The Chinese century and the fate of India

I had the chance of reading the book Destined For War by Graham Allison. The author was not able to escape out of his prejudices while explaining the rivalry between the US and China. However, those issues aside, and if we only focus on the case that he lays out using harsh realities that are actually hiding in plain sight or should I rather say inaudible because of the noise all around. One such fact is that China is not going to surpass the United States as the largest economy of the world but rather it already has. Using the Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) yardstick, which is the standard measure used by economists worldwide, and to skip over the economic mumbo jumbo, the United States is no longer the number one economy in the world, China is.

The one tectonic shift that got me thinking about the future of India and Pakistan is how the Chinese economy is on its way to gain 30% share of the global economy while the US would have 11% share. And this is projected to happen around the year 2040, which is about 16 years from now. On the scale of nation states changing their piece of the pie among the comity of nations, this is equivalent to merely a few minutes if not seconds. Here is the crucial part: the US knows it, China knows it, India knows it. What about Pakistan?

Here is why it is important to know because this is a matter of vision for the future. Pakistan has always relied on borrowed power majorly from the United States during much of its history. We are living in the American century but the next century most likely is the Chinese. And we are sleepwalking into it very fast.

America is feeding India to bark harder at the Chinese but what we might all be missing is that the master throwing the bone is perhaps soon going to stop being able to do that because of its diminished economic powerhouse. And if history is any guide; once nation states gain financial wealth, their next steps include gaining military strength and imperialistic urges. If the projections about China’s economy are right, China would have twice the share of the world economy than the American share way before 2040. That will not be a good day for India.

The one thing we know is that nation states are pragmatic actors and believe in national interests. England burnt the White House down to ashes in 1814 but today both are strong allies. Japan and the US, Germany and England, and many other examples exist from humanity’s recent past where enemies of the yesteryear became allies due to national and business interests.

However, India most likely would feel the wrath of the Chinese power for the same reason that the US is not tolerating China, which is the same reason an established Sparta did not tolerate a rising Athens. As Allison lays out in his book, when a rising power threatens the powerful and dominant position of the established power, conflict is inevitable. It is called the Thucydides’s Trap. India is certainly nowhere close to being a superpower but it has been getting nurtured as a player that would power up to stand up to China, which is not going to tolerate any state, least of all in its neighborhood. China is already challenging the global order by establishing a World Bank equivalent called the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). It is surpassing the US in making advances in military capabilities, AI, space technology, and so forth. It has lifted half a billion people out of poverty in less than a generation. China produces a billionaire every week.

Perhaps Pakistan needs to lay low until China becomes America, which will turn Pakistan into the new India of the region challenging America’s India, which would be an India enjoying the support of the second richest country in the world.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 30^th, 2023.

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