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ShareMuch water has flowed down the Yellow River since then, but Chinese disdain for India's 'big power' ambitions remains undiminished, even if doesn't always find poetic expression. "China's policy seems to be aimed at thwarting India's ambition to become a regional power," notes anthropologist Steven W Mosher, author of Hegemon: China's Plan to Dominate Asia and the World.
Official Chinese articulations on deepening Indo-US relationship, particularly after the 2005 civilian nuclear agreement, are benign. "Some Chinese officials have lingering concerns (about the deal)," says Shen Dingli at Shanghai's Fudan University. "But this only reflects China's lack of self-confidence." But when push comes to shove, as happened at the Nuclear Suppliers Group meeting last year to secure an India-specific waiver to implement the deal, China nearly torpedoed it.
In the past year, China has been emboldened by the success of its "economic diplomacy" in East Asia, particularly since it appears to have emerged stronger from the global financial crisis. New elected governments in Japan and Taiwan have led to an apparent lowering of tensions and improved economic relations with China, and Australia too is gradually being drawn into Beijing's orbit.
Is India, then, missing out on a chance to mend fences with China (and the Asian region) by aligning with an economically enfeebled and militarily overstretched US? "Not really," says China watcher Gordon Chang, author of The Coming Collapse of China. "India has been trying to placate China since Nehru's days, and it hasn't worked," he notes. "It's time to be more resolute, and get more friends in the region and elsewhere who have similar interests and are also threatened by China."
Aligning with the US, reasons Chang, "won't cause China to be more upset: how can China be more threatening to India than it is today?" If anything, China will be more respectful of India if it moves closer to the US.China's own 'big power' ambitions are worrisome, reckons Mosher. "China isn't just an emerging superpower. It is the hegemon, waiting to reclaim its rightful position as the centre of the world."
