nwasianweekly.com
Mar. 29, 2008

C. N. Anand

China & India

By C. N. Anand
Northwest Asian Weekly

Two of the world’s oldest, greatest and neighboring civilizations, India and China, never coveted others’ lands. Both were culturally and materially rich and did not have to maraud to acquire wealth. They exchanged ideas when Hien Tsang visited India in the sixth century B.C. While Copernicus and Galileo were reviled and incarcerated for their theories on heliocentricity, Indian and Chinese astronomers mastered the concept centuries earlier

Before the 17th century, both countries produced steel the Western world could not match in strength and durability. Ideas on paper currency and printing were brought to the western world by Marco Polo. Use of gunpowder for rockets in warfare was experimented with. There was nothing that Europe produced that India and China wanted, but there was plenty that India and China produced that Europe desired.

While the marauding raids from central Asia had an immediate effect, it was not corrosive in the long term. It was the multinationals that came from the sea that poisoned both countries, the effects of which still last today. The most powerful was the British East India Company, armed with the powers to wage war, sue for peace, make laws and mint money in the lands they subjugated.

They had to show profit, and they cleared the decks in China by fighting the opium wars. They subjugated Bengal and Bihar of India, the main opium-growing states. They secured the sea route between China and India by acquiring Hong Kong and Singapore and dominating the Malacca straits. Free opium was distributed in China for the habit to take root and then opium from India was dumped in China.

The profits enabled the East India Company to take home indigo, tea, spices, silk and muslin. Some of this tea found its way to the Boston Tea Party. The dawning of the Industrial Revolution led to the death of Indian and Chinese crafts. Chinese and Indian labor was indentured for work in the Americas, Malaya and Africa.

The subsequent overthrow of British influence left behind festering wounds. The India- China border was not clearly demarcated by the British. India and China, which never before had coveted each others’ lands, bickered over inhospitable land. However, good sense seems to have prevailed when leaders agreed to leave the dispute for later generations to solve. In the meantime, there are urgent economic problems to be attended to.

Non-renewable energy sources are depleting while the appetites of China and India are growing. If every Chinese and Indian consumes an extra two liters per day of petroleum products to improve their standard of living, it will be more than the U.S.’s daily oil consumption. If literacy rates improve and two extra sheets of paper are used by every Chinese and Indian, whole forests will have to be hacked. A small improvement in standards of living will strain the world ecology. The first world will not give up an iota of the luxury they are wallowing in.

Enlightened cooperation between India and China is needed to save the world. Joint research and development efforts in renewable energy, water conservation, oil exploration, nuclear energy and exploration is the need of the hour. A consortium of countries, many of whom fought each other in WWII, got together and established Airbus. Why can’t India and China jointly land a man on the moon? If China is willing to share its plutonium with India, many fast breeder reactors could be set up to convert thorium to Uranium 233 for satiating the energy needs of both countries. If only they can put aside their border dispute and reduce their defense expenditures.

C.N. Anand resides in Chennai, India. He is the author of “Tarbela Damned — Pakistan Tamed.”

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