New Delhi: Foreign secretary S Jaishankar on Thursday said that China was a model for India, saying that China’s rise has allowed India to make its presence felt.
“For India, in some ways, China has been a motivator and an example. People think if China can do that why can’t we. To some extent, China has opened up the international order allowing India to make its presence felt. Its rise has many facets to it,” Jaishankar said, who is soon to complete his term as foreign secretary. He was speaking at the Raisina Dialogue in the national capital today.
Adding that the rise of China was not the first time a power has risen in the last century, he said it sure was the rise of a different power.
“The US rose too. But clearly what we are seeing right now is not just the rise of a global power but a very different power. Also, whether that power would be a model to others is an open question,” he said.
“You have now Chinese think that their organizational model is replicable elsewhere. Would also say that the rise of China has been disruptive in many ways but also positively. We need to have a balanced view of it,” he added.
Elaborating on the changing world order, he explained that there were four very important disruptions that needed to be looked at, first and foremost being the rise of China.
“The second is the choices and postures of the United States. The third disruption is the challenge of terrorism, particularly governed spaces and the fourth would be the rise or the implications of non-market economics,” he said, adding that there was one transition that needed to be addressed too- “how the rule-based order is not about western world anymore and how it has become more universal.”
Elaborating on the US, he said that the US had been a disruptor for some time now and it was not just limited to the Donal Trump administration.
“Iraq was a disruption, American choice in Pakistan is, was and will be a disruption. I think Obama’s choices on Russia were a disruption to the conduct of international politics,” he said further.
Part of the solution to the aforementioned disruptions and transition, he said, was India. “If we look at India’s responses to the disruptions and the role that it can play in the transition, one will get the answer,” the foreign secretary said.
He also said India had taken the pressures from its west side so that the east side could grow.
“People don’t realise that we have absorbed all the pressures of the west side so that the east of India can be immune from set of viruses. The world around us partly depends on us. If we look at the neighbourhood, when there are multiple choices to the countries, people would exercise it to the advantage and we have to raise the level of our game,” he said.
“We’ve committed around 25-30 billion dollars in credits and grants to our extended neighbourhood, from East Africa to South East Asia. A lot of that is done on the hope that you will build connectivity,” he said, adding that on important issues (maritime security, climate change, counter-terrorism debates across the world), “you have an India which is stepping up.”
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