Not only rivals

Former Economist editor Bill Emmott describes vividly the strategic, economic and social implications of three great powers — China, India and Japan — being in the same region, writes AG Noorani

Rivals: How The Power Struggle Between China, India And Japan Will Shape Our ext Decade
Bill Emmott
Allen Lane
314 pages
Rs795

There has been in recent months a steady trickle of books on the Asian Triangle formed by China, India and Japan, on their relationships, and their impact on the continent’s affairs and in world affairs, no less.

It is not surprising that Bill Emmott’s book has received the greatest attention. Editor of The Economist from 1993 to 2006, author of six books on Japan, and an indefatigable traveller in the region, he is an honorary fellow of the prestigious Magdalen College, Oxford.

The book combines the journalist’s reportage with the scholar’s research. He describes the present situation vividly, and looks beyond to reflect how it will shape the future.

The central theme of the book is “the implications for Asia and the world of having three great powers in that region, simultaneously”. It is discussed with a wealth of information on all the aspects — diplomatic, strategic, economic and social.

Japan rose to be an economic giant only to relapse. But its political role was never commensurate with its economic might. China’s ‘peaceful rise’ lately has sent alarm bells ringing because it has been a politically assertive power. India’s rise fascinates because it presents, as ever, a multitude of contradictions.

Regardless, there is a new India on the scene, and the author praises President George W Bush for reaching out to it, and discarding the old hyphenation with Pakistan. The nuclear deal is a symbol of this change. Together, the three countries reflect a significant shift of power to the East. To the historian Niall Ferguson, this reflects “the descent of the West”.

Emmott injects realism into this overdrawn picture. The United States’ military might will long remain unsurpassed. 

Besides, for all their recent economic success, China and India remain among the world’s poorest countries with annual income per head of just $2,500 and $800 respectively in 2007 compared with more than $40,000 in the United States.

Economists at Goldman Sachs forecast that China, if it maintains its present rate of growth, can overtake the US as the world’s biggest economy by the late 2020s, and India too will do so by 2050.

India does not share the US’s calculations in forging an entente between the two countries.

Bush saw India as a country whose economy was by then growing strongly, that had shed much of its anti-Western ideology, and which wanted both acceptance as a global power and assistance to become one.

Its status as a democracy was thus being given a higher priority than fears about nuclear proliferation: a democracy, the deal implied, could be trusted not to spread nuclear weapons, even if it refused to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty or to forgo the right to test further nuclear weapons, as India continued to do.

Most crucially, India was a country with the potential to balance the rising power of China. George Bush’s recognition of that fact was his Richard Nixon moment. Where Nixon had used China to balance the Soviet Union, Bush was using India to balance China.

India has no desire to play such a role even if in some respects its perceptions of China coincide with that of the US. India engages China in its own interests in an Asia which resembles the Europe of old. It is an arena of balance-of-power politics, with no clear leader, rather as Europe was during the 19th century.

China may emerge as the most powerful of the three, but like Britain in the 19th century, it is unlikely to be capable of dominating its continent. A new power game is under way, in which all must seek to be as friendly as possible to all, for fear of the consequences if they are not, but in which the friendship is only skin deep.

All are manoeuvring to strengthen their own positions and maximise their own long-term advantages.

Emmott is utterly unrealistic, however, when he describes the ‘flash points’. The India-China boundary dispute is manageable because each has its non-negotiable vital interest securely under its own control.

India has the McMahon Line; China has the Xinjiang-Tibet road through the Aksai Chin. He also exaggerates the importance of Tibet in Sino-Indian relations. Indo-Pak détente is a reality despite the hiccups. Differences on Kashmir have narrowed in the back-channel talks between Satinder Lamba and Tariq Aziz.

Emmott’s overview is followed by detailed analyses of all the three players: China, India and Japan. He predicts that “it is going to get harder for China’s profile to remain low and for its head to stay cool.

That in turn is going to make China a more awkward neighbour for Asia’s other great powers, India and Japan, and a tricky counterpart for America.  Japan has to overcome the burden of its past in domestic as well as foreign policy.

It is in India that change is particularly pronounced. Its most obvious sign is self-confidence. India has become more open in economic terms, and more open-minded in political terms. It is no longer defined in its foreign policy thinking by its long-time policy of non-alignment, nor by the memories of colonialism.

Increasingly, its foreign stance is not defined by any philosophy or ethical considerations at all. It is defined by India’s national interest. One change dictated by that interest should be a concentration on improving relations — both political and commercial — with the country’s South Asian neighbours. That is sound advice from a friendly observer.

Bill Emmott’s Rivals is one of the most thought-provoking books on the Asian scene. There is one player however whose role merits greater attention than it has received so far: Russia.
The reviewer is an eminent lawyer.