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Significant books that unpack China’s rise and what it means for India ahead of the 20th Communist Party Congress

Significant books that unpack China’s rise and what it means for India
ahead of the 20th Communist Party Congress

October 15 (Delhi) — China’s 20th Communist Party Congress will begin on Sunday in Beijing. Some 2,300 delegates will gather in Tiananmen Square’s Great Hall of the People for about a week, where the party is expected to hand a third five-year term to Xi Jinping, cementing his position as the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao Zedong.

The decision would further tighten Xi Jinping’s grip on China and it is possible that he will remain in power for the rest of his life.

As a result, the eyes of the world are on the 20th Party Congress, making it the most consequential and closely watched party meeting in decades. Developments at the Congress are expected to reveal much about the direction of the world’s second-largest economy for the next five years. What changes China makes to rejuvenate its economy as well as adjustments to its foreign policy following the repercussions of the Russia-Ukraine war, have generated much interest in the Indo-Pacific where an assertive Chinese rise has already raised concerns.

In India, a growing interest in and publication of books on China attest to the burgeoning curiosity and concern with which the Sino-Indian relationship has come to be marked, especially in recent years. Coming from former foreign secretaries, journalists, foreign policy analysts and diplomats, these books have effectively commented on all major aspects of China’s relationship with India. Here is a selection of significant books that discuss the past, present and future of China from an Indian perspective:


Tiananmen Square: The Making of a Protest
, by Vijay Gokhale

More than three decades later, the Tiananmen Square incident refuses to be forgotten. The events that occurred in the summer of 1989 would not only set the course for China’s politics but would also re-define its relationship with the world. China’s message was clear: it remained committed to market-oriented reform, but it would not tolerate any challenge to the supremacy of the Chinese Communist Party. In return for economic prosperity, the Chinese have surrendered some rights to the state. A democratic future seems far away.

Vijay Gokhale, then a young diplomat serving in Beijing, was a witness to the drama that unfolded in Tiananmen Square. This unique account brings an Indian perspective on an event in China’s history that the Chinese government has been eager to have the world forget.


After Tiananmen: The Rise of China
, by Vijay Gokhale

After the end of the Cold War, China was faced with fundamental challenges – and had to make some critical choices. After Tiananmen: The Rise of China is the story of how it handled its complex domestic and external environment while silently ascending the hierarchy of world power.

The book traces the developments in contemporary China from 1989 to 2010, delving into the country’s initial political and economic experiments. It examines the adeptness with which challenges like the ‘Malacca Dilemma’ and the resources crunch shaped Chinese policies; how, in the process, the very character of the Chinese Communist Party was fundamentally transformed; and the twists and turns in India’s relationship with China.

The sequel to Tiananmen Square: The Making of a Protest, this is an essential primer for those who wish to understand China’s behaviour today.

Understanding the India-China Border: The Enduring Threat of War in the High Himalayas, by Manoj Joshi

In the summer of 2020, China and India came close to war. The nuclear-armed adversaries both amassed troops and equipment along their disputed border in eastern Ladakh. The two sides slugged it out with fists, stones and clubs next to a fast-flowing Himalayan stream, resulting in dozens of deaths and injuries, many from hypothermia.

The entire 4,000-kilometre Sino-Indian boundary is disputed. In 1962, the two countries fought a short and vicious war that went badly for India, and from which Nehru never recovered. The border, called the Line of Actual Control, is not marked on any map agreed upon by the two sides; it runs through the largely unpopulated and inhospitable high mountains of the Himalayas. From the 1990s, as Beijing and New Delhi sought to resolve their seemingly intractable border dispute, an elaborate system of agreements kept the situation akin to a kettle on a slow boil.

But the kettle is now boiling over. The two rising Asian giants, both led by strongly nationalistic regimes, neither of which wishes to blink first, are seeking geopolitical and strategic advantage. This timely book, Understanding the India-China Border: The Enduring Threat of War in the High Himalayas, explains what is happening on ‘the roof of the world’, and why that matters for us all.

Strategic Challenges: India in 2030, Edited by Jayadeva Ranade

 

In the shifting sands of contemporary geopolitics, this edited volume puts the spotlight firmly on urgent strategic challenges India is likely to face by the year 2030. Already, major powers like China and Russia are adopting muscular policies with the intent of changing the global order. This includes attempts to take territories–claimed by them on the basis of, at times, imagined history–through the use of military force. The US and the West are struggling to retain their pre-eminence, while emerging powers in the Indo-Pacific are demanding representation at the global high table. Each player is seeking to shape events to their advantage.

As alliances are altered, India finds itself in a position that calls for dexterous, nimble and bold policies. India is also presented with an opportunity to wield influence that would place it in an advantageous geopolitical position. Strategic Challenges aims to form a fuller picture of the situation by examining the various pieces that make up this dynamic kaleidoscope, with chapters authored by India’s leading thinkers, analysts and strategists.

Beginning with an introduction by the former foreign secretary, Vijay Gokhale, the topics the book tackles include the volatility of India’s neighbourhood, its hesitant embrace of the US, implications of Russia’s warming ties with China, modern military technology on land, sea and air, and the challenges of artificial intelligence, among others.


