Hare, tortoise and monkey: As China head butts its neighbours and rivals, it is setting itself up for a fall

Such was the apparent chariness of Chinese leaders about their country’s economic and military resurgence being seen as a threat, that in 2006 they amended the political goal of a “peaceful rise” to “peaceful development”. The militaristic overtones of “rise”, it was felt, were best avoided. For years China’s persuasive leaders and scholars claimed that daunting internal battles against poverty and inequality made fears of Chinese expansionism over cooked. Under Hu Jintao, China pledged to build a “harmonious society” and made “soft power” a part of national strategy. Yet less than a decade later, in November 2014, the world held its breath as Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Japan’s Shinzo Abe exchanged one of the frostiest handshakes in recent history in the backdrop of China’s aggressive bid to claim the Senkaku-Diaoyu Islands raising the spectre of armed conflict. Earlier that year, Vietnam erupted in public fury over China’s provocative act of placing an oil rig in disputed waters. If decades of close economic ties with Japan did not deter China’s strong arm conduct, it did not spare a much smaller communist neighbour from its unsubtle power play either. China is eyeing a lot of maritime real estate. The nine dash line claims so much of the South China Sea that it leaves the Philippines and Vietnam with barely a coastline. Military base building in the Spratly Islands is more evidence that China is a “revisionist” power keen on reviving its “natural” hegemony at the cost of neighbours and by swatting aside inconvenient international laws. Given China’s instinct to head butt neighbours and rivals, the swifter pace of India’s military and civil infrastructure development along its border with China is neither a “peer to peer” play nor a case of hare versus tortoise as Kai Xue has misleadingly suggested in these columns (“Who’s The Overconfident Hare?”, 18 October). Rather it’s a belated bid to deter China’s persistent attempts to bend the line of actual control in its favour through repeated “incursions”. China sees itself as a challenger to American dominance. But China needs to consider why the billions of dollars it spends in aid and development do not give it a fraction of the returns Hollywood and Harvard deliver to US. Maybe China’s choice of allies like nuclear blackmailer North Korea and terror junction Pakistan doesn’t exactly inspire confidence of many nations. Amid global economic uncertainty, Chinese leaders are unbeatable when it comes to economic forecasts. In March 2015 Premier Li Keqiang set a 7% goal for GDP. In October he carefully noted the target is not cast in stone. But his fears proved baseless; China grew at 6.9% in 2015. In March this year, China announced a 6.5%-7% growth target. No prizes for guessing what the GDP will finally be. The real problem for China may be a lot worse than a communist cell massaging economic data before release by the national bureau of statistics. China is no longer growing at 9% and it is not folding up either. But it might be stalling. Despite his commitment to reforming state enterprises by giving markets a “decisive role”, Xi has been unable to implement required reforms. China may remain stuck in the middle income trap and worse, Chinese people may realise they have been fed opiates. India’s GDP figures, despite not capturing all relevant data, are more transparent. Its GDP forecasts mirror those of World Bank, IMF and OECD that see a 7.5% growth for 2016, hardly at variance with RBI’s 7.6% prediction for 2016-17. Further, economic statistics are subject to vigorous analysis with a free media ensuring plenty of dissent and discussion. Future trends see faster growth for India. By 2020, China’s growth is expected to stabilise at around 4.8% while India should tick along at 5.7%. So denying the emerging realities won’t help. Rather a pragmatic assessment should fashion China’s policies. Given their preoccupation with ensuring social and political control, the import of this scenario cannot escape China’s leaders. China’s great success in improving the health and education standards of its population is matched by subtle but firm political control. While the party has managed to stay out of the way of the daily lives of common citizens, it relies on a permit system (hukou) to regulate rural-urban migration. A secretive central organisation department charts careers of thousands of officials and government-supported NGOs quietly infiltrate the civil society space. India’s democracy despite its warts and aberrations prevented dictatorships that visited famine and death on millions of Chinese, as during Mao Zedong’s rule. When he set course for China’s rise as a modern nation, Deng Xiaoping advised his colleagues that it might be useful to “hide your strength, bide your time”. He also suggested that the best way to cross a river may be by “feeling the stones underneath”. China’s elites perhaps believe that it is time to get rid of subterfuges. After all 2016 is not 1978. But 2016 happens to be the year of the monkey, an animal more agile than either a hare or a tortoise and one that might recognise the value of testing the strength of a branch before essaying an injudicious leap.