Pax Indica: India and the World of the Twenty-first Century (25 page)

If there is one assumption taken for granted by all of us familiar with Chinese sensitivities, it is that of ‘One China’—the inflexible policy adhered to by Beijing that requires the world to accept the unity and indivisibility of the Chinese nation, including not only Tibet but also Hong Kong (despite its autonomy, separate administration and currency) and Taiwan (despite its de facto, but not de jure, independence).

Taiwan has tended to go along with the assertion of One China: it still officially calls itself the Republic of China (ROC), claiming descent from the regime established in Beijing by Sun Yat-sen when he overthrew the last emperor of the Q’ing dynasty in 1911. Still, it has been a while since the world took seriously the Taipei government’s pretence of speaking for the whole country. Once seen by the majority of members of the United
Nations in the 1950s as the legitimate government of China temporarily displaced by communist usurpers, Taiwan has been marginalized for decades: it was forced to surrender its UN seat to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) by an overwhelming vote in 1971, and has been largely ostracized from the global political community since.

At the same time, no one pretends that Beijing speaks for this island nation of 23 million, with its GDP of $460 billion (a per capita income of over $20,000) and its robust democracy. Taiwan has not been ruled from the mainland since 1949, and for all practical purposes it conducts itself as a separate country. Not only is it a major trade powerhouse, out of all proportion to its size, but a significant source of foreign investment. It also has a robust defence establishment, designed to ward off threats from the mainland, and a proactive foreign policy. But it is recognized as a sovereign state by only twenty-three of the 193 member states of the United Nations. As a result, the other 169 nations must deal with it by subterfuge. So the United States, India and other countries maintain quasi-diplomatic relations with Taiwan by assigning foreign office personnel to Taipei in nominally trade-related jobs. The Indian ‘ambassador’ in Taiwan is officially the director-general of the India-Taipei Association; his Taiwanese counterpart in India rejoices in the designation of representative at the Taipei Economic and Cultural Centre in India.

Seems fair enough. There’s only one catch: deal with Taiwan more formally, and China goes ballistic. Any contact that implies official recognition of a ‘state’ or a government of Taiwan provokes furious outrage and protests on Beijing’s part. Thus the president of Taiwan could not set foot on US soil as long as he was president; ministers of countries recognizing Beijing are forbidden from meeting ministers from Taiwan. Taiwanese officials are, of course, banned at the United Nations, where the PRC’s sway is confirmed by a General Assembly resolution. I remember, in my UN days, apoplectic Chinese diplomats prompting successive Secretary-Generals to bar entry to Taiwanese representatives who had been invited to address the UN Correspondents’ Association. The resultant standoff at the UN gates usually got the Taiwanese diplomats more publicity than if China had simply ignored them altogether, but the bad press was less important to Chinese officialdom
than insisting on their rights to prevent the pretenders from sullying the UN’s precincts.

The strange thing, as I discovered during a recent visit to Taipei, is that these rules don’t apply to China itself. Behind the formal rejection, a thriving and almost incestuous level of contact flourishes. There are 370 flights a week between the mainland and Taiwan; some 3 million Chinese tourists came to the ROC last year. Taiwanese businesses are China’s largest investors, with an estimated $300 million pumped into their economy, and one of the largest trading partners, to the tune of over $110 billion. Some 1 million Taiwanese are either living, working or studying in China at any given time. Chinese officials, up to and including governors and ministers, travel happily to Taiwan, and are quite pleased to welcome high-ranking Taiwanese visitors in return; when I was there, the mayor of Taipei (a crucial post, since the last two mayors became the country’s presidents) was planning a holiday in China. Obviously, Beijing does not recognize the Taiwanese passport, but it is quite pragmatic and flexible when it wants to be: travel by the two sets of citizens uses informal documentation that implies no recognition of separate sovereignty by either side.

