‘ The China Story ‘ covered the early period of Indo-China relations in the 1950’s , the annexation of Tibet by China , the border war and then the phenomenal economic growth of China finally culminating with the rise of Xi Jinping and China’s ascendancy into a military power with its hegemonistic ambitions .

The Chief architect of China’s phenomenal and unprecedented growth was certainly Deng Xiaoping ; Under Deng Xiaoping’s pragmatism China adopted the market economy , opened up to the world , was inducted into the WTO and was primarily blessed by globalization . India too has benefited by globalization when 30 years ago, then Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao and Finance Minister Manmohan Singh threw open the doors to the country’s economy, reversing decades of socialism. However China’s growth was much more rapid whereas India’s was more tepid. so what was it that China did right or rather India did not do and more important having been left behind what is it that India can do now to catch up .

China was able to capitalize on the opportunities thrown open by Globalization primarily due to the leadership of Deng Xiaoping who was pragmatic and is credited with the dictum    ‘  It does not matter if a cat is black or white as long as it catches mice’ by which he turned away from Leninist ideology and embraced market economy . Even during Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s visit to China Deng had reminded Rajiv that India and China together accounted for 1.8 billion people, almost 40 per cent of humanity. “Our sole aim should be to improve the lives of our people …. That China has surely done raising their per capita GDP to $ 10,000 in 2019 .

Under Deng Xiaoping US and China built a de facto alliance and China forged relationship with Japan and the ASEAN countries . China was already ahead in terms of adult literacy as its socialist policies were more equitable and they focussed on primary education . This base has helped China in its early stage manufacturing ; Deng Opened the Chinese Universities which had been discarded in the Cultural revolution , invited Chinese origin Noble laurates and other academicians to return to China to teach and sponsored Chinese students to study in US universities .

They developed SEZ’s in the coastal zones and liberalised land use which helped set up low manufacturing industries to begin with and have now graduated to advanced and more complex manufacturing of high end products and systems including electric vehicles , AI and quantum computing .

The Chinese diaspora across Hongkong , Taiwan , Singapore invested heavily and established joint ventures with multinationals who took advantage of the low cost of labour and availability of excellent infrastructure that made doing business easy . This may have been largely possible due to the single party rule which brooked no dissent and in a way imposed political stability , brought discipline to its economic planning resulting in allocation of resources as per state plans ; competent state institutions too helped . Favourable demographics accompanied by a favourable international economic environment and a strong Han Chinese core also contributed .

Efficiency was the driving force behind globalisation .Companies located production where costs were lowest, while investors deployed capital where returns were highest. Governments aspired to treat firms equally, regardless of their nationality, and to strike trade deals with democracies and autocracies alike. Over two decades this gave rise to dazzlingly sophisticated value chains that account for half of all trade .This benefited both India and China and many more emerging economies – however China was the major beneficiary .

Going ahead will Globalization benefit India as much as it has China ?

May not .  Globalization is on a decline for some time and this process has only accelerated post the pandemic . Much of the advanced economies have realized that dependence on a single country for key resources and raw material could have severe consequences on their economies and peoples livelihoods such as now starkly brought out by the oil crisis that the European Union faces post sanctions on Russia after the invasion of Ukraine . The Covid related severe lockdowns imposed by China have resulted in supply chain issues across the world .

National security implications due to industrial espionage has resulted in companies such as the Chinese telecom giant , Huawei being banned by the US . Autocracies such as China worry that too much of integration could result in western culture seeping in weakening the autocratic regime . Deng himself identified the dilemma: “If you open the window for fresh air, you have to expect some flies to blow in.”

Sanctions are being increasingly used as a foreign policy tool as China faced after the Tiananmen Square crackdown and more recently Russia is facing . In the recent past America has placed sanctions on Cuba, El Salvador, Jordan, Kenya, Romania and Yemen; This has also hampered international trade . The Biden administration in October announced sweeping new limits on the sale of semiconductor technology to China, a step aimed at crippling Beijing’s access to critical technologies that are needed for everything from supercomputing to guiding weapons.

Recent policy announcements and trade deals shed some light on the probable direction of globalisation as the world’s most powerful democracies and autocracies turn away from each other. Countries are signing smaller, regional trade deals instead; democracies are banding together, as are autocracies; and many countries are also seeking greater self-reliance.

In 2020 China signed an agreement with 14 other Asian countries . In that year the ASEAN group of South-East Asian countries became China’s biggest trading partner, replacing the EU. In Africa, meanwhile, most countries have ratified the African Continental Free Trade Area.

Large countries in particular, meanwhile, are also turning inward. A big focus of President Joe Biden’s administration, for instance, is “supply-chain resilience”, which in part involves efforts to encourage domestic production. This new kind of globalisation is about security, not efficiency: it prioritises doing business with people you can rely on, in countries your government is friendly with. It could descend into protectionism, big government and worsening inflation.

Globalization would have waned but its here to stay ; The power rivalry that is playing out between America and China is also existential where each is challenging the others political system with China calling it a failure of democracy ; however this would only help band the world democracies together against the authoritarian regimes . India can score here and benefit from this development . As China becomes more assertive the countries in Asia ( Australia included ) that rely on a rule based order shall band together ; the decreasing American influence in the world order shall also prompt the emergence of these new trading blocks .