Dragon’s Mind: The Chinese

Strategic View continues...

The Chinese strategic mindset as regards India is influenced both by (1)

their own general strategic mindset and (2) their impression of India

and Indians.

In determining the Chinese attitude to India and Indians it becomes necessary also to keep an open mind regarding how Indians are perceived by others. It therefore would be of value to bear in mind what a number of perceptive and introspective Indians have written about

Indian society.

Chronologically, the following have examined this in sufficient detail: Nirad C. Chaudhuri in ‘The Continent of Circe’ (1965), the Indian-descended V.S. Naipaul in ‘An Area of Darkness’ (1964),

Khushwant Singh in ‘We Indians’ (1993), and recently, Pavan K. Varma

in ‘The Great Indian Middle Class’ (2007) as well as Sudhir Kakar and

Katharina Kakar in ‘The Indians, Portrait of a People’ (2007). Observers

in China may hold different views on Indians, but it would be well to

remember that these are likely to be different from the views of most

Indians regarding themselves or their country.

China’s diplomatic stance since the early 1950’s, and all its

subsequent actions, including those of the brief 1962 Sino-Indian

border war, have all been in accordance with the teachings of the

ancient Chinese masters of strategy, and are thus, in essence,

predictable. Most of India’s inability to effectively with China since

Independence was due initially to its foreign policy being a ‘one-man

show’, that of Pandit Nehru, and overall due to a myopic view of

China, viewed through the periscope of a western thought-process.

To be continued....