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Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Is the India and China hype true?
By BRAHMA CHELLANEY
Today it has become commonplace to speak of India and China in the same breadth as two emerging great powers challenging the two-century-old Western domination of the world.
How justifiable is the hype on their rise? The future will not belong to China and India merely because they have a huge landmass and together make up more than a third of humanity. Being large in size and population is not necessarily an asset.
In history, small, strategically geared states have wielded global power. The colonial powers that emerged in the 18th and 19th centuries were led by small Britain and included tiny Portugal and the Netherlands.
For analysts, it is tempting to make long-term linear forecasts on the basis of current trends. But such projections in the past have rarely come right. Remember the popular concerns in the United States in the 1980s that a fast-rising Japan threatened America's industrial might?
The reason why such predictions have come wrong is that statistical probability — the sole tool in forecasting — has little application in strategic analyses.
The straight-line projections on the economic growth of China and India may be too one-dimensional.
Goldman Sachs, for instance, forecasts that China's economy will surpass the U.S. economy around 2035 and that India will do so a decade later.
This could happen but it is hardly certain. To be sure, economic growth is essential to underpin political and social stability. It is doubtful the Chinese Communist Party's monopoly on power will survive without it continuing to deliver high economic growth. But such growth in any country hinges on several factors, endogenous and exogenous. One factor beyond the control of policymakers in India and China that could slow economic growth and create major policy challenges for them in the years ahead, for example, is climate change.
China and India, of course, have history on their side. These two were the world's largest economies for centuries up to 1820, after which they went into sharp decline due to their failure to catch up with the industrial revolution and by making themselves easy prey for European colonial interventions.
But world history is replete with instances of small states made powerful by farsighted policies and big states unraveled by weak, unimaginative leaders.
China certainly has a more forward-looking leadership than India, even though Chinese leaders, lacking popular legitimacy, tend to be more insecure. India has to pay a "democracy tax" that weighs down its decision-making and slows its economic development.
When one examines natural endowments — such as arable land, water resources, mineral deposits, hydrocarbons and wetlands — the picture that emerges is not exactly gratifying for India and China in order for them to achieve enduring great-power capacity. Bounteous natural capital is critical for a country to sustain national strength over the long run.
India and China together have more than 35 percent of the global population — or eight times the number of inhabitants in the U.S. — but just 60 percent more usable arable land than America.
The two giants would have had a better balance between land size, population and natural resources had their populations been much smaller. But even as India still adds nearly a million people a month despite a slowing fertility rate, some Indians cheer the "demographic dividend" that awaits their youthful country while the developed world ages. Failure has come to be identified as a success.
At a time when the world is confronting an energy crisis — symbolized both by the spiraling price of crude oil and gas, and the buildup of planet-warming greenhouse gases in the atmosphere — India and China stick out for their fast-rising dependency on energy imports and growing contribution to carbon-dioxide emissions. Their energy dilemma causes a growing burden and threatens to slow down their economic rise.
Constraints on resources are likely to become pronounced as more and more Indians and Chinese gain income to embrace modern comforts in everyday life — from gasoline-fueled transport to water-guzzling gadgets like washing machines and dishwashers.
The global demand for resources is set to soar, along with their prices. But unlike the choices that the old economic giants had in their path of development — such as the one exemplified by the shift from scarce timber to abundant coal in 18th-century Britain — the emerging economic giants can avail themselves of no substitutes for some of the resources whose present demand is beginning to lag availability.
Of all the resources, the one with the greatest strategic bearing on the future prospects of India and China is fresh water.
Climate change will have a significant impact on the availability and flow of river waters from the Himalayas and Tibetan highlands, making water a key element in the national-security calculus of China and India. The Himalayan snow melt that feeds Asia's great rivers is likely to be accelerated by global warming.
China and India already are water-stressed economies. The spread of irrigated farming and water-intensive industries and a rising middle class are drawing attention to their serious struggle over water resources.
Having entered an era of perennial water shortages that are likely to parallel, in terms of per capita water availability, the scarcity in the Middle East, India and China face the prospect that their rapid economic modernization could stall due to inadequate water resources. This prospect will become a reality if their industrial, agricultural and household demand for water continues to grow at the present frenetic pace.
Even though India's usable arable land is larger than China's — 160.5 million hectares compared to 137.1 million hectares — the source of all the major Indian rivers except one is the Chinese-held Tibetan plateau. While the Ganges originates on the Indian side of the Himalayas, its two main tributaries flow in from Tibet.
