The latest thinking on India, in China

And some important personal news

Dear Global Jigsaw,

Some significant news on my end:

In August, our family will be moving to China. For me, it will be a return to the country that I lived in between 2002-2009. I began my career as a foreign correspondent in Beijing, spending years following the Sino-Indian relationship through a series of peaks and troughs. The time I spent there was definitively the most formative.

This is what I wrote in my farewell column :

“Inside the house a clutter of boxes and bubble wrap, material portents of the impending move, stare up at me accusingly. I look outside the window to escape their relentless gaze… Little bursts of colour adorn trees that only a few weeks ago were starved of life. The long months of cold finally over I walk around the city.

Beijing! A city drenched in History, magnificent in imagination, imperfect in reality but over and above all else a city that has become home.

Beijing and I, we grew up together. When I first moved here seven years ago, a fresh-faced university graduate to take up a post teaching English at a local university, the city had only just won the bid to host the Olympic Games in 2008. A year earlier China had joined the WTO, binding it closer than ever before to the international trading system. I found myself in an old-new city. A city with ancient, seeing eyes but with a youthful soul; a city imbued with energy and beginnings.

Aged streets were spitting up new buildings at a vertiginous pace as Beijing went shopping for new clothes to dress up in for the Olympics. And not since the Tang dynasty had a Chinese capital exerted such a magnetic pull for foreigners of every hue. Colombian doctors, Bulgarian singers, Indian yoga teachers were only some of those who had begun to wash up in Beijing, desirous of hitching their wagon to the city’s rising star.

I walk through the hutongs, the narrow winding alleyways of Old Peking where I had lived for years. A gaggle of old men with gnarled faces and wide, gummy, smiles sit in a corner smoking in companionable silence. Next to them caged songbirds trill springtime tunes. An itinerant gold-fish seller comes cycling past on a tricycle, her gold-fish displayed in little glass jars.

Photo: Pallavi Aiyar. Beijing circa 2007

I keep walking, finding myself in the pulsating, glass and chrome jungle of the Central Business District. This is a frighteningly modern creature inhabited by yuppies glued to blackberries and a tsunami of haute couture stores. When I had first moved to Beijing the CBD had been but a drawing on a city planner’s draft board.

Beijing had changed. But then so had I. This was the city where I married my long-term boyfriend; where our bonny boy, Ishaan, was born and where I built up a career as a foreign correspondent.

I had arrived in China at a point in its history when a series of dualities: tradition and modernity, control and chaos, were in particularly sharp relief. I spent the next several years in an attempt to map this country in transition, traveling from booming Zhejiang to troubled Tibet, interviewing monks and medics, scholars and government officials. I tried to bring alive to an Indian audience a sense of the awesome changes and churnings of modern China. It was a formidable task and one with profound consequences for me as an individual.

Instead of answers I only found more questions. What is the real nature of freedom? Can a society free to become rich but not to criticize be called free? From what source do governments’ gain their legitimacy? Can stability and social justice legitimately be prioritized over free speech?

Presenting my book, Smoke and Mirrors, at the Huawei headquarters in Shenzhen in mid 2008. My first child was a bun in the oven at the time.

Ultimately I found myself increasingly eschewing black and white, while my fascination for the shades of grey that permeated China, grew. This was a country of oxymorons; an officially atheist country in the midst of a religious revival; a country of dynamic bottom-up resistance in a top-down system. It was a country moreover where every street and every contradiction was shot through with the irrepressible spirit of Chineseness.

This intangible, yet concrete sense of Chineseness lived in the language and the food and the faces of the people. These were people who had eaten bitterness and survived through dint of sheer will and endurance. These were good people who had experienced bad times but whose optimism somehow remained intact. These were a people at once proud and practical, clannish, yet welcoming….”

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In due course, I plan to shift the focus of this newsletter to China, given the privileged ring-side view I will have of a nation that is both increasingly significant for the world in almost every aspect from climate change to artificial intelligence, yet increasingly decoupled from it.

Today, I bring you the first of a three part series that focuses on an extensive interview I conducted with China’s most prominent young scholar of Sino-Indian relations, Mao Keji. He is currently a fellow at Harvard University, based in the Indian Studies in China programme, hosted by the Harvard-Yenching Institute.

His replies to my questions are nuanced and candid, qualities that are rare (in my - possibly dated- experience) when talking to Chinese academics on foreign policy issues.

For the rest of this post I will include answers to the first two (of ten) questions that I posed to him. I will serialize the remaining interaction over the next couple of weeks. These posts will feature free previews, but will be available in full exclusively for paid subscribers. A good excuse to upgrade (or renew) your subscription now!

On to the interview (the highlights in bold are mine, intended to draw attention to key points):

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PA: What is the current situation regarding India studies in China? When I lived there between 2002-2009, there was very little emphasis within academic institutions and think tanks on the study of India - particularly as a strategic player. Is India-studies a growing field in China?

MK: Compared to your time in China, the emphasis on Indian studies has indeed significantly increased. Currently, there are more researchers, a broader range of research topics, and a higher quality of scholarship. Although many aspects still leave room for improvement, overall, Indian studies are flourishing. Several key factors provide context for this development:

First, China has been developing rapidly. I hold a theory that "small countries focus solely on major powers because their destinies are largely determined by those powers; major powers on the other hand, pay attention to small countries because their interests span the globe." For an extended period after initiating the Reform and Opening up, China prioritized meeting domestic development challenges and even deliberately portrayed itself as a smaller nation than it actually was, paying attention primarily to developed countries such as the U.S., Europe, and Japan rather than Asia, Africa, or Latin America. The first decade of the 21st century, which you mentioned, exemplified this trend.

However, as China’s economy continued to expand, other regions have garnered greater attention. From China’s perspective, India—as a neighbor, major power, and emerging economy—has naturally received increased scholarly attention, becoming one of the main beneficiaries of this policy shift. Many universities have established Hindi language programs and courses in the second decade of the 21st century, and numerous think tanks have started focusing more seriously on India.

Second, India has also been rising. Although India had entered a high-growth trajectory after its 1991 reforms, its visibility in China remained limited for some time, rarely entering public attention. A significant turning point occurred around 2014-2015 during the "digital economy boom," coinciding with the Belt and Road Initiative, though the two were driven by entirely different motivations.

At this point, many Chinese internet startups discovered India's market potential with favorable Sino-Indian relations, flocking to invest and establish ventures. India swiftly became the preferred destination for outbound Chinese digital entrepreneurs, with many investors genuinely seeing India as "the next China." This brought unprecedented attention to India within China's business circles. Notably, this wave of entrepreneurship significantly impacted other sectors, providing ample employment opportunities for students of South Asian languages and generating new India-related business for think tanks and consulting firms. Unfortunately, the Modi government’s 2020 crackdown on Chinese apps abruptly ended what had been the most dynamic area of Sino-Indian interaction.

Third, the increasingly complex and intensive Sino-Indian interactions. Objectively, frictions and conflicts between China and India sometimes stimulate deeper scholarly engagement with India in China. Border confrontations in 2017 and 2020 notably elevated demand for India-related analysis among media outlets, think tanks, and government institutions. This demand substantially caused a major growth of Indian studies in China, drawing in talents previously uninvolved in such research.

During this period, Indian studies notably prioritized strategic with a macro perspectives, often focusing on grand issues such as the Indo-Pacific strategy and Quad framework, thus emphasizing external relations over research into India’s domestic affairs.

2) What is the main lens through which India is studied in China?

This is a critical question deserving detailed exploration. Presently, those engaged in India studies in China generally fall into three distinct categories, each connected yet clearly differentiated in their research focus, methodologies, and organizational setups.

First, there is the group specializing in Indian language and cultural studies. This group represents China’s oldest and most established tradition in India-related scholarship, dating back to distinguished scholars such as Ji Xianlin（季羡林）. Today, researchers in this group mainly delve into Indian languages, culture, history, philosophy, mythology, and religion, building upon the foundation of classical Oriental studies. Their importance lies in their continuous scholarly tradition dating back even before the founding of modern China, training generations of scholars who contribute significantly to policy-making, media, diplomacy, and international relations.

Second, there is the policy-oriented research group focused on India. This group also boasts a long history, with roots tracing back to renowned scholar and social activist Chen Hansheng（陈翰笙）, who systematically surveyed India economy, society, and international relations as early as the 1930s and 1940s. Today, this group’s research spans fields such as foreign policies, economics, and domestic politics.

However, given the interdisciplinary nature and heterogeneity of the involved institutions, along with much research remaining confidential, this area historically lacked clear scholarly continuity. Following China’s economic reforms, segments concerning Indian economics and domestic politics gradually downplayed their focus on India, while international relations scholars better maintained their Indian focus. Consequently, in the first decade of the 21st century, major Chinese institutions studied India predominantly through an international relations lens, often overlooking analyses of India’s domestic politics and , economics. Although this situation has recently begun improving, significant room for advancement remains.

Lastly, there is a grassroots, independently driven group engaged in India studies. Fundamentally, anyone proficient in English can embark on India-related research, and India’s rapid development has greatly increased the demand for such insights. Coupled with structural imbalances within formal academic India studies—marked by low entry barriers, high demand, and limited supply—this environment has attracted numerous amateur enthusiasts. Although these individuals operate outside formal academic circles, widespread internet and social media usage has enabled some of these independent researchers to produce insightful work, particularly on topics like military affairs, geostrategy, tourism, and history, effectively addressing gaps left by mainstream scholarship.

However, this surge of interest in India has also attracted extreme nationalists, chauvinists, and conspiracy theorists, who exploit stereotypes and misinformation to gain attention through social media platforms. This phenomenon is not exclusive to China; similar extremist narratives frequently arise in India and Western countries regarding China.

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Over the next two weeks we will look at the following questions:

• What single change in policy on the Indian government's side do you think can make a significant difference to Sino-Indian bilateral relations? And the same question for the Chinese government side.

• You have said, " If there is any single event in the future that could [fundamentally] alter this (global) order, I believe it would be the rise of India." Can you explain this further? Why is India's economic development a geopolitical issue that can recast the international order?

• What do you think the impact of Trump will be on the India-China dynamic?

• Do you believe that democracy has served India well or that democracy has held India back?

• What do you believe is India's greatest weakness? And what is its most significant strength?

• Does the fact that the West often equates India and China bother China, given the fact that China is so much ahead of India in economic and developmental terms? In other words, does China feel that India gets a "pass" on human rights issues and other problems, simply because the West wants to use it as a counterbalance to China?

• What role could China play in India's industrialization, that is currently not possible because of political problems?

• What is the general perception of India amongst average Chinese people today?

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  Until next week,

  Cheers,

  Pallavi