Some think this implies an extended willingness to coexist: rather than the ‘One China, Two Systems’ formula that applies to Hong Kong, this is almost ‘One China, Two Entities’. Others, more cynically, think that what Beijing is doing is enveloping Taiwan in a smothering economic embrace while continuing to isolate it politically, so that Taipei’s dependence will inevitably oblige it to submit to a Hong Kong–type merger with the PRC. And then there are the optimists, who think the increased contact will instead change China, making the PRC more like the ROC. ‘You know what these Chinese tourists do?’ a senior official asked. ‘They enjoy a day’s tourism, have dinner and then sit in their hotel rooms in front of the TV for hours, watching Taiwanese talk shows. They can’t get enough of the cut-and-thrust of our democracy.’ ‘Imagine,’ a mainlander said to me, ‘my taxi driver had an opinion on nuclear policy, as if it had anything to do with him.’ But in Taiwan, unlike in China, the taxi driver gets to vote on who makes the policy, so it has everything to do with him. Chinese citizens are learning that, and going back to the mainland infected with the taste of freedom. Soon, the optimists aver,
‘They will want to be like us. Then Taiwan will have conquered China.’

It’s a pity that Indians can’t engage more formally with this vibrant land, because China demands that we be more purist than they are. There’s a lot we can do to attract more investment, tourism (just 25,000 Taiwanese a year, from a country that sends 1.8 million to Hokkaido alone!) and educational and scientific exchange. But that means greater and higher-level contact in our dealings with Taiwan, not holding its leadership at arm’s length. Given the PRC’s penchant for needling us on Arunachal and Kashmir, isn’t it time we picked up a Taiwanese thimble of our own?

This is not just about self-assertion, or even showing China that we have options. It is also, quite simply, about self-interest.

First of all, Taiwanese companies and government institutions have a lot of money sloshing about, looking for a place to plant itself. Taiwan invests some $300 billion in the economy of mainland China, and many in Taipei wonder whether it is wise to place quite so many eggs in the PRC’s basket. Taiwanese investment in India is a measly $1 billion so far, and the potential for more is considerable. Most of it is currently concentrated in a handful of industries in a couple of states (Tamil Nadu and the bits of Andhra Pradesh that are easily accessible from Chennai). Diversification is clearly on the cards; when I was in Taipei in 2011 I met a businessman who was about to buy 10 per cent of a petrochemical industry in Gujarat, and was open to more. Kerala, with its upcoming Technocity in Thiruvananthapuram and Smart City in Kochi, will want to talk to Taiwanese IT firms about setting up shop in its sylvan environs. There are many other examples. Attracting investment isn’t just about growing GDP; it generates employment, which is vital if we are to benefit from our ‘demographic dividend’ (having a young, dynamic workforce at a time when the rest of the world, including China, is ageing).

If India is skittish about opening its arms nationally to Taiwan, why not take advantage of our federal system to allow our states to deal directly with the island nation? In an economy which is already witnessing considerable competition between states for investment (remember the offers flooding into Tata after the Nano pulled out of Bengal?) I see no reason why we shouldn’t encourage Kerala and Gujarat to sell their wares to Taiwanese investors. In the end, it is India that will benefit.

Another obvious area of cooperation is educational and scientific exchange. Taiwan is host to some of the best universities in the world, especially in the areas of science and engineering. Degrees earned there are recognized worldwide (even in India). They are also more affordable than university courses in the United States or the United Kingdom, and of comparable quality. There’s only one catch: for the most part, the medium of instruction in Taiwan is Mandarin Chinese. But Taiwan is also the best place in the world outside Beijing to learn that language, mastery of which will count for more in the world as China acquires superpower status in the next few decades. So encouraging Indian students to both learn Chinese and undertake advanced study in Taiwan is potentially of double benefit. The Taiwanese minister of education recently came to India, accompanied by twenty-two university presidents from his country. He and his colleagues are keen on opening their portals to young Indians. There are currently 500 Indian students in Taiwan; the minister, and his country’s energetic representative in Delhi, Philip Ong, would like to see that figure change to 2000 within two years. The potential is for 10,000, Ong says, in five years. The word just needs to get out.

