China may have recently returned to our headlines — at least on some news TV channels — and we can argue about whether the threat on the border is real or exaggerated. But, for a moment, think the unthinkable. Could it be, could it just be, that we are a nation deeply scared of China? Not merely Sinophobic in the sense that many other major nations like the US, Japan and Korea may be, but genuinely scared. Since the short, sharp and disastrous war of 1962, could it just be that we have brainwashed two or three generations of Indians to live in dread of the dragon? We glare at Pakistan all the time, we look the US in the eye all the time now. But China? Just mention the word and we start talking trade, culture, shared values, centuries-old contacts and so on. Have we, over the decades, internalised, and institutionalised, a psychology of pretending a Chinese challenge, economically, politically and militarily (I have chosen that order deliberately) does not exist? And believing that, if it does, we can do nothing about it?

We flatter ourselves often enough comparing ourselves with China, we feel flattered when, rather occasionally, we are mentioned in the same breath as China. We were obviously so thrilled when some in the global financial community started saying, particularly when they came visiting India, that China “and India” were now key to a global recovery. But let’s be honest. Do facts on the ground justify that ranking? Consider just one fact. Since the governments around the world initiated stimulus packages exactly a year ago, the Chinese banking system has pumped an additional Rs 70 lakh crore of credit in their economy. Compare this with the total credit currently outstanding in our entire economy: just about Rs 27 lakh crore. So the Chinese, in less than a year, have shored up their economy and manufacturing by releasing additional credit that is two-and-a-half-times all credit of all times in India. And we, at the same time, are so self-congratulatory, we want to teach financial regulation to the world, and our central bank is fighting so fiercely to guard its bureaucratic turf it might be an interesting idea to send some Mint Street troopers to sort out the Chinese on the Ladakh border.

... contd.