‘Hindi-Chini Bhai-Bhai’: Indian media representations of China

BY Subarno Chattarji| IN Books | 23/07/2005

Subarno Chattarji

In its pursuit of economic prosperity and its desire to belong to an increasingly globalized world, Indian policy makers and politicians almost constantly evoke the example of the West. Although Europe is a part of that western model, the primary template for all the virtues of modernization and its attendant joys is the US. A recent Pew Research Center global poll (the Global Attitudes Project) found that Indians were the most enthusiastic and positive about the US, in sharp contrast to skepticism and cynicism in the UK, France, Spain, and Germany. This positive attitude is evident in the proliferation of what is perceived to be quintessentially American lifestyle icons in India ranging from shopping malls to designer labels, from Ruby Tuesday to the television sitcom ¿Sex and the City¿. The fascination with all things American is reflected in media coverage which includes not only politics and sport but celebrity trivia emanating from Hollywood.

But the focus on America is intertwined with awareness that there are countries in geographical proximity to India who are closer to the dream of realizing the American utopia and who are far more integrated into the global trade, economic, and power systems than India is. An earlier generation of Indians in the fifties and sixties was hopelessly envious of the Japanese, in the eighties it was the Asian tigers that showed up the inefficiency of India¿s economy, and now the object of competition as well as standard of comparison is China.

This essay looks at English language print media articles dealing with China as well as one internet portal¿s response to the Chinese premier¿s visit in April 2005. I will be looking at articles published in 2005 only. I have limited the time frame to ensure that I can focus on some primary issues raised by the media coverage rather than be swamped by the volume of that coverage. Indian media¿s obsession with matters Chinese is not, of course, limited to 2005 and the issues dealt with this year are available in articles published earlier. However, 2005 is also seen as an epochal moment in Indo-Chinese relations primarily because of the visit of Premier Wen Jiabao and I will concentrate on that to foreground certain hopes and anxieties that underly India¿s response to China.

While there are innumerable China specific articles, it is important to emphasize the extent to which China functions as a constant frame of reference in pieces that are about India¿s politics and concerns. A special two-page report on the completion of one year by the present coalition government, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), ¿Worldly-Wise India is Happy Making New Friends¿ (Indrani Bagchi, Sunday Times of India, May 15, 2005, p.12), lauds the government for its foreign policy initiatives. It would seem from the article that India is a pivotal player in world politics. ¿China is wooing India, the US is wooing India, so are Japan and Asean, and the Pakistanis are coming in droves. Surely something is going right.¿

Despite the importance of the US in a largely unipolar world, a fact acknowledged by the ten year Indo-US defense pact signed in June 2005, the order of countries mentioned by Bagchi is not entirely without significance, as she indicates later in the same analysis: ¿China is clearly the feather in the cap. A boundary settlement is just over the horizon and with galloping trade acting as ballast, the Sino-India relationship now has a foundation of trust. If the 21^st century belongs to Asia, both India and China will accommodate each other, even as they seek domination. The Indian foreign office is dealing with China with a sophistication that has managed to make strategic partners out of strategic competitors.¿ The boundless optimism of this sentence encapsulates some of the problems and desires that are reflected in most media reports emanating from India. The boundary settlement, to take the most vexed problem between the two countries, is not really ¿just over the horizon¿. There is an assumption here that the ¿ballast of trade¿ will offset competition and historical memory, as well as the complexities of the border negotiations. The hope is not entirely false as over the past decade China and India have been willing to proceed with trade ties and allow questions of territory to be taken up later. Indeed China¿s recognition of Sikkim as an integral part of India and India¿s reciprocal gesture regards Tibet shows that progress can be made.

There are, however, no facile solutions and the border dispute is at the center of a future of trust and cooperation between the two countries. The only indication of the crucial importance of the border settlement in the Indian media appeared in the newsmagazine Frontline, to which I will return. Bagchi¿s use of the word ¿wooing¿ along with its coy matrimonial connotations, places India at the center of attention, the reluctant but powerful regional (and perhaps world) power that must be courted assiduously. Bagchi also highlights in passing a theme that recurs in media reportage: that India and China seek both accommodation and domination. The subtext of this is that the two are equal partners, an illusion that most of the Indian media sustains quite ably.

