This Brave New World

India, China, and the United States

Anja Manuel

• Éditeur: Simon & Schuster
• Année: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781501121999
• Sujet: Politics & International Relations
• Sous-sujet: Global Politics

"By turns alarming and encouraging…Manuel delineates with clarity [why] the US must attend closely to…harmonious future relations with China and India" ( Kirkus Reviews ) and why our obsession with China (as once with Japan) is shortsighted. In the next decade and a half, China and India will become two of the world's indispensable powers—whether they rise peacefully or not. During that time, Asia will surpass the combined strength of North America and Europe in economic might, population size, and military spending. Both India and China will have vetoes over many international decisions, from climate change to global trade, human rights, and business standards.From her front row view of this colossal shift, first at the State Department and now as an advisor to American business leaders, Anja Manuel escorts the reader on an intimate tour of the corridors of power in Delhi and Beijing. Her encounters with political and business leaders reveal how each country's history and politics influences their conduct today. Through vibrant stories, she reveals how each country is working to surmount enormous challenges—from the crushing poverty of Indian slum dwellers and Chinese factory workers, to outrageous corruption scandals, rotting rivers, unbreathable air, and managing their citizens' discontent. "Incisive…lively and accessible…Manual shows us that an optimistic path is possible: we can bring China and India along as partners" ( San Francisco Chronicle ).We wring our hands about China, Manuel writes, while we underestimate India, which will be the most important country outside the West to shape China's rise. Manuel shows us that a different path is possible—we can bring China and India along as partners rather than alienating one or both, and thus extend our own leadership in the world. This Brave New World offers "a thoughtful analysis…and a strategy for keeping it from turning violent" ( The Wall Street Journal ).

PART I

SETTING THE SCENE

1 | LONG MEMORIES

FIFTEEN THOUSAND performers crowded onto the vast floor of Beijing’s “Bird’s Nest” stadium in July 2008. Three thousand young “disciples of Confucius,” dressed in flowing black and white robes, danced with scrolls and recited ancient proverbs. With impressive pomp and precision, the four-hour Olympic opening ceremony took spectators on a journey across China’s early history: the invention of the compass, gunpowder, paper, and movable type, the traders of the Silk Road, and Zheng He’s fourteenth-century sea voyages, which explored the world as far as Africa. There the history abruptly stopped, and the ceremony jumped to modern or cultural topics.

Olympic opening ceremonies say a lot about how a country views itself, or how it wants to be seen. Beijing’s 2008 opening was a spectacle with no match. It celebrated China’s glorious early achievements. It skipped neatly over the centuries of its domination by western powers, its brutal civil war, and the painful paroxysms of the Mao era, and declared boldly that now the Middle Kingdom is back, in the center of world affairs, where it belongs.

The Chinese have not forgotten more painful aspects of their past, but they keep them mostly private. Over a glass of rice wine in a small group, even senior officials have told me of their own suffering during the terrifying purges of the Cultural Revolution, for example, and explained that this created their whole generation’s yearning for political stability above all else. They are unlikely to share this in public.

India’s yearly Republic Day ceremony reflects a nation more comfortable with both the splendid and more difficult episodes of its history. On Republic Day, thousands of military personnel parade by to raucous marching bands or ride orange-clad camels. Their traditional regalia recalls both the Hindu Rajputs and Indian colonial-era regiments, although many suffered under colonialism. Colorful, noisy floats depict the diversity of Indian culture and religion. In contrast to the joyous pomp, the prime minister opens the day by laying a wreath for those who lost their lives in India’s long struggle for independence. Many onlookers barely hold back tears. For most of India’s current leaders, the key memory was the trauma they experienced as children in 1947, when they witnessed the country’s independence, forced division, and the mass killings that followed. The day reflects both the victories and defeats of this great nation, and an optimistic view about its future.

