Does the idea of the 21st century as ‘Asian century’ continue to remain feasible given the growing friction between India and China? (2024, 15 Marks)
The idea has an Indian–Chinese birth certificate: Deng Xiaoping told Rajiv Gandhi in Beijing in December 1988 that no genuine Asia-Pacific century could come unless China and India both developed. Parag Khanna’s The Future Is Asian (2019) gives the popular form: a world Europeanised in the nineteenth century, Americanised in the twentieth and now being “Asianized”. Friction between the two giants weakens the political core of the idea, not its economic base.
What the Asian century claims
- Material weight: Asia holds about three-fifths of humanity and supplies most of world growth; China, India, Japan and ASEAN anchor manufacturing and trade chains.
- Political leadership: the stronger claim is that Asia will shape the norms, institutions and security order of the century. That needs its two largest states to share some common purpose.
Why India–China friction undermines it
- An unsettled border: the 1962 war, the Galwan clash of June 2020, and an LAC where disengagement is complete but de-escalation and de-induction are not.
- Strategic rivalry: the China–Pakistan axis, CPEC through Indian-claimed territory, the live Chinese support to Pakistan during Operation Sindoor (May 2025) described by India’s deputy army chief, and Chinese obstruction of India’s NSG entry.
- Asymmetric interdependence: China became India’s largest trading partner in FY2025–26 ($151.1 billion), but India’s deficit reached $112.16 billion, and the 2025 rare-earth controls showed how dependence becomes leverage.
- Status: Kanti Bajpai (India Versus China, 2021) finds the deepest friction in rank: China expects deference as Asia’s dominant power, India wants recognition as an equal.
- A divided Asia: India stays out of RCEP and the Belt and Road and balances through the Quad. John J. Mearsheimer’s offensive realism (The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, 2001) expects a rising China to seek regional hegemony and India to resist it.
Why the idea survives
- Conflict alongside cooperation: both sit in BRICS, the SCO, the AIIB and the G20, prefer a multipolar order, and have defended common but differentiated responsibilities together through BASIC.
- A managed thaw: the October 2024 patrolling understanding, Narendra Modi’s visit to Tianjin (August–September 2025), the 25th Special Representatives round (August 2026), and Xi Jinping’s visit for the New Delhi BRICS summit (September 2026), where both leaders committed to a “fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable” boundary settlement.
- Liberal logic: Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye (Power and Interdependence, 1977) argue that dense ties raise the cost of conflict.
- Strategic autonomy: India balances China without joining an alliance, which keeps engagement possible. Former ambassador Nalin Surie holds that no Asian century is possible without real India–China collaboration.
Conclusion
An Asian century in the economic sense is happening regardless of friction. A century led by Asia is another matter: S. Jaishankar warned in Bangkok (August 2022) that it would be hard to realise unless India and China came together. With China’s economy nearly five times India’s, the likelier outcome is what Amitav Acharya calls a multiplex order: Asian in weight, but plural and competitive in politics.