The economy and economic facts are a major point of comparison in media reports dealing with the two countries. Achievements or non-achievements are constantly weighed against the Chinese model. For example an article on the visit of Wal-Mart¿s President and CEO, John B. Menzer, to India in May 2005 details the excitement triggered by his desire to shop for food and dairy products for his behemoth chain. ¿After Indian textiles, apparel, jewellery and household products, it could well be basmati rice, gulab jamuns, vegetarian cheese, and spices that could find their way on Wal-Mart shelves in global markets¿ (Ratna Bhushan, ¿Wal-Mart CEO visit triggers hopes among food, dairy cos¿ Business Times, May 16, 2005, p.19). At an obvious level Mr. Menzer¿s need is for cheaper goods and the buzz is created by India¿s ability to export primary products to Wal-Mart. One aspect of the new global economy is the ways in which older trade patterns persist whereby poorer countries export raw materials in exchange for precious foreign exchange and/or aid. Indian corporate leaders are justifiably proud of their new ventures into foreign manufacturing markets, but their share is puny. As Bhushan points out, ¿It [Wal-Mart] sources products worth $1 billion from India. In comparison to China that¿s small, from where it sources products worth $18 billion.¿ Not only is this is a damning comparison that puts the visit and its hype in perspective, it also omits the fact that a major part of products sourced from China are manufactured goods, not primary products such as rice and spices.

India¿s discomfort with China¿s manufacturing base is indicated in another article, ¿China far ahead in textile exports¿ that deals with an area in which India is supposed to have a world presence. The article is surprisingly candid about India¿s inadequacies in the face of the Chinese juggernaut. ¿"We were never in the running for the first place,¿ said an official. ¿We aim to come second and we are on track.¿" The only hope seems to lie in protectionist measures taken by the US and EU against the Chinese ¿deluge¿. ¿In the wake of the two rounds of quota curb announcements by the US against China this month [May 2005], Assocham said India¿s textile exports could increase by 50% to those two major markets¿ (Priya Ranjan Dash, Times of India, May 21, 2005, p.9).

Unable to compete Indian traders give up on the free market and hope that old fashioned trade barriers will help them. This is a clear acknowledgement of non-parity and the projection of China as a threat which has to be contained by bigger powers - the US, and EU. In its use of the term ¿deluge¿ and its alignment with the US and EU the article, perhaps unwittingly, taps into dominant Western anxieties about the threat represented by China¿s economic clout. In this identification Indian media follows a pattern established by the media in the West. The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The Washington Post are just some prominent media names who have over the years heightened western fears of being swamped by cheap Chinese goods. These representations find their counterpart in academic discourse such as Samuel Huntington¿s harping on the challenge represented by China and in political discourse such as Donald Rumsfeld¿s characterization of China as a threat to regional security (June 2005).

Underlying these iterations are older patterns of fear related to a period, particularly in the US, when Chinese were both necessary as labour for the Pacific Railroad and despised as the yellow hordes who would overwhelm and contaminate Anglo-Saxon purity. The Chinese were portrayed in popular culture and political discourse as drug-abusing, cheating heathens and their entry into the country frequently referred to in terms of a deluge or pestilence. In the 21^st century older racist appellations applied to an immigrant community and people are now transferred to encompass the ¿deluge¿ of Chinese products which are the metonymic representations of the new yellow peril. In India the fear of Chinese immigration was nonexistent but substituted particularly since 1962 by the dread of invasion. By appropriating these Western stereotypes Indian media representations participate in an egregious discourse reflective of national inadequacies. The rhetoric also reflects the difficulty of acknowledging the economic gap between the two nations.

Indo-Chinese relations as reflected in political and media discourse in India move between extremities, from the bonhomie of Hindi-Chini Bhai-Bhai to extreme suspicion, and they are not helped by factors such as India¿s granting asylum to the Dalai Lama or the 1962 war. There is an acute and simultaneous sense of competitiveness, parity, and inferiority, available most obviously in the realm of Information Technology. India¿s prowess in software and its burgeoning presence in business process outsourcing are acknowledged the world over. Wen Jiabao visited Bangalore, India¿s Silicon Valley, before New Delhi, a sign of the importance that China places on India¿s IT industry. The numbers, however, give the lie to India as a global giant whether in terms of computers per capita, internet penetration, or share of the world market. Narayanmurthy, founder and CEO of Infosys, the first Indian IT firm to register on the NY Stock Exchange, reminded the industry at home of its paltry presence on the world stage. For example, while India has 99 million telecom users, China has 650 million; India has 15 million internet users, China 94 million.

The next category of comparison and national heartburn is the importance of and integration into globalized trade frameworks. Foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows into China are a constant source of envy and amazement, so much so that some media reports attempt to argue against the facts. An Indian internet portal rediff.com carried an article by Rajeev Srinivasan ¿India v China: Startling Economic Facts¿. Herein Srinivasan argued that although India may be somewhat behind in GDP or PPP (Purchasing Power Parity) or FDI, China had cooked it books and the situation is not that bad. The idea that the Chinese communist government is inherently untrustworthy and economic indices emanating from such sources are grossly inflated is an old one and has been in circulation in the Western media for quite a while. Srinivasan cites several such sources ranging from The Economist, Time and Newsweek to the San Jose Mercury News. The titles are indicative of their content: ¿China: How cooked are the books?¿, ¿Workers wasteland,¿ ¿A dragon out of puff.¿ Srinivasan cites with approbation an opinion piece in The Asian Wall Street Journal, ¿India and China: Asia¿s Tortoise and Hare¿ where the author Bruce Gilley writes:

