While the Indian communists continue to peddle their sophomoric anti-Americanism, their counterparts in Beijing are relishing the renewed warmth between China and the United States under the Obama administration. Much like CPM boss Prakash Karat, Beijing was nervous about the growing Indo-US partnership under President Bush. While Karat can’t change his song after Bush, the Chinese communists are determined to lock Obama in an embrace that he can’t wriggle out of. If Karat wants to undo the gains in Indo-US relations during the last decade, the Chinese foreign minister Yang Jiechi waxed lyrical about Sino-US relations last week in Washington. “As permanent members of the UN Security Council and as the world’s largest developing country and largest developed one respectively, China and the United States have maintained close consultation, coordination and mutually beneficial cooperation”, Yang said. “One can hardly find an area where China-US cooperation is not needed. Comprehensive cooperation in the global sphere has tied our two countries and peoples to each other,” Beijing’s top diplomat insisted.

Referring to the current financial crisis, Yang said, “China and the United States must weather the storm together like passengers in the same boat and support each other to get through the tough times and emerge from the crisis victorious.”

China does not see the current upswing in Sino-US relations as a temporary expedient. “Even when the train of world economy drives into fairly smooth areas one day,” Yang continued, “there will still be the need for China and the United States, the two big engines, to jointly push it forward on a continuous basis.” Unlike the CPM which can indulge in schoolboy radicalism, the Chinese Communist Party has the responsibility of protecting the interests of more than a billion Chinese people. While the CPM can’t get out of its Third World mindset, the CCP is animated by the prospect taking the lead in global affairs in the 21st century.

... contd.