China and India

Asia's Emergent Great Powers

Chris Ogden

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9780745689906
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politique et relations internationales
• Subtopic: Mondialisation

China and India are becoming increasingly influential, powerful and prominent countries – but what kind of states do their leaders and people wish them to become? Will they act and behave like major Western entities or like something altogether different, hence changing the very nature of international affairs? And as the Asian twenty– first century takes shape, how will these dynamics affect the wider geopolitical landscape and the balance of power? In this in–depth study, Chris Ogden evaluates the prospective impact of China and India upon the definition and nature of great power in the contemporary world. Whilst many contend that they will rise in a similar way to current and previous great powers – namely via traditional material, economic and military measures – Ogden explores the extent to which domestic political and cultural values as well as historical identities and perceptions are also central driving forces behind their common status, ambitions and worldviews. In so doing, he offers a new and comprehensive analysis of these two countries' past, contemporary and future global significance, in particular their shared status as the world's first such post–imperial great powers.

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DOMESTIC DETERMINANTS

Here, we focus upon how, where and by whom foreign policy is constructed in China and India. Our initial focus upon domestic factors, structures and understandings should not obscure their centrality to ideational great power accounts concerning how states conceive, make and deliver foreign policy. Such an importance also interlinks the domestic and international spheres, indicating how foreign policy is specific to states and institutions, and represents ‘the substance of a nation’s efforts to promote interests vis-à-vis other nations’ (Christopher Hill quoted in Gupta & Shukla, 2009: 2). Rather than overlooking domestic factors, as materialist and realist accounts predominantly do, the interplay between different elites – either as individuals or as groups – and the nature of the international system are underscored. This approach echoes Modelski’s definition of foreign policy as ‘the system of activities evolved by communities for changing the behavior of other states and for adjusting their own activities to the international environment’ (1972: 6).

Comprising assemblages of internal values, central understandings and policy precedents that are reflective of a particular state’s international interaction, foreign policy is thus conditioned, regulated and even restricted by its domestic context. Historically contingent, a state’s self-conception is transmitted from generation to generation of political elites and leaders, further underlining how critical it is that a state’s domestic political features are examined. On this basis, ‘shared meanings and intersubjective structures can be as important in shaping international outcomes as material interests’ (Nicholas Onuf quoted in Fierke, 2007: 3). The domestic also retains a critical significance for the maintenance of any leader’s legitimacy, position and political centrality. With regard to our two subject states, which are developing, modernizing, post-colonial states that desire to be great powers, such a dynamic is of particular contemporary significance.

The chapter begins with an exposition of how Beijing and New Delhi’s political systems function, and outlines their key governing structures (both legislative and executive). Here, an analysis of the decision-making process and its generational evolution – in democratic India and authoritarian China – is included. We discuss the viewpoints of major political parties in both states concerning foreign policy, and their various ideological biases, before considering the role of each entity’s bureaucrats. The chapter then evaluates the growing and diversifying non-governmental influences upon foreign policy-making, in particular from expanding indigenous security communities, as well as expanding discussion via mass media. It concludes with some deliberation concerning nationalism as a foreign policy issue that links together China and India’s relative internal and international spheres.

Core Political Dimensions

Domestic institutional political capabilities are the means by which states implement their political agendas internally and, through specific foreign policy-making regimes, externally. Setting themselves apart from lower-tier states, and in order to lay claim to being a great power, they must have the ‘willingness and ability to promote [their] interests further abroad’ (Lanteigne, 2013: 21), which requires a combination of high institutional capabilities and political volition. A better understanding of a state’s central political dimensions also underpins the key constructivist notion that ‘identities are at the basis of interests’ (He, 2009: 117). This greater appreciation of intangible factors – such as ideology – also acknowledges not only that Western ideologies and concepts are irrevocably coupled with (most) current notions of what constitutes a great power (Suzuki, 2008: 51), but also that, as India and China emerge to prominence, their specific values (in isolation and perhaps collectively) will gradually challenge this preponderance.

There is a ‘negligible separation’ in China’s authoritarian political system ‘between the apparatus of government and the structure of the CCP’ (Lanteigne, 2013: 24), the Chinese Communist Party, which is the country’s paramount political actor. In an essentially one-party state that is highly centralized, hierarchical and subservient, the CCP controls all major institutional appointments via a nomenklatura system based upon fixed vertical transition, which runs in tandem with the governance structure. The CCP therefore sees itself as providing the ‘political leadership of the country’ (Brown, 2013: 6–7) – a central position it has enjoyed since the consecration of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949. Enshrining such a position has resulted in the strong state-led (and hence CCP-led) nature of modern Chinese politics, economics, foreign affairs and societal issues as a whole. The CCP has also sought periodically to consolidate its political supremacy, most notably during the Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s, when its founding leader, Mao Zedong, first demolished, and then rebuilt, most state and party apparatuses.