"North Asia`s colossus appears to be a paragon of efficient government and high growth. Its South Asia counterpart seems mired in political stasis and sluggish growth. That view is propagated most forcefully by Western investment banks and multinationals, and eagerly embraced by Chinese nationalists and disaffected Indian intellectuals. Yet it is a gross misreading of the comparative achievements of the two countries. A closer reading shows that, in the last two decades, India has done better than China both in social and economic progress and in the expansion of rights and freedoms." [Emphasis mine]

Gilley has correctly identified craven Indian "intellectuals" - India¿s greatest liability -- as those most eager to embrace the views of Chinese nationalists. In other words, "secular," "progressives," Nehruvian Stalinists, JNU-ites and Marxists. Unfortunately for them, they are wrong, as Gilley goes on to demonstrate in the rest of his article. (Srinivasan, www.rediff.com)

According to Gilley and Srinivasan it turns out that China inflates its FDI inflows and India underreports its own. Apparently 50% of the FDI in China is actually flight money, Chinese money being rerouted. As a result it turns out that instead of a gap of about $40 billion the difference is much less. In Srinivasan¿s words: ¿Therefore, the reported FDI for India is considerably less than the reality: thus, in fact, on an apples to apples comparison, India`s FDI goes up to $8 billion or so and China`s comes down to $20 billion or so: roughly proportional to their nominal GDPs. So it is not the case that India has done frightfully badly in FDI.¿ The article is a wonderful combination of factual arm twisting, patriotic jingoism, and intolerance. Gilley¿s conflation of ¿Chinese nationalists and disaffected Indian intellectuals¿ is eagerly expanded by Srinivasan to blame the pet hate groups of the political right in India ¿"secular," "progressives," Nehruvian Stalinists, JNU-ites and Marxists¿, as if they alone are to blame for all the inefficiency, corruption, mismanagement, and bureaucracy that plague Indian industry and economy. There is a bridge here between Chinese communism and its godless Marxist counterpart in India, represented in particular by Nehru and the university named after him. Srinivasan concludes: ¿Indians also have no reason to be overawed by a mythical Chinese success story. That is the intent of this essay, to urge Indians to not blindly follow China¿s example. This is a real danger, because India¿s "intellectuals" are uncritically starry-eyed over China.¿ India need only rid itself of starry-eyed intellectuals and its inferiority complex vis-à-vis China will be sorted. Srinivasan wrote a series of articles for rediff.com and his brand of rhetorical defense is part of the discourse of intolerance and racism I noted earlier.

While Srinivasan represents an extremist, untenable, and factually dubious portrait of the relations between India and China, there is another line of defense that the Indian media frequently projects. This is the fact that India is a democracy and China is not. Chidanand Rajghatta¿s ¿India a growing global power, natural friend: US¿ (Sunday Times of India, May 29, 2005, p.8), is part of this stable of journalism. The article is essentially an interview with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the questions are loaded towards making explicit comparisons between China and India as global powers. Rice makes the point that India¿s advantage is its functioning democracy: ¿"The advantage in India is its democracy. And it is a quite remarkable democracy. […] It¿s a remarkable story. And because our view is that democracies tend to be stabilizing in their activities and behaviour, obviously it¿s a good thing that India is a democracy. […] The United States has issues with China over democratization, human rights issues, religious freedom issues, the transparency and openness in politics, its currency and intellectual property rights. An economy that big has simply got to be within the rules of the international economy or it will be disruptive to the international economy."¿

This is music to Indian ears and carries the stamp of US approval so necessary for India¿s self esteem. As in the appropriation of American racist tropes to counter China¿s economic prowess, so too here India acquires identity and affirmation by firing over the shoulders of the US. While the issues that the US has with China are valid ones, it is interesting to note that some of them - human rights, religious freedom, transparency and openness in politics - are equally applicable to India. Indian pretensions towards global power status are also stymied by a corrupt, inefficient, and obdurate political and bureaucratic class and there seems little change. The trumpeting of democracy as a panacea for all ills is central to US foreign policy at present and India is an automatic beneficiary of that outlook. The article and interview also inadvertently highlight the fact that the US has ¿issues with China¿ because China impinges in a major way on US economic and geopolitical interests, whereas India is still a bit player. The Time issue of May 30, 2005 emphasized China¿s increasing clout in Southeast Asia and US anxieties about this phenomenon. However, Rajghatta¿s article headline and text highlight India¿s global desire and its affirmation by the US.

ⁱ China¿s importance in the public imagination in India was also indicated by a Times News Service Poll across eleven cities. ¿In response to a question on which was the bigger achievement of the government - sustaining economic growth or improving ties with neighbours China and Pakistan - the economy took a backseat, with 59% voting for better relations with China and Pakistan.¿ Shankar Raghuraman, ¿Never Mind the Promises, It¿s a Job Well Done,¿ Sunday Times of India, May 15, 2005, 12.