China's ambitious interbasin and inter-river water transfer projects in the vast Tibetan plateau, and its upstream damming of the Brahmaputra, Sutlej and other rivers, threaten India's well-being. If President Hu Jintao — a hydrologist by training who has served as party secretary in Tibet — begins China's long-pending project to divert the waters of the Brahmaputra northward to the parched Yellow River, it would constitute the declaration of a water war on lower-riparian India and Bangladesh.
Water is likely to become a cause of Sino-Indian tensions, reopening old wounds and bringing Tibet to center stage. Asia's economic rise and the ensuing shifts in international power equations foreshadow a world characterized by a greater distribution of power. But the hype on China and India needs to be tempered by geopolitical realism centered on a careful assessment of their long-term potential to build and sustain comprehensive power.
Brahma Chellaney, a professor of strategic studies at the privately funded Center for Policy Research in New Delhi, is the author, most recently, of the best-selling "Asian Juggernaut: The Rise of China, India and Japan."
日本时报： 鼓吹中印崛起没道理 自然资源有瓶颈如今，关于中国和印度这两个新兴大国挑战西方世界主导权的说法已是司空见惯。这种鼓吹中印崛起的说法有道理吗？未来不会仅仅因为中印庞大的国土以及人口（加起来占世界人口三分之一以上）而属于中国和印度。国土的广阔与人口的庞大并不一定是资产。在历史上，小而富于战略的国家掌握全球权力。18、19世纪的殖民大国以小小的英国、葡萄牙和荷兰为首。
分析家喜欢根据当前趋势作长远直线预测。但在过去，这样的预测鲜有正确。还记得八十年代流行的观点吗？那时候人们以为快速崛起的日本威胁美国的工业实力。那些预测之所以错误，原因在于战略分析很少应用作为唯一预测工具的统计学概率。对中国和印度经济增长的直线预测可能往往是一维的。
例如，高盛预言中国的经济将在2035年左右超过美国的经济，而印度将在2045年后超越。这种情况可能发生，但并不确定。当然，经济增长对政治和社会稳定至关重要。如果无法继续实现经济高增长，中国共产党的权力垄断难以持续。但任何国家的经济增长都受制于一些内外因素。例如，气候变化就是一个超出印度和中国决策者控制的、可能减缓经济增长并构成重大政治挑战的因素。
当然，中国和印度历史辉煌。在1820年以前的很多世纪里，它们都是世界上最大的经济体。在1820年后，它们由于没有赶上工业革命而急剧衰退，轻易受到欧洲殖民干涉的掠食。但世界历史上有很多例子说明面积不大的国家可以因为富有远见的政策而强大，面积庞大的国家可能被软弱、缺乏想象力的领袖毁掉。
中国的领导人当然比印度的更富前瞻性，不过中国领导人缺乏大众合法性（popular legitimacy），往往更没有安全感。而印度不得不支付削弱其决策、放缓其经济增长的“民主税”。
在自然资源方面，印度和中国的情况并不真的乐观。而丰富的自然资产对于维持长期的国家实力至关重要。
印度和中国总人口占世界人口35%，差不多是美国人口的八倍，但可耕种土地只是美国的60%。
世界面临能源危机（以石油和天然气价格高涨、温室气体集结为象征），但印度和中国的快速崛起依赖能源进口，并制造越来越多的二氧化碳排放。它们的能源困境造成越来越大的负担，并可能制约它们的经济崛起。
在所有资源当中，对印度和中国未来最具战略意义的是淡水。气候变化将对来自喜马拉雅和西藏高原的河流产生重大影响，水成为关于中国和印度国家安全的重要因素。滋养亚洲大河的喜马拉雅积雪可能因气候变暖加速融化。
中国和印度已经是水资源紧张的经济体。印度和中国快速的现代化可能因为水资源不足而停顿。如果它们的工业、农业和家庭用水继续飞速增长，这一可能性将成为现实。
尽管印度可更耕种土地比中国的多，但印度主要河流只有一条不是来自中国控制的西藏高原。水可能变成中印关系紧张的一个原因，重新揭开旧伤疤，把西藏带到中心舞台。
亚洲经济崛起以及随之而来的国际权力平衡转变预示着一个以更大的权力分配为特色的世界。但关于中国和印度的炒作应该降温，地缘政治现实主义应关注审慎评估它们建设和维持综合国力的长期潜能。（原标题：关于印度和中国的炒作可信吗？作者：BRAHMA CHELLANEY）