Chinese Spies: From Chairman Mao to Xi Jinping
, by Roger Faligot

In 1920s Shanghai, Zhou Enlai founded the first Chinese communist spy network, operating in the shadows against nationalists, Western powers and the Japanese. The story of Chinese spies has been a global one from the start.

Unearthing previously unseen papers and interviewing countless insiders, Roger Faligot’s astonishing account reveals nothing less than a century of world events shaped by Chinese spies. Working as scientists, journalists, diplomats, foreign students and businessmen, they have been everywhere, from Stalin’s purges to 9/11. This murky world has swept up Ho Chi Minh, the Clintons and everyone in between, with the action moving from Cambodia to Cambridge, and from the Australian outback to the centres of Western power.

In the twenty-first century, the Chinese intelligence services, an umbrella term that includes several organisations, rival the largest in the world: the American CIA, the Israeli Mossad, the Indian R&AW, the French DGSE, Britain’s MI6, and of course the other intelligence services in the region, such as the Taiwanese MJIB and the Japanese Naicho.

This fascinating narrative exposes the sprawling tentacles of the world’s largest intelligence service, from the very birth of communist China to Xi Jinping’s absolute rule today.

India’s China Challenge: A Journey Through China’s Rise and What It Means for India, by Ananth Krishnan

Ananth Krishnan first moved to China in the summer of 2008. In the years that followed, he had a ringside view of the country’s remarkable transformation. He reported from Beijing for a decade, for the India Today and The Hindu. This gave him a privileged opportunity that few Indians have had — to travel the length and breadth of the country, beyond the glitzy skyscrapers of Shanghai and the grand avenues of Beijing that greet most tourists, to the heart of China’s rise.

This book is Krishnan’s attempt at unpacking India’s China challenge, which is four-fold: the political challenge of dealing with a one-party state that is looking to increasingly shape global institutions; the military challenge of managing an unresolved border; the economic challenge of both learning from China’s remarkable and unique growth story and building a closer relationship; and the conceptual challenge of changing how we think about and engage with our most important neighbour.

India’s China Challenge tells the story of a complex political relationship, and how China — and its leading opinion-makers — view India. It looks at the economic dimensions and cultural connect, and the internal political and social transformations in China that continue to shape both the country’s future and its relations with India.

The Comrades and the Mullahs: China, Afghanistan and the New Asian Geopolitics, by Ananth Krishnan and Stanly Johny

The withdrawal of the United States from Afghanistan has left a lasting impact on both Afghanistan’s future and on Asian geopolitics. It has also brought China into focus. This book traces the emergence of China as a key player in Afghanistan and the evolution of China’s Afghan policy especially with respect to its relations with the Taliban. Beijing’s dominant role in Afghanistan’s future is a potentially game-changing development in Asian geopolitics, even if questions remain about the former’s appetite to step in to fill the void and the limits of its ambitions.

In The Comrades and the Mullahs, Ananth Krishnan and Stanly Johny examine what Beijing’s interests are and the drivers of its foreign policy, and, more specifically, how its new Silk Road project-the Belt and Road Initiative-is shaping China-Afghan relations. They look at how Afghanistan has emerged as a key point on the corridor heading west from Xinjiang, and discuss the Xinjiang factor, drawing on their travels to China’s western frontiers, as well as the internal dynamics that are pushing Beijing’s westward march.

Another factor is the East Turkestan Islamic Movement and the terror groups that are leading to an increasingly securitized approach to China’s western regions and beyond, including possible Chinese plans to deploy special forces along the China-Afghan border areas in the Wakhan corridor and Badakhshan region.

China’s Afghan engagement has also deepened its ‘all-weather’ alliance with Pakistan-with Beijing increasingly leaning on Islamabad, particularly in its outreach to the Taliban and other elements in Afghanistan that have long been supported by the Pakistani state-and is a perennial source of tension between Islamabad and Kabul. The authors show how this increasing closeness is alarming for India, and might have far-reaching consequences, especially in Kashmir


A New Cold War: Henry Kissinger and the Rise of China, Edited by Sanjaya Baru and Rahul Sharma

In July 1971, US National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger, made a secret visit to China to meet top Chinese leaders. This inaugurated a new phase not just in US-China relations but in contemporary history. That visit and the subsequent US-China relationship, including the US decision to invest in China’s economic rise and admit it into the WTO, combined to firm up the foundations of China’s rise as a world power. For more than four decades, the leadership of the two countries had a secretive pact, which worked well to each other’s benefit. The US helped power China’s economic growth in the hope that Beijing would turn a new political leaf and adopt Western practices (e.g. democracy). China grew economically and militarily, used its financial prowess to spread its influence across continents, as four generations of Chinese leaders built their nation at the expense of the US. Half a century after Kissinger’s historic visit, the US and China are today engaged in a trade war bordering on a new Cold War. Washington is not openly talking about ‘de-coupling’ from China, which has begun to challenge its global dominance, but it might very well be. China has already established itself as a dominant power across Eurasia. More worryingly, China is militarily and economically threatening its neighbours, including Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan, Australia, Philippines, Indonesia and India.

This collection of critical essays examines the impact, consequences and legacy of Kissinger’s first, door-opening visit to China and how it has shaped world order.

 

***

For reviews, excerpts, interviews and more information, please contact Shivendra Singh at
shivendra.singh@harpercollins.co.in

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