Born out of the aftermath of the rebellions, ethnic tensions, myriad instabilities and economic crises of the 1800s that culminated in the nationalist revolution of 1911, the CCP came into being in the 1920s. This period was also punctuated by China’s crushing defeats by Britain in the Opium Wars of 1839–42 and 1856–60, and by Japan in the 1894–5 Sino-Japanese War (and later its full invasion of China in 1937), as well as unfair trade concessions given to the United States, France and Germany. China’s international stature was consequently seen by the CCP to be debased, as personified by its negative treatment under the Treaty of Versailles of June 1919, which transferred German-occupied portions of Shandong to Japanese control. It was protests against the Treaty that led to the anti-imperialist 1919 May Fourth Movement, and inspired the 1921 formation of the CCP. Collectively these events constituted a ‘Century of Humiliation’ (bainian guochi) for China, and spurred Mao to urge it to ‘stand up’ again in the international system (D. Scott, 2007). The CCP would base its legitimacy to rule upon defeating Japan in 1945, and winning the subsequent civil war against the nationalist Kuomintang that ended in 1949, which led to a generation of war-hardened leaders who would influence the party until the 1990s.

China’s past helped shape the bedrock upon which the CCP’s foreign policy and self-image would be based. Indicating that power relations and perceptions of threat dictate policy, Mao stated his aim to have his ‘poor country . . . changed into a rich country, [and from] a country denied her rights into a country enjoying her rights’ (quoted in Lewis, 1963: 261). The CCP’s long revolutionary history was also instructive in forming its central organizational tenets. Based upon Leninist principles, and thus having a structure akin to that of the Soviet Communist Party, its organization was underpinned by three critical notions: democratic centralism (whereby binding decisions, which must be implemented, are made by a small number of leaders); minority protection (through which views can be held and voiced, and all decisions are based upon consensus); and, in the post-Mao era, collective leadership (to avoid over-concentrating power in one individual). Additionally informed by a traditional Chinese worldview, these approaches synthesized, leading to a China-specific ‘Sinification of Marxism’ (Nathan & Ross, 1997: 33).

With over 85 million members (Xinhua, 2013), the CCP is the world’s longest ruling political party and, overall, the world’s second largest political party (the first being India’s Bharatiya Janata Party, BJP). There are also currently over 86 million members in the Communist Youth League of China (CYLC), and competition to join the party remains high, with the CCP accepting only 14 per cent of the 21 million applications made to it in 2010 (BBC, 2011). CCP membership thus provides representation and core benefits to over 6.2 per cent of the population (and to an additional 6.3 per cent if CYLC members are included) – benefits that permeate to family members and relatives. CCP members dominate positions within public institutions, as realized by the concurrent nature of the CCP and the Chinese government in a party-state model, resulting in a necessary, mutual and complementary dynamic through which a proportion of the population has a vested interest in continued CCP governance. The position of ‘princelings’ (gaogan zidi – the offspring of senior CCP leaders, including Xi Jinping) also underlines the continuance of CCP rule from one generation to the next. In recent years, the CCP has diversified its membership based upon myriad different backgrounds, ages, geographical foci, (foreign) education and interpersonal connections (guanxi). The party has also accepted capitalists since 2001, reflecting China’s fiscal liberalization since 1978 and the centrality of economic growth to its current legitimacy (see Chapter 4). This diversification indicates a crucial need for political consensus-building, so as to avoid ‘the same fate as communist parties further west’ (Susan Shirk quoted in Breslin, 2009: 821).

Modern India’s political system, make-up and core attitudes are also heavily influenced by its colonial experiences prior to gaining independence in 1947, and India is, in many ways, a state based upon promoting a post-colonial identity. Many of its key initial leaders – such as Mahatma Gandhi and India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru – were veterans of the struggle to end three centuries of imperial domination under the British East India Company and then the British Raj. India’s largest contemporary political parties – the Indian National Congress (INC) and the above-mentioned BJP – both date from the pre-1947 period, with the former formed in 1885 and the latter’s Hindu nationalist roots also taking hold around the same time. Both parties played major roles in the political emancipation struggle from the British – experiences that would impact upon their foreign policy approaches and attitudes concerning achieving political independence and self-determination against external threats (see Ogden, 2014a: 21–74).

The British Empire left a range of legacies for modern India. Domestically, India’s political and judicial systems both bear the hallmarks of British imperial rule, especially in terms of the workings of India’s multi-party democracy, which is based upon first-past-the-post elections and has upper and lower houses (the Rayja Sabha and Lok Sabha, with 245 and 545 members, respectively). The general election of 2014 was the world’s largest democratic exercise to date, with an overall turnout of 66.3 per cent of India’s 834 million eligible voters (ECI, 2015). In addition, India is a sovereign republic with a President as head of state but executive power resting with the Prime Minister and cabinet, and it has a non-monarchical federal parliamentary form of governance, as well as an independent judiciary, a single electorate and ostensibly guaranteed social and political rights. The INC’s last Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh (2004–14), saw Indian’s long-standing Asian democracy as ‘an international public good’ (quoted in Zakaria, 2009) that enhanced his state’s global standing. Perhaps more negatively, other British legacies include intractable territorial conflict with Pakistan concerning Kashmir, and India’s perceived dominance over its smaller neighbours and the wider Indian Ocean Region (as all detailed in Chapter 5).

The sustention of domestic legitimacy has also motivated generations of post-1947 Indian leaders. Within ‘a political culture which privilege[s] the concept of national autonomy’ (Ganguly & Pardesi, 2009: 5), successive Prime Ministers have sought to protect, foster and enhance India’s domestic and international standing. A range of key principles have underpinned this approach, serving to embody certain characteristics in India’s political system which are frequently reflective of past interaction. These include striving for an antimajoritarian and secular (meaning universal and inclusive) body politic, based upon equality, tolerance and liberalism, whereby a ‘dream of unity has occupied the mind of India since the dawn of civilization’ (Nehru, 1946: 55), notwithstanding its highly varied ethnic and religious make-up. Directly related to anti-colonial and anti-imperial stances, and affording India a particular global uniqueness, Manmohan Singh has further noted that ‘nowhere else will you find a country of India’s diversity, of India’s complexity, one billion people trying to seek their social and economic salvation in the framework of democracy’ (quoted in Rose, 2006).

Although now essentially resembling a fully matured political entity, for the majority of the post-independence period the INC dominated India’s democratic process, resulting in a distinctive Nehruvian legacy. Winning all elections except one between 1947 and 1996, overall the party was victorious in eleven of India’s sixteen general elections up until 2014. The 1998–2002 National Democratic Alliance led by the BJP was the first full-term government not led by an INC Prime Minister, and it was only with Narendra Modi’s overwhelming triumph for the BJP in 2014 that India saw, for the first time, an alternative political entity gain an absolute parliamentary majority. The BJP itself slowly rose to prominence in the 1980s in the midst of a general proliferation of political actors and organizations across India, including the emergence of a host of smaller regional, state and caste-based parties, along with the persistent presence of several communist groups. In March 2015, BJP membership reached 88 million, making it, as noted, the world’s largest political party, although doubts persist about the rigourousness of its application process and assessment, particularly in comparison with the CCP (Balachandran & Dutta, 2015). In contrast, in March 2015, the INC had 40 million members (Phukan, 2015), which equates to 3.2 per cent of India’s total population versus the 7.0 per cent now represented by the BJP.

Generational Evolution

Whilst both states have displayed a relative consistency through one-party rule in China and multi-party democracy in India, the style in which their foreign policies have been conceived and delivered has evolved over time. Reflective of the role of leaders in delineating policy attributes, often in conjunction with key pre-independence experiences, such a focus emphasizes how ‘the most directly relevant [factor] to a decision maker’s perception of international relations is international history’ (Jervis, 1969: 470). Further accentuating our concentration upon how ideational sources develop, change, shift and progress, this approach underscores how culture and identity are ‘important causal factors that help define the interests and constitute the actors that shape national security policies and global insecurities’ (Katzenstein, 1996: 537). Again, this emphasis highlights the interconnection between domestic and international spheres, and how they mutually constitute and influence each other within the sphere of foreign policy.

Driven by an overt, explicit and idealistic strain of internationalism, India’s first Prime Minister and primary architect of Indian foreign policy, Jawaharlal Nehru, envisaged a world order based on peace, harmony, cooperation, development and equality. Also acting as India’s first External Affairs Minister, Nehru governed in an era of big personality politics, with Edward Shils noting that ‘few men so intellectual by disposition occupy comparable positions in any countr[y]’ (quoted in Power, 1964: 261). Unswervingly informed by India’s colonial subjugation under the British, along with a desire to increase its national prestige, Nehru stated: ‘I want neither Western nor Eastern domination . . . if we have no weapons we will fight with sticks, but will not submit to being bullied by anybody’ (quoted in Ralhan, 1983: 232). This enlightened national self-interest encapsulated a broader policy of purna swaraj – complete independence and self-rule – which directly informed anti-colonial, anti-imperial and pro-democracy principles.

India’s new elites also emphasized core principles of non-violence (ahimsa), economic self-reliance (swadeshi) and positive neutralism away from great power politics. This latter value would inform a policy of non-alignment (see Chapter 6). Designed to ensure that India’s voice be heard, rather than being neutral or removed from international affairs, non-alignment was an attempt to position India apart from the bipolar dynamics of the Cold War period. Simultaneously protecting yet projecting India’s core values, these perspectives critically informed its foreign policy, and – especially in terms of building up military capabilities – restrained more materially constituted power quotients. Such initial values were also to be held up as an example for others, as its elites regarded India as ‘the only stable and progressive nation in the whole of Asia, and as such . . . the natural leader of Asian countries . . . the potential power of India is well realized by the world’ (Nehru quoted in Wolpert, 1996: 446). In these ways, India’s key foreign policy tenets not only informed its conduct in the decades immediately after independence but also were intended ‘to create implicitly the scope and space for a major-power role, if not now, at least in the future, when capabilities matched the ambition’ (Nayar & Paul, 2003: 127). Democracy added a further dimension, although not in ...