As China celebrates the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic this week, India must take a deep breath and begin a fundamental rethink its strategy towards the rising giant north of our borders.

The recent anti-China hysteria in our mass media may yet serve a purpose if shakes our political classes out of their complacence. For nearly two decades, India’s China policy has stood on three legs: say nice things in public about Sino-Indian friendship, Asian unity and anti-Western solidarity; nurse intense grievances in private; and avoid problem solving because that would need a lot of political courage.

Our elite is now swinging wildly from being feckless to anti-China bravado. This merely replaces self-deception with certain self-defeat. As it seeks a new equilibrium with China, India needs a policy that is neither foolishly romantic nor stupidly hawkish.

Delhi’s new approach must be built upon an unambiguous recognition that the rapid rise of China is the single most important geopolitical fact of our time that must be addressed purposefully and on a sustained long-term basis.

It must also be based on the self-assurance that India too is emerging and can find its own rightful place in Asia and the world without having to treat China as a threat or become its subaltern.

The proposed realpolitik for India is not very different from that articulated by Chairman Deng Xiaoping for the Chinese leaders in the early 1990s. Deng’s advice is the virtual opposite of what has passed off as a debate on China during the last few weeks in Delhi.

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