THE RACE OF TWO ASIAN GIANTS: “INDIA AND CHINA”

Last month, a United Nations population survey estimated that a milestone may be passed in 2023, for the first time in over two millennia, China will not be the most populous society on earth. Instead, India will have the largest population, and China will be second.

It’s a rare example of a global ranking where India sits higher than China, and it’s an ambivalent victory at best: a larger population does not have merit in itself, unless it is well-fed and endowed with economic prospects. China has other number 2 rankings which may raise its standing, such as the second largest economy in the world. It is not second to India but the U.S. In global power terms, China now looms above India, but the fluidity of geopolitics in the 2020s may give India advantages in the world now being shaped.

Today, geopolitical tensions mean that China and India mostly sit on opposite ends on major global questions. There are some areas of commonality, to be fair; both are nervous about climate change commitments that may hamper their growth, and both abstained at the United Nations this year rather than condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

LESSONS TO BE LEARNED

One of China’s most powerful engines for growth has been its stress on education: 2.4% of GDP goes on research and development broadly defined, and in international university rankings, which mostly rate hard sciences, China has a group of institutions in the top tier, many more than India. Education is not evenly distributed, with urban centres obtaining much more of the pie than the children of the countryside. Yet, there is no doubt that China’s stress on building human capital has had results.

However. China’s current political system runs the risk of losing its gains as it become narrower and more authoritarian. In the last few years, technology entrepreneurs, academics and lawyers have all become victims of political crackdowns by the party, which is concerned about any voices that do not simply follow the line sent down by Beijing. However, societies that suppress questioning voices find, in time, that their capacity to innovate is damaged. India has long had a pluralist system with a variety of voices; the flexibility and capacity to change that such a system can provide should give both China and India pause for thought if neither wants to fall behind in the next stage of global development.

CHALLENGES AHEAD

The 2020s will provide a set of challenges for both India and China. On the international stage, both countries need to think where they can find new friends. In the case of India, there are plenty of suitors, as the establishment of the quad naval agreement with the U.S., Australia, and Japan suggests. Yet independent India has always been reluctant to become too entangled in disputes beyond its borders. The growing strength of China has become a source of alarm for India, but it is not yet obvious that New Delhi wants to accept the invitations of the U.S. to become a full-blown ally against Beijing, nor what New Delhi’s reaction would be, say, to a Chinese attempt to take Taiwan in the near future. China is likewise wary of formal alliances, but that is in part because its potential partners are ambivalent ones. Russia and China declared a “friendship without limits” in February this year, but it seems unlikely that Russian President Vladimir Putin shared the full extent of his ambition to invade Ukraine with Chinese President Xi Jinping when he met him at the Winter Olympics.

There is little doubt that the actions of both China and India will shape Asia in the next decade. But it is likely that they will continue to do so in wary opposition to each other, and not as part of a wider Asian power bloc, even if they continue to remain the first and second most populous societies on earth in whichever order.

The 2020s will provide a set of challenges for both India and China. On the international stage, both countries need to think where they can find new friends.