From Chinese history and culture, 30 years was generally regarded as a very important time window for looking changes of society and human activities (including relationships between nations). There is a very well known phrase in Chinese literature to express such a belief: “Thirty years for the river east, and (next)thirty years for the river west”. What this means that major changes will occur every thirty years, so get used to it and always be ready to move on. If you looked at China’s relations with other major nations, you can tell such observations are not far off except with India:

WWII with Japan, ended 1940s, and re-established relationship in 1970s. Now Japan is China top trading partner.

Korea war with US, ended 1950s, and re-established relationship in 1970s. Also establsihed ties with South Korea in 1980s. Both US and SKorea are China’s major trading partners.

Border conflicts with USSR, happened 1960s, re-establihsed relationship at 1990s, now both in Shanghai Organization.

Border war with Vietnam, happened late 1970s, re-established relationship in late 1990s. Current Vietnam Premier graduated from a Chinese university after the war.

All these nations are now China’s major trading partners and most Chinese people have very faint memories about these wars except to Japan because Japan’s denial of responsibility. Even for Japan, China gave up its ritht for Japan to pay the war damages.

Form this board and other boards, it seems that India as a nation and India elite have not moved on from 1960s and it vividly shows from the emotions expressed from responses whenever the China comes to the text. We are not sure this is a culture issue, but if yes, the situation will continue for a very long time.

But as this poster pointed out earlier, big nations like India must have confidence in response to various opinions and even sometime hostile environments, and citizens also must be ready to move on from the past experiences. In international politics, one can not avoid major nations even the relatioship is not in the desired shape.

Many Chinese are not aware that we were at war and treat Indians with great hospitality which many would be hard pressed to offer in return. This was a very pleasant surprise to me.

The guys described the Chinese as very humble and genuinely interested in attracting Indians to setup shop in China. One Indian franchise went over with a plan to setup 150 outlets in a year - they ended up with around 4000 in 2006.

It costs about Rs 1.5 lakhs to pay for medical school in China and at the moment there are about 3000 students from Andhra Pradesh studying there. Many universities teach in English curriculum. The students are only encouraged to learn Chinese to interact with the local patients etc.

Chinese is not very hard to learn to speak according to one in our group and many Indians can speak it well enough. Meanwhile many Chinese children have learnt to speak good English.

Recently the head honcho of one of the IT majors visited one of the provinces to explore business options. He was welcomed at the airport by the head of the local government - significant because that state has business volume comparable to the size of the Indian economy. He was taken to his hotel to freshen up while the delegation waited in the lobby.

When discussions began, he was invited to setup shop to which the IT company chief hesitated at the investment to be made in land/buildings and even if they built one where was the supporting infrastructure. The state chief nodded at an aide to clear enough land and agreed to provide infrastructure (land, buildings, furnishing, roads, etc) as desired - next question. What about the time needed to train the people asked the IT chief? The officials cleared payment of one years salaries on the spot … I have no idea what has come of this but this is what is out there for some Indian businesses.

There are negatives some of which are poor “soft” infrastructures - legal structures for example. China is way ahead in hard infrastructure (ports, roads, buildings etc) but severely lacks soft infrastructure.

The building in which the restaurant we were in was built using cement from China. Price of Rs 140 per bag including duties. I am told Indian cement costs approx Rs 220. The same building owner is building a hotel with all raw materials including furnishings right down to to plates and silverware coming in from China.

I am just throwing this out there in reference to the Japanese attempt to create their “Asia arc”.

Japan’s proposal to form a broader asia arc to counter China is actually a de-facto self-demotion of Japan’s status in asia and can be considered as Japan’s acknowledgement of China’s superpower status (although China may not accept). There is no another explaination to this proposal because Japan is the biggest economy in asia and it has US as its major supporter, so why Japan has to form such an arc to counter China? Where is Japan’s national confidence?

However, consequences for Japan’s agressive move actually have no immediate impact to China, but only cause harm to US’s (may be India’s too) national intrests. At the time when Unites States try to get Afganistan situation stabilized and Pakistan at a political mess, Japan’s move may have major impact to Russian and Parkistan and will make US to work much harder for getting those countries to listen and have some focus. If you add Iran and North Korea in the mix, so how much explaining work Japan has generated for Unites States in order to calm down the region’s worries? Plus, any thing related to WWII responsibility denial is not positve to both Japan and India around the globe.

Abe praises Indians who backed Japan in WWII

http://asia.news.yahoo.com/070823/afp/070823071657asiapacificnews.html

A slap on the face to US and WWII alliance? US congress just passed a resolution for Japan to apologize for its atrocities to women during WWII.

little Ram/ thecupgr/ Nikhil : Thanks for bringing newer insights and adding value to the topic.

One of the Japanese delegates mentioned that the US has lost the edge in this area to Japan and France. Toshiba is the company that now owns Westinghouse. The other players are Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Hitachi. But I do remember reading elsewhere of the problems of Japanese nuclear facilities - with fatal mishaps causing facilities to be mothballed.

The $5 billion Monju facility using fast breeder technology was to be the centre piece but was plagued with problems like leakage of sodium coolant. Granted that it was back in 1995 but it would be nice to know if the technology is now stable because back then the impression was that it was too complicated to be commercialized.

I mention this because Indian players like Tata Power, Reliance Energy and NTPC are looking to get involved with technology transfer deals. Others waiting in the wings are companies like Lanco, GVK and GMR from Andhra Pradesh, Torrent from Gujarat, and CESC from West Bengal.

LOL on the Altman issue of India being a Japan client state. I would like to side with pragmatic on this. Altman needs to be kicked in the nuts for a stupid comparison.

Japan’s decision to investing in India actually is a direct response to several important trends in international politics and economics. Japan, as a major economic power, has been trying to show its influence and the everyone seems to have taken a notice.

First, six-party talks for North Korea disarmment may have exposed Japan’s weakness in influencing the meeting agenda. Japan may have felt that it did not have any leverage to contribute anything to the agreements.

Second, on-going US-China senior level talks may have worried Japan for its role between US and China. US, as the sole superpower, has been trying hard to bring China into its order framework and may hope China can play a bigger role for safeguarding the regional peace and stability. Japan may not like such US-China senior level talks.

Third, Japan may have reservations to recent US-India nuclear pact because Japan may feel that they were left out. Remember that Japan has the best civil nuclear technologies and a Japanese company currently controls Westinghouse. There are big commercial benefits in stake.

For US, the willingness to share energy technologies with China and India may have strategic considerations behind. US is trying to build a collaboration framework in order to avoid future energy conflicts, which shows that US places future world peace as a high priority. Unfortunately for Japan, they may have felt being left out, both politically and commercially.

So Japan responded with the infrastructure investment in order to be relevent in India, and also in the middle east.

Japan’s move actually is a repeat of history. When US re-established its relationship with China in 1970s, at the time, Japan also felt left out and then responded agressively in China market. For example, Japan invested heavily in China’s steel indutry at that time.

It must be a very tough decision for Japan because they have no other leaverages and other choices in India market. Their real goal now is probably not to contain China, but to let world, particularly US and China, know that Japan is still a big player in international politics.

For India, the expectation can be like this: money will be well spent and Japanese politics will be skillfully ignored.

As for giving him credit, I think it is worth practising with such bait to build our own argumentative and analytical strengths, a bit like doing weight-training with slightly larger weights each time to shore up one’s physical strength. Getting emotional does not change anyone’s perceptions; if anything, it shows us all up as cry-babies, which I hope we are not.