If we send you students, I joked to the Taiwanese, please send us your tourists! India has been receiving just 25,000 Taiwanese visitors a year, a negligible figure from a country of affluent travellers. As the birthplace of Buddhism, the majority religion in Taiwan, and as a country that has much to offer the East Asian tourist, India should be doing a better job of selling its attractions to Taiwan.

Alongside the development of this relationship, we would need to increase official-level contact between our two countries, encourage journalists and scholars to travel to and write about each other, establish connections between our smarter think tanks, and get parliamentarians to meet to exchange their experiences of fractious democracy in action. Political leaders from various parties could also be welcomed in each other’s countries.

All of this, of course, immediately begs the question, won’t China object? Will such overt engagement with a ‘pariah state’ incur Chinese disapproval? It might, but I believe we should stand our ground. No country needs to apologize for doing something that is unambiguously in its own national interest, and that is not gratuitously offensive to the
other. So we should stop short of doing anything that implies treating Taiwan as a sovereign state; no prime ministerial namaste for the Taiwanese president, for instance, which would naturally rile Beijing. But inviting an ex-president of Taiwan to deliver a lecture in India, or getting a presidential candidate to familiarize herself with New Delhi before entering the electoral lists, should be possible, indeed desirable.

And we should do it. In addition to the intimate and direct contact China already has with Taiwan, it has also made important international concessions, notably permitting the International Olympic Committee to admit a separate Taiwanese team, albeit under the name ‘Chinese Taipei’ and without flying the Republic of China’s flag. Recently, Taiwanese delegates were allowed to participate in the World Health Assembly, the global gathering of the UN’s World Health Organization (WHO), though China ensures they are not treated on a par with governments. If ‘one country, two entities’ is a viable formula in those two places, it can be contemplated carefully elsewhere.

So let us not be, as the French put it,
plus royaliste que le roi
, placing restrictions on ourselves that the Chinese have long ceased to observe (but insist on imposing on others). After all, China too has its own interests in preserving a good relationship with India—a gigantic market for its products and project exports, and a trade balance weighted hugely in Beijing’s favour. The onus should not always be on us to bend over to accommodate their concerns. As long as we draw the line short of political recognition, India should deal enthusiastically with Taiwan. On its own merits—and for our own sake.

Though I have laid out a lot of both good and bad news, no serious decision-maker in either Beijing or New Delhi wants the bad news to prevail. There are manifest opportunities for cooperation which India should seize, including involving Chinese companies in the mammoth infrastructure-building tasks needed in our country over the next two decades (though sensitivity to security concerns may continue to limit Chinese involvement in telecom equipment, port building and some kinds of software services). International cooperation is also an obvious
win-win, though India should be careful not to let such cooperation mire us in shared responsibility for Chinese policies that are not ours (for example, on climate change, it is odd that India, which has 17 per cent of the world’s population but generates only 4 per cent of its emissions, should make common cause with China, which has 17.5 per cent of the world’s people but generates nearly 20 per cent of its emissions). There are certainly issues on which cooperation suits both countries, including on anti-piracy, keeping open the sea lanes of communication across the Indian Ocean, progress on fair and free trade at the World Trade Organization (WTO), or the reform of the Bretton Woods institutions. In other cases, India might well be advised to wait and watch while others take the lead in pushing Beijing; this could result in issues being resolved to our advantage, such as the re-evaluation of the yuan or the effective pushback from the East Asian countries to China’s assertiveness. We should join issue with China only on matters which directly affect us, whether it is the border, the offensive Chinese practice of issuing stapled visas to some Indian nationals, responsible sharing of river waters or the need to reduce the trade deficit. Here our policy has to be deliberate and finely calibrated, and must involve a palette of options, ranging from conciliation to firmness to the judicious development of our strategic relations with other countries.