India and China - Implosion: India's Tryst with Reality - page 304

ina has been looking for contracts in India. 45 Other areas include engineering and construc-
tion projects.
Future Contours
The contours of the likely long-term relationship between the two countries began to
emerge as Wen Jiabao finished his 2010 visit to Delhi and fiew on to Pakistan. 46 Economic
and cultural ties would grow and trade would boom, but China would continue indefinitely
to rattle India's nerves in a variety of ways, not least by becoming closer to Pakistan and
claiming territory on the Himalayan border. Beijing would not see this economic carrot and
diplomatic stick approach primarily as a bilateral matter because India is merely a (rather
large) pawn in its overall ambition to become a superpower, alongside, and one day repla-
cing, the US. That ambition necessitates keeping India in check because China is determ-
ined that it should not become a rival.
A key to these contours, as seen from Beijing, came from a Chinese official who told
a former top Indian bureaucrat and ambassador in 2010 that India needed to understand
three things. 47 First, political differences would not impede economic growth and trade re-
lationship between the two countries. Second, India should not meddle with its neighbours
(meaning presumably that China would meddle in places like Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Nepal
and Bangladesh, but that India should neither object nor try to counter its efforts). Third,
India should accept China's growing links with Pakistan, which would continue (presum-
ably because arming and aiding a nuclear Pakistan is a key way to keep India in check).
This meant that, while China was content to see India's prosperity grow and to participate
in its economic growth, India should not expect to become a regional power, even though
the US might like it to do so. It also probably meant that, though China was surprised and
rather taken aback by India's rapid economic and industrial advances in the first decade
of the twentieth century, and was rattled by growing close ties (and the 2008 nuclear deal)
with the US, it knew that it was way ahead in terms of overall development and as a re-
gional power.
King Goujian's Revenge
The contours laid down for India by the Chinese official - which, of course, India would
not accept - tie in with the long-term question for the whole world of whether China will
be a 'Friend or Foe', to quote the title of a special report in The Economist. 48 Did China's
(rather clumsy) regional belligerence, which was developing in 2010, indicate that the 'foe'
angle was gaining supremacy in Beijing as the country became economically powerful and