In recent years, the young patriotic Chinese have set alight the web-world amidst perceived insults to the motherland more than protesting against the injustices of the political system at home.

All this however does not mean China has solved all its political problems. Far from it. Change, indeed, is inevitable in China. The question is, when and how this change might unfold. What are the factors catalysing and retarding China’s inevitable political evolution?

As the CCP forgets Marx and promotes the traditional Confucian values, many Sinologists argue that the sources of Chinese political development must be found in its own long history and the recent structural changes in its society.

They also insist that simplistic theses — “capitalism versus communism” and “democracy versus dictatorship” — might help frame the issues nicely but offer little insight into the rumbling of the tectonic plates underneath China’s overt calm.

If this assessment is right, India is rather poorly equipped to cope with the changes in China. For all its rhetoric about “Asian solidarity” and its enthusiasm for the old “East versus West” paradigm, India has made little intellectual investment in knowing China. Barring the Foreign Office, few Indian agencies have trained their cadres to either learn the language or master the politics of China.

In the US, hundreds of colleges teach Mandarin and Chinese studies. In India, you could count such institutions on your finger tips. While China hosts thousands of foreign journalists, only a handful of Indians are part of that list.

... contd.