A Future Chinese Strategy for India continues....



For any reader who may be wondering what eventually became of the

two states whose relationship this chapter started with, it is perhaps

worth mentioning. While the history of the Jin and the song dynasties

was happening, in the steppes of Mongolia to the north of China, a

new power was being created by a minor Mongol chieftain named

Temujin. When he became the undisputed leader of all the Mongol

tribes, or ‘banners’ as they are called by the Mongols, and had acquired

the title Chinggis Khan, he led his armies southwards towards China.

As we have seen earlier in Chapter Three, the Jin shifted their capital

south to Bianjin to escape the Mongols after a battlefield defeat.

Chinggis Khan then came back to raze Zhongdu to the ground, and

began a pursuit of the Jin Emperor, who was killed soon thereafter,

ending the Jin dynasty.



As Anil Chandra narrates: ‘After conquering the Jin, the Mongols attacked the Song on a large scale. In 1276 CE the Mongols took the city of Lin’an and captured many senior generals of the Song. The advances of the Mongols continued till on the 19th March 1279 CE, during the naval battle of Yaunan, Prime Minister Lu Xiufu, a senior general, carrying the nine year old emperor, Zhao Bing, threw himself into the sea along with the emperor, and thus ended the rule of the Southern Song Dynasty.’

It is difficult if not impossible to make presumptive projections

from the examples of history. However, given the economic

expansionist compulsions of the world’s largest population, and the

world’s fourth-largest economy, any method of expansion by China to

bring all of eastern, south-eastern, and southern Asia into a modern economic version of the ‘Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere’ ould well result in India’s independence of action being jeopardized. As  the respected journalist-turned-politician Arun Shourie cautions, and as Claude Arpi warns, ‘Today, it is irrelevant if China is a friend or a foe;

India needs to act as a friend, though being prepared for the worst. History

cannot and should not be forgotten’.

To be continued....