7 - Strategic Transactions: China, India and Southeast Asia

Summary

The rise of Asian power and its transformed strategic profile in the 21st century is predicated on the robust restructuring and rejuvenation of several countries in the region. Among these, China and India have a long history of pre-eminence and are now embarking on the process of economic-industrial transformation reflected in trajectories of their phenomenal and sustained economic growth, socio-economic development, and strategic transformation. The two states have impressively progressed with the strong penchant of adapting their respective cultural and civilizational ethos that has resulted in a powerful and resilient capacity to absorb the western institutional processes and indices of national power. Significantly, these processes and indices have been gradually assimilated into their socio-cultural-political-strategic matrix.

The phenomenal rise of Asia in the 21st century has its foundations in “antiquity”. China and India were the two great powers that were the richest and indeed most formidable powers in ancient times, epitomized by their networks of politico-economic and strategic transactions in the neighbourhood in Southeast Asia and as far as Persia, the Eurasian landmass and the Mediterranean. China and India were the pre-eminent maritime powers in Asia that possessed mercantile and naval prowess, which was brought to bear on their respective strategic conduct. The early modern period witnessed the relative decline of the two states in comparison to the imperial-colonial powers of Europe that benefited immensely from the Industrial Revolution. China and India could not compete with the ingress of colonial and mercantile initiatives of the European powers that came from the sea, to the littoral and into the heartland that resulted in their gradual decline and eventual subjugation.

In the civilizational history of Asia, Southeast Asia made a seminal contribution and played a significant role in the prosperity of China and India facilitating movement of people, cultures, and religion otherwise constrained by difficult and challenging overland geography. Notwithstanding its distinctive geographical position as a gateway to the East and the West and its civilizational eminence, there is a tendency to understand Southeast Asia through the prism of Indian and Chinese civilizations. This was due to a wide and dominating prevalence of Indian and Chinese social, cultural, religious practices, and language, trade and even statecraft in the region. Ironically, Southeast Asia came to be known as “Greater India”, “Farther India”, and “Little China”.