There are some experts in India who believe that India should leave the Quad alone and preferably befriend China. The finest compliment we can give the yellow giant from the Indian point of view is that it is a neighbourly sibling. When vital interests are involved, a sibling is a person’s enemy, a vicious one at that if not worse. At an individual level, the Mughals and their succession wars were an emphatic example. When it comes to countries, the Franco-German relationship before the European Union came into being is a useful case. Former President Donald Trump was busy building a wall in the south of his country, on the Mexican border. The Indo-Pakistan equation continues to remain as sore as it can be.

Mao Zedong defeated Chiang Kai Shek conclusively in 1949, whereas India became free two years earlier. It is difficult to think of a country’s prime minister who could have endorsed the takeover of its friendly neighbour, Tibet, with such alacrity as Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru did. He then went on to the Bandung Conference in 1955 organized by President Mohammed Sukarno of Indonesia. Nehru repeatedly took time off at the conference to introduce the Chinese foreign minister Chou en Lai as though he was launching his younger brother.

Nehru did not have the slightest inkling at the time that vast tracts of his dear country were being overrun in Aksai Chin. Later, when Nehru discovered the deception, he explained to Parliament that the lost territory did not matter; it was land where not a blade of grass grows, was his reasoning. A member of parliament, Mahavir Tyagi, pointed to his own bald pate and retorted, “No hair grows on my head. Does it mean that the head has no value?”

Nehru continued his policy regardless until eventually China invaded India on two fronts: Ladakh in the west and NEFA (today’s Arunachal Pradesh) in the east. After humiliating India to its satisfaction, the Chinese army unilaterally withdrew after a month.

Since then, for all these decades, Beijing has been in occupation of Indian territory. Yet India has in recent years spent billions of dollars of foreign exchange importing a great deal of goods including toys and even statues of Hindu deities. Because of these imports, many of our small and medium industries have had to shut down. The World Trade Organization (WTO), one suspects was innovated to facilitate Chinese export companies, a number of which are used for espionage. Now, many countries especially in the West have begun avoiding Chinese goods.

All these decades, India could not make much effort to either recover its lost territory, nor come to any definitive agreement on some sort of a boundary settlement. It is almost a contradiction that one country trades with another on a large scale, while their frontiers reflect the status of enemies.

As if all this were not enough, some experts say that we must not depend on either the USA or Australia to fight with us, and therefore, abandon the idea of the Quad. The only associate which could fight with us is Japan. It is not realized that the Quad need not be limited; it could be extended to say Vietnam, Taiwan and South Korea in due course. Further extension could be made with the help of Indonesia and the Philippines. Every associate need not send soldiers to take to the battlefield with our troops. For example, the USA could be invaluable in providing armaments and technological assistance. Incidentally, China invaded Vietnam in 1979 but suffered a defeat at the hands of Hanoi.

Earlier in the Korean War, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) participated in a big way when the Americans took the field for saving South Korea in 1952/53. At that time, the PLA showed no concern for the lives of its own soldiers, fighting as it were, with men rather than weapons. An American, who later joined the diplomatic service, told me in Kolkata that the tank in which he was riding was swarmed by up to a hundred or so Chinese soldiers who climbed on to it and blocked its passage with only rudimentary rifles. “We in the tank drove as fast as we could” he said, while narrating the incident. He had no time to look at how many Chinese perished by getting knocked down or run over.

The PLA is not China’s national army like ours is, but belongs to the Chinese Communist Party; for fear of an anti-party revolt. Normally except for some specially trained battalions, such proxy armies are not as efficient as their national counterparts. The reason is likely to be that the priority in recruitment would be loyalty to the party and not potential military aptitude. We cannot take for granted that there would be no adverse reaction in the West if we were to cozy up to China. On the other hand, it is well known that we have border disputes with China.

Even today, many a Tibetan would have greater sympathy for India than China. Some pro-China experts consider the yellow giant to be the world’s number one power. Surely this cannot be true, with the US economy well ahead, plus having the most advanced technology and above all, the largest nuclear arsenal.

Sitting in democratic India, it is difficult to visualise the uncertainty, if not the insecurity, of a dictatorial country. Since there are no electoral opportunities, the regimes have to be constantly alert to the possibilities of rebellions or revolts. The PLA being a party institution and not a national one is explained by this factor. Moreover, Tibet and Xinjiang are not integral to the Han civilization.

Coming to the economy, with the train of rapid prosperity, the class profile of individuals changes, and so has been the case in China as well. With more than subsistence level livelihood people begin to expect some say in the affairs of their society. There is bound to be more education, more thinking and more differences in opinion. A democracy can deal with such changes. In a democratic country the party in power can be replaced through an election.

One major reason for the Soviet Union suffering an economic bust in 1991 was attributed to the Kremlin not always being aware of what was happening in different parts of the huge country. Had there been periodic elections, as in a democratic country, they would have reflected the changing situations and problems. In the case of the Soviet Union, the Kremlin knew accurately about Moscow and perhaps Leningrad, but not very much beyond. In a conversation several years ago, a Marxist in Kolkata went to great lengths to convince me that had there been regular feedback from the ground, the Soviet Union would still be flourishing. Evidently, he could not see the inherent contradiction between popular elections and a dictatorship of the proletariat!