History is malleable. Every country—including the United States and European nations—reinterprets its history. Many of India’s and China’s actions on the world stage are framed by what they consider their shameful recent pasts, and their glorious distant history. Both were repressed by outside powers in the nineteenth century, and their nations were born amid chaos in the twentieth. They draw very different conclusions from these similar trajectories.

Many excellent volumes have been written on Chinese and Indian history. Here I will highlight only the history that Chinese and Indians tell themselves: the key events that frame how they see their place and approach relations with the world.

The great religions and philosophies founded in India and China influence their societies and politics to this day. In broad brushstrokes, Indian empires assimilated outside cultures and religions more than their Chinese counterparts, and some Chinese emperors strictly limited their subjects’ interactions with the world beyond the Great Wall. Some of this distrust of outsiders still exists in China today. The glories of China’s imperial dynasties loom large in China’s imagination, especially in contrast to its perceived humiliation at the hands of the Europeans and Japanese in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. China has some lingering resentment toward the West and is eager to recover its great power status. India, under oppressive British colonial rule for two hundred years, seems less compelled to prove that it can compete with the West.

Both countries struggled in the early twentieth century to create their current regimes—communism under Mao in China, and democracy on the model of Gandhi and Nehru in India. These struggles have left their mark. Gandhi and Nehru’s legacy is a pluralist, gentle one, and Gandhi especially is universally revered in India. By contrast, Chinese modernizers would like to forget Mao and the atrocities he committed, yet he retains symbolic power as the man who made China great again. As an Italian journalist once memorably put it, “At the center of China lies a corpse that nobody dares remove.” China is now “communist” in name only, so the Party is struggling to find a new unifying narrative and must dust off Confucianism and other homegrown philosophies in order to find a modern way to interpret Mao’s long reign.

For China, its history creates a combination of insecurity and bravado. We will see how this plays out later in China’s nationalism, its tough stance on the South China Sea, the Himalayan border dispute with India, and countless other diplomatic issues that should be easier to resolve than they are.

India is now more at peace with its past. After independence in 1947, it initially reacted to colonialism by closing its economy to what it perceived as western exploitation. It refused to align with any major power, and instead chose to speak for other downtrodden countries as the leader of the “nonaligned movement.” Some of its older diplomats retain a latent distrust of any large power, including the United States. This pendulum is slowly swinging back to the center with a more open economy and a closer partnership with the West.

To better understand India and China as they return to their historic place as great powers, and to persuade both to help bring about the positive scenario for 2030, we must appreciate the lenses through which each sees the world.

Once over a twelve-course banquet, an erudite Chinese diplomat told me, “Confucius is making a comeback.” It seemed an odd phrase to me at the time, but he was right. After a century of trying to purge Confucius because his legacy was seen as backward-looking and hierarchical, the Chinese Communist Party now seems eager to resurrect him. He had a starring role in the Olympic opening ceremony. Confucius is China’s way to emphasize its native philosophy and avoid western ideologies that could undermine the Party.

The life of Confucius, the philosopher and teacher who lived in the sixth century BCE, is shrouded in mystery. Stripping away the myth from his real life is nearly impossible. His sayings have been interpreted and reinterpreted over time to suit the political winds. Confucianism emerged at a time of internal divisions and war in China, and its goal is social harmony and order. Confucius taught that the way to achieve this is through ritual and ethical behavior, and by putting the greater good of the group ahead of individual desires.

Most Chinese are still deeply influenced by Confucian ethics, for example by emphasizing the importance of family and education and feeling great responsibility to care for aging relatives. On the darker side, many argue that Confucius’s philosophy emphasizes the superiority of fathers, husbands, and rulers over children, wives, and citizens, who are relegated to subordinate status.

China’s leaders have recently made a concerted effort to reintroduce Confucianism outside the family and spiritual sphere, and into politics. After China’s revolution, Mao vilified Confucius as a symbol holding China back, so the Communist Party closed or destroyed many shrines to him. This abruptly changed about a decade ago. Many shrines have reopened, and the government added a stop in Confucius’s hometown, Qufu, to the high-speed trains that run from Shanghai to Beijing. President Xi and other party leaders make pilgrimages there. Chinese professors of Confucian studies—once not much in demand—are now giving frequent lectures to senior party officials, and many government workers liberally lace their speeches with Confucian quotes.

Why this sudden interest in an ancient philosopher? Confucian emphasis on stability and social harmony helps the modern Communist Party maintain order. Scholar Michael Schuman and others also argue that “having replaced Marxism with capitalism . . . the leaders of modern China have been left scrambling for an alternative governing ideology to legitimize their rule.” In the late 1980s, too many of China’s young people were drawn to western ideals of democracy and individualism, and this resulted in the Tiananmen Square uprising—the student protests and violent government crackdown on them in 1989. For the Party, western liberal ideals are dangerous, and Confucius is a native substitute for imported ideologies that could threaten their rule.

As with Confucianism in China, most Indians are still deeply steeped in the culture of their religion, even if they are not themselves religious. Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam came at different times to the Indian subcontinent. Each left a potent imprint and affects the current world outlook of its followers. While India’s constitution emphasizes religious pluralism and tolerance, the election of Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi as prime minister has inflamed some tensions between Hindus and Muslims and provoked a national debate on the role of religion in Indian public life.

Many scholars consider Hinduism, which developed around 3,500 years ago, the world’s oldest religion. Hinduism has many gods, and unlike Islam and Christianity, it does not have a clear founding date, founder, or basic text like the Bible or Koran. It teaches its followers that their behavior in this life has implications for the next (karma), and that the only way to escape the cycle of rebirth is to let go of the ego and merge with the universal soul.

Hinduism is present in the daily lives of 900 million Indians today. Most have shrines to some gods in their homes and make small offerings to them daily. Prime Minister Modi has called Hinduism not a religion, but a “way of life.” He, along with millions of other Hindus, performs yoga and breathing exercises every day and speaks regularly to Hindu gurus for advice.

Hindus learn from childhood the stories of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata—epic poems written more than 2,000 years ago whose moral lessons remain relevant. In the late 1980s, a seventy-eight-part Indian television series on the Ramayana drew more than 100 million viewers and essentially brought India to a standstill for an hour each week: government meetings were rescheduled and buses stopped as dozens gathered around television sets to witness the gods and demons play out their destinies.

Compared to the rushed individualism and constant striving of the western world, Hindus can seem more relaxed about their place in the universe. The Hindu acceptance of what is—whether it’s one’s caste or adverse events fate throws one’s way—can sometimes seem bizarre to Americans. An American friend doing business in India was once told by an employee that he couldn’t finish a critical assignment for the CEO because “the universe just said no.”

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The founders of independent India were committed to religious tolerance. India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, himself was fairly secular and India today is a country of tremendous religious diversity. But in recent decades, Hinduism has become an increasing part of India’s public identity especially since the successful election of the openly Hindu party—the Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, and its current leader, Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

From a young age, Modi volunteered with the Hindu nationalist group Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), as did many other BJP leaders. Defenders of the RSS argue that it is a sort of Boy Scout organization for teens and adults that teaches discipline, good values, unity among Hindus of all castes, and Indian patriotism. Yet many secular, liberal Indians distrust Modi’s government for being too close to the RSS. To its detractors it looks more like the “Hitler Jugend,” as one liberal journalist put it to me. Some RSS members take part in military drills and exercises, and its critics argue that the RSS wants an India that is more openly Hindu and militarized.

The RSS and Modi also played a role in a symbolic issue that has bedeviled Hindu-Muslim relations in India for decades: a conflict over a small house of worship in the town of Ayodhya—a mosque to some, a Hindu temple to others. Some sources say Hindu Lord Rama was born at this site where a mosque was built centuries later. In 1990, BJP leader L. K. Advani marched on Ayodhya with an army of 75,000 Hindu volunteers to tear down the mosque and erect a temple to Lord Rama. Twenty thousand Indian police met the marchers and, after days of fighting, stopped the onslaught. Two years later, however, other hard-line Hindu activists descended on Ayodhya and within a few hours tore down the mosque with hand axes, sticks, and their bare hands, setting off interreligious riots across India.

In 2002, Modi had just been elected chief minister of the state of Gujarat when Muslims on a train in his state murdered fifty-eight Hindu pilgrims returning from Ayodhya. When Modi declared a day of mourning for the slain pilgrims, Hindu fanatics used the opportunity to butcher four thousand Muslims in revenge, while police largely stood by. Several independent inquiries have cleared Modi of all wrongdoing in the riots. Yet the U.S. State Department denied Modi a visa to travel to the United States for a decade due to this incident, which means that most U.S. diplomats don’t know him well. After this massacre, Modi kept the RSS on a tight leash in Gujarat. Yet questions about his commitment to religious tolerance remain.

Since Modi became prime minister in 2014, India has had a heated internal debate about the role of Hinduism in public life that is not yet resolved. Hindu nationalist ministers sometimes make outrageous comments that inflame interreligious tensions, such as when a BJP chief minister suggested in late 2015—after a horrid killing of a Muslim man by a Hindu mob for eating beef—that Muslims are only welcome in India if they stop eating cows. Hindu nationalists in Modi’s cabinet also advocate for a more muscular and military-focused foreign policy, and a harder line toward China.

· · ·

While Hinduism is a native religion, Islam came to India peacefully by way of Muslim traders along the Sindi coasts about a thousand years ago. In the sixteenth century, Islam came again, this time through Mughal invaders from the high plains of Kabul, in what is now Afghanistan. Their empire united most of north and central India for several hundred years. Although these Sunni Muslims believed in one god, Allah, and their faith had little in common with the polytheistic Hinduism, the Mughal conquerors mostly coexisted in harmony with other religions.

Indian Islam today is on the whole more moderate than that in the Persian Gulf states or Pakistan. Many of the Muslim traders who plied the Indian coasts were Sufis who integrated with other religions and adopted some of their cultural practices. Many Indian temples and mosques feature both Hindu and Muslim symbols. Pakistan, by contrast, defined itself as a Muslim state, got much aid from conservative Wahhabist groups in Saudi Arabia, and sends many migrants to the Sunni Gulf states. It has grown increasingly conservative since the 1980s. The Indian state, with its fear of Pakistani terrorism, closely watches its own madrassas. India’s more than 130 million Muslims are also spread throughout the country, so they are a sizable minority everywhere, and a majority almost nowhere. This encourages people to make coexistence work. India’s lively democracy, secular constitution, and welfare schemes to assist poor Muslims also contribute to most Indian Muslims feeling comfortable and proud to be Indian. Violence with Hindus is still infrequent, although it has risen slightly since the Hindu BJP-led government took office.

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While most Indians are Hindus or Muslims, there are more than 20 million Christians, a similar number of Sikhs, and almost 10 million Buddhists. Chinese and Indian leaders today are fond of pointing out how Buddhism in particular unites them.

Buddhism was born from the teachings of Prince Gautama Buddha, who lived in northern India in the sixth century BCE. In the centuries after its founding, monks migrated over the Himalayas to spread its influence to Tibet, China, and eventually Japan and much of Southeast Asia.

During his first visit to India in 2014, Chinese president Xi Jinping emphasized these ties: “the relationship between China and India dates back over 2,000 years. Buddhism was born in ancient India, and thrived in ancient China.” What Xi diplomatically failed to mention is that this peaceful religion is the source of an insoluble current conflict between China and India. India has sheltered the Dalai Lama, leader of Tibetan Buddhism, and hundreds of thousands of his followers, since they were attacked and driven out by the Chi...