A public exchange between the foreign ministries of Asia’s two largest nations, India and China—also the world’s largest nations in terms of population, between them totaling almost 3 billion people—gives an interesting insight into their evolving diplomacy in an emerging, non-unipolar world. Both nations are approaching their efforts to improve their still-tense relations from the broader standpoint of securing a world order beneficial for all.
Indian External Affairs Minