There is an obsession in the West that India, since it is labeled a democracy, is the country to counter China’s economic and military growth in Asia.
The thinking has been, “If the United States and India can together rediscover and revive the Indian military’s expeditionary tradition, they will have a solid basis for strategic cooperation not only between themselves but also with the rest of the world’s democracies.” For instance, in A Himalayan rivalry, The Economist focused on the 1962 conflict between India and China saying, “Memoires of a war between India and China are still vivid in the Tawang valley.”
But memoires aren’t everything. There is also knowledge, economics and culture, and, compared to India, China is not the same country it was in 1962, because unlike India, China’s one party political system allows for quick decisions that often benefit the country and the people.
Another important factor to remember is that China is a collectivist culture just like India, and according to healthypsych.com “Culture influences behavior.”
“Collectivism is the political theory that people should be interdependent on others and all conform to the same ideas and worship the goals of group than that of the individual. It’s a broad term that expands to many different topics and politics. Collectivists believe in order to form the more common good that the people should be united as a whole live their lives for the community, nation, or society.” – Science Leadership Academy
Due to these facts, China and India have more in common than India and the United States.
Another factor is that China and India both have ancient civilizations more than 5,000 years old, and they are next-door neighbors that are also linked by economics—both are members of BRIC: Brazil, Russia, India and China.
The Institute of Development Studies says, “Globally and politically, the influence of the BRICS countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China, and since 2011, South Africa – is rapidly increasing. They have been engaged in official and non-official development cooperation for decades, but their role as development actors has only recently been acknowledged by the development community.”
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the unique love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse 
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