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The making of a soft State

There were two interesting headlines in the San Jose Mercury News of January 12, 2000. One said, "Ugly death in belly of ship: Chinese migrants entombed in box". The other said, "India is told to not take in lama".

The first story spoke of 18 illegal Chinese stowaways who had travelled in a locked cargo container in the bowels of a freighter from Hong Kong to Seattle. They were in transit for 15 days, and three of them died, probably of cold or thirst or hunger; maybe they choked to death on the stench of their own excrement all around them. At least eight times in the last two weeks Chinese would-be immigrants have been found in cargo containers at US/Canada ports.

Apparently, this is the latest mechanism for smuggling Chinese into North America. Immigration and Nationalization Service officers conclude that this is merely the tip of the iceberg -- they estimate at least 200,000 Chinese have managed to elude them and disappear into the warrens of Chinatowns, to labor in restaurants, whorehouses and sweatshops.

This is par for the course, one might think -- after all, China has, for centuries, used all of Asia as dumping grounds for its excessively fertile Han population. Think of Southeast Asia and Tibet, for example. Now that it is possible to reach the prosperous cities of America, why not attempt to go there, as well as, say, Australia?

The point is, this is the great superpower everyone is so afraid of! China, which offers so few prospects to its citizens that they are willing to undertake a perilous journey across the ocean to end up working like dogs, as indentured servants, to pay off the price of their passage! All those who buy the propaganda that China is about to overtake the US as the leading economic power in the should pay heed to this. In particular, these people are from Fujian province, on China's coast, which is generally supposed to be better off than the benigthed interior.

I have said this before, and let me say it again, China is like a Potemkin village, one of those fake facades that Russian kulaks used to erect in remote villages to hide the desperate poverty behind it. So that the Tsar would not be upset as his train passed by. The numbers support it: China, despite its twenty years of economic growth, still has a long way to go. Compare:

	China	India	Pakistan
GDP 1999 est	$ 993 billion	$ 468 billion	$ 67.0 billion
GDP 2000 fcst	$1,001 billion	$ 495 billion	$ 65.3 billion
GDP per head 1999 est	$ 790	$ 470	$ 460
GDP per head 2000 fcst	$ 790	$ 490	$ 440
Real GDP growth % fcst 2000	7.0%	6.6%	3.1%

Source: Business Asia, The Economist Intelligence Unit, Nov 1, 1999

In other words, India, despite all the propaganda, is not that much worse off than China, and is actually growing at a reasonable clip. And Pakistan is truly in a different class -- one of these days, the market capitalization of Infosys, Satyam and Wipro put together will exceed the GDP of Pakistan. I wonder if Narayanamurthy, Ramalinga Raju and Azim Premji together want to buy Pakistan? (Yes, I recognize that Microsoft or Cisco Systems could buy India, too.)

But to get back to what I was saying, it is not as if China is some great lord of Asia and India is some vassal state that has to do its bidding -- there is no Qing Empire any more, in case you were asleep for, oh, six hundred years.

Yet, the second story above: "India is told not to take in lama", would make it appear as though China is the overlord, and India is the vassal. The Chinese told India, it seems, that in the interests of the "five principles of peaceful co-existence", it should not accept the lama. And guess what, India capitulated, and decided not to give asylum to the 14-year-old Tibetan lama who had braved the Chinese military and an arduous trek of several hundred miles to escape Chinese brutality.

I tell you, I am ashamed of the Indian government. I am ashamed that we have so little resolve. For every tenet of human rights demands that the boy-lama should have been granted asylum when he sought it. And every tenet of Indian culture, which has for millennia taken in refugees and religious supplicants of every stripe, militates against this show of cravenness.

The Chinese know exactly how to twist the knife in the wound, don't they? All this talk of "five principles" harks back to the Panchasila, that idiotic Nehruvian Stalinist prescription that the Chinese have never paid any attention to. In other words, what the Chinese are saying here is: "Nehru was a fool, and we used him. You current guys are no better."

What exactly is India afraid of? Indo-Chinese relationships will never get better, because it is a maxim of Chinese strategy that it must contain and destroy India. What exactly would have happened if India said, stoutly, "Nuts to you!" I believe nothing would have happened if India showed the slightest hint of a backbone. China would have fumed a bit, "lost face", and would have gained a modicum of respect for India.

Let's look back at the few times in the recent past that India has exhibited some semblence of resolve. One, the refusal to sign the CTBT. Dire predictions were made by the 'progressives'. But nothing happened -- it was business as usual. Other countries could recognize that India was looking after its national interest.

Two, Pokhran II. Dire predictions of doom again by the usual Cassandras. And what has happened? Exactly what I predicted in my column The End of Nuclear Virginity -- there were sanctions imposed by the US, and they did hurt, but they were temporary, and we all learned how to live with the Indian bomb, didn't we? The heavens did not fall down upon the Chicken Littles, did they?

As I have said ad nauseam before, the problem is the Panipat Syndrome -- India's pathetic ruling classes do not think through any scenario in advance. Strategic planning is an oxymoron in India. This was exactly what was evident in the disgusting response to the hijacking crisis of the Indian Airlines flight recently as well. No wonder the Chinese think they can push India around -- after all, a ragtag bunch of Pakistani terrorists can, so why not the canny mandarins of Beijing?

1999 CE was a terrible year for India: see my column Annus Horribilis. 2000 CE is shaping up to be no better.

Rajeev Srinivasan