Sunday 19 May 2013

LI KEQIANG GOES TO DELHI

Firstpost-Logothumbnail_29225955_std

IN THE HANDS OF LI KEQIANG AND MANMOHAN SINGH, THE FUTURE OF A CONTINENT

Firstpost, May 19, 2013

In the summer of 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Duchess Sophie were assassinated on the Latin Bridge in Sarajevo. The shots weren't, as pop history now has it, heard around the world. Europe was riding a great wave of prosperity that had stretched for over a century; its markets better-integrated than ever before and economic institutions better-developed than any in human history. Britain, focused on the Irish conflict, paid little attention to the regicide in the Balkans. The United States had long retreated into isolation, choosing to know little and care less. France had-what else-a sex scandal on its mind.

Less than weeks after the killing in Sarajevo, though, jaunty marching-bands were cheering on soldiers headed into a war that would end in the death of 10 million soldiers and seven million civilians. Europe's great powers had begun an inexorable march towards the abyss.

Chinese premier Li Keqiang will land in New Delhi on Sunday-bearing a message, he says, that his country and India “must shake hands… so that together we can raise the standing of Asia in the world”. It's hard to imagine either he or Prime Minister Manmohan Singh don't know their not-always-steady hands must guide their nations towards something more important than prestige: the survival of a continent.

Europe in 1913 looked a lot like Asia in 2013. China, like Germany back then, fears its rise is being shackled by the established great powers. In the global system, the United States operates much like imperial Britain, an arbiter of the destiny of nations far from its shores. India, like Russia, is struggling to emerge from backwardness-and views its newly powerful neighbour with deep trepidation. There are competing military modernisation programmes; new geo-strategic alliances; tensions from the East China Sea to the Himalaya and the deserts of Persia.

(...) [article here]

No comments: