the India story takes its biggest beating. No matter that the absence of credible ground level surveys, independent of the carefully crafted claims of the official side, works to China’s advantage by enabling an exaggeration of the extent of its achievement.
These are fairly well known, by and large, even if not always borne in mind in so-called ‘nationalist’ narratives of the state of play in the bilateral relationship, especially in the audio-visual media in the country prizing pithy sound-bites and summary/instant judgements. That said, it is necessary to bear in mind the many caveats and catches that qualify the Chinese performance, economic and otherwise.
Qualifications
Together with a controlled media, the totalitarian nature of the State (complete control of the Chinese Communist Party of all aspects of political life in the country) results in concealment of weaknesses in its functioning due to the total absence of mechanisms for checks and balances and exposure of wrongdoings and failures through an independent media functioning as a watchdog.
Apart from low capital-output ratio and high energy intensity of the economy over long years noted earlier, another notable example that has come to light lately is that of the many downsides (demographically and socially but also economically) engendered by the “one-child policy” that have now been admitted officially. That policy was implemented uncritically over several decades, without a murmur of protest or public expression of doubt. This (the possibility of such an obvious “blind-spot” remaining unnoticed for so long) is the obverse side of the same characteristic that gives China its notorious capacity to go all out in fulfilment of its plans and policies, in contrast to the halting and hesitant pace due to lack of political will of the ‘soft State’ that is democratic India.
It is also reflected most pointedly in the “profound crisis of legitimacy” that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) faces today with ideology, the basic premise of CCP’s monopoly rule, having been relegated to the background in favour of pragmatism. (The latter encapsulated in the late Deng Xiaoping’s injunction about the colour of the cat being immaterial so long as it caught mice and further simplified in his dictum that “it is glorious to be rich” and for some to be richer than others — all of which naturally undermines the CCP’s raison d’etre and claim to monopoly rule.)
The crisis has worsened because of the rip-offs and wanton conduct by Party cadres, especially those at the top who are a law unto themselves, made possible by the confluence of power (of Party functionaries) and money (of/in the market at the command of Party nominees). So much so that the outgoing General Secretary of the CCP, Hu Jintao, felt constrained to openly issue an unprecedented apocalyptic warning in his Report to the 18th Party Congress in November 2012 — the five-yearly apex gathering of the crème de la crème of the Party, and fountain-head, of all authority in that country’s polity — of the danger of “collapse of the Party and fall of the State” as a result of these tendencies.
The root of this destabilising state of affairs lies in the untrammeled power of the CCP under China’s political system, which posits it in open-ended terms as the core of the leadership of the State. China is currently engaged in an attempt to promote a cardinal tenet of liberal political theory, the rule of law, in its national political discourse and functioning in a bid to curb arbitrariness of the CCP and address the legitimacy crisis.
That attempt to promote the rule of law, however, sits uneasily with the overarching feature of the State — namely, of its being constrained to function with the CCP at its core. How can there be ‘rule of law’ when the most dominant political force in the country is not subject to itIJ And there can be no question of it (CCP) being subordinate to the law when it is the supreme source of the law as well as its ultimate arbiter; both the legislature and judiciary being fig leaves, by definition, to cover the Chinese State’s nakedness in this respect.
This is a problem without solution — within the framework of the existing Chinese polity. So also corruption, the earnest campaign launched by Chinese President Xi Jinping notwithstanding, since it is integrally linked to that gap — the issue of the CCP being beyond the law (in practice definitely, and also in theory even if the latter aspect is not foregrounded). A benevolent dictatorial intolerance of corruption by fellow Party leaders cannot be the answer to the problem of lack of checks and balances in the system.
Corruption in China is a structural problem, i.e., it is in-built in its structure; unlike in India, where it is only a governance problem (and therefore remediable more easily, relatively speaking, no matter howsoever difficult that might appear in conditions prevailing today). little wonder that it has assumed the proportions it has — reflected in the bizarre Bo Xilai affair, whose ramifications continue to unfold. With all its faults, an occurrence of similar grotesqueness is inconceivable in India.
A recent interaction between top level Chinese and Indian political science theorists/academics brought out very clearly the limitations of the Chinese approach to the entire question of political freedom and adjustment to the changing times. The argument advanced by the Chinese scholars, against an electoral democracy and a liberal democratic system in China (based on separation of powers of the legislature, judiciary and the executive and independence of the judiciary, a la other countries), was one of ‘functionality’ being prized in China (over democratic ‘values’ as an end in itself) — that such systems, with their multiplicity of centres of power and mutual antagonisms, were not conducive for economic progress, so essential for economic freedom in China in its current stage of development. That liberal democracies tended to be “dysfunctional” (in self-referential terms), whereas China’s one-party state was at least a “responsive authoritarianism” — thanks to the ideology, and practice, of that party.
It was quite evident from the interaction that the Chinese political system is in a jam, caught between Scylla and Charybdis, as it were, with no easy escape in prospect. And that there was cognition of the intractable nature of the problem. There are several other similar, less than superlative, aspects of the Chinese record hidden behind the prepared propagandist official “line” — severe inequalities and social ennui, massive environmental damage, gargantuan bad debts in the State banking sector and so on —that will need to be brought into the reckoning in any in-depth strategic assessment of relative strengths and weaknesses.
Conclusion
India-China comparisons, bedeviled as they generally are by disregard for adequate or appropriate contextualisation, need special attention because of the difficulty of probing the ground level situation and processes underlying macro-indicators in the case of China. What emerges from even a cursory reflection at the state of affairs as above is a more nuanced picture than the instinct of the Sensex. All is not lost in China’s favour but in ways different from a jingoistic clamour.
Tactically, i.e., at the functional level (the province of day-to-day decision-making), a pessimistic perspective might not be out of place in recognition of palpable realities unpalatable though they may be. There could be no greater folly than to deny them. And wishful thinking to seek to paper over them or not take them seriously, instead of getting down to the business of remedying the gap. Especially now that China has decided to open the purse strings of its massive foreign exchange holdings in the service of its newly formulated activist external stance seeking to leverage on geo-economics to influence geo-politics. In India’s neighbourhood, and ‘near abroad’ in the Indian Ocean region, above all. This is a sea-change from the situation prevailing hitherto that poses a first rate challenge to the Indian strategic establishment.
But there is room for “strategic optimism”. As far as the question “whose side is time on” goes — which is what should be of interest/concern to the strategic policy maker and planner — there are many imponderables in a longer run scenario, not all of which need be feared or written off and labelled as being loaded against India.
Popular sentiment would have it just the other way round — all eyes and ears tuned to the immediate, with little regard for the long term. That kind of an orientation not only misleads but is also debilitating, sapping as it does national determination to gird up one’s loins to redress the current asymmetry, however long and whatever that might take.
(The writer is former Ambassador with a background on China and in strategic affairs as a former Secretary of the Joint Intelligence Committee of the Cabinet Secretariat. He is currently an Adjunct Faculty at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore. His other writings and perspective on China can be seen at http://www.nias.res.in/aboutnias-people-faculty-ambassadorsaurabhkumar.php)