|4| India-China Chronicle November 2011

Mutual BenefitReference India-China Chronicle

( July-August 2011) the views of the Chinese ambassador Zhang Yan ex-pressed in his speech at the conference on “India-China Economic Relations and Performance in the 21st century,” offers a road map to stability and pros-perity in Asia. A mutually beneficial economic engagement between India & China holds immense potential of helping each other overcome the his-torical resentment against each other and providing the relationship a con-temporary and progressive framework to operate within.

– Chitra Subramanium, Chennai

Zen of BuddhismThe article on The Zen of Buddhism

in the last issue of the India-China Chronicle made for a very interesting read. It traced the origin of the religion in India and how it then spread across China. The article also reflected upon the differences in forms over period of time. But the religion flourished in China whereas in the country of its origin it was on the wane. But still there are many similarities and some common grounds between the two countries on account of Buddhism. When we talk of India-China relations, we must remember that religion plays a very important part of culture in both countries. It was a good and informative article.

– Abid Hussain, student, JNU, Delhi

f e e d b a c k

Fourth ColumnistsThe cover story in the July-August

issue on media was a real eye opener. Today the media in its race for eyeballs is ready to blow things out of proportion. They want more of the masala and less substance. Sensationalism has become the order of the day. But some are still balanced and fair to some extent especially while covering news of these two giant countries even as the prevailing perceptions influence the direction of thought. But then there should be a concerted effort by the media to restrict the flow of irrelevant and baseless assumptions. In the recent times we have seen that the relationship between these two countries have started taking a more positive shape and may be few years down the line in can get better. We hope the media play a constructive role towards this end.

– Sameer Verma, NDTV, Delhi

The Dragon Encircles the Elephant

India-China relationships in the field of trade and economy have been discussed in the article “One size doesn’t fit all.” The discussion takes in to account the growth story of the two economies though both are moving forward independent of each other. In fact the development that have taken place are not structured trade

relationship based on state policy of the two nations but are mostly based on cost-effectiveness and entrepreneurship of people of the two nations. In Indi, the Chinese are contributing in the development of the construction sector or power generation but that too without much backing of the state policy. The thrust areas in India’s market development strategy for China are information-technology, engineering and pharmaceutical products. These slowly need to be developed in a systematic manner. There are many irritants in the development of such a trade relationship and these are lack of understanding of each-others market potential and marketing strategy, policy framework at government level etc. The Chinese attitude to remain strategically superior to its neighbour particularly India at all costs is a matter that will always act as a deterrent for development of trade. China is slowly developing closer ties with Pakistan that provides it with a ready market apart from strategically encircling India with a policy of ‘cold start’ – a policy framed by Indian defence system against Pakistan. China has developed close ties with Bangladesh and Sri Lanka too and its presence in Tibet and Nepal is well-known apart from the territorial disputes with India.

– Amit Anand, Mumbai