Hissing Dragon-Squirming Tiger:

Comparisons, Negotiations

and Attitudes continues.....

The ‘Chinese sub-continent’ is a political sub-continent, unlike the

Indian sub-continent, which is a geographical sub-continent, of which

the Republic of India is just one part. The entire Indian sub-continent

itself is less than half the size of the PRC. With China’s land area being

9,596,961 sq km, and India’s 3,274,600 sq km, the PRC is nearly three

times the size of the political state of India. It extends for about 5,250 km from east to west, and 5,500 km from north to south.

The PRC is almost as large as the whole of Europe, and among the important

countries of the world, is significantly surpassed in size only by Russia

and Canada.

The Indian sub-continent, or ‘South Asia’ as it is now being called to sound ‘politically correct’, is a fragmented collection of one large, one medium, and a couple of small countries. Its geographic

and cultural heartland, Hindustan, as a country is run by two

governments, the Government of Pakistan in the west and the Government of India in the east.

With 90% of its population being ethnic Chinese (Han Chinese),

the PRC is a political monolith, in spite of three major minorities, the Tibetans , the Muslim Turkic-speaking Uighurs and Kazakhs , and the Mongols of Inner Mongolia, occupying a great deal of its land area.

Unlike China’s, India’s large population is not united under one political

ideology. Given these significant disparities, it does not make much

sense to make ‘one-on-one’ comparisons between China and India, as

the media is wont to do. To make military comparisons, again a media

pre-occupation, is positively dangerous. News items which state things

like: ‘India makes missile which can strike Beijing’ are both irresponsible and harmful, in that they project a false sense of security to a gullible public, and often negatively influence the PRC’s official

relations with India. This approach of comparisons is fraught with

dangerous consequences. As has already been shown, the people of

China see India as a small country on its south-western periphery.

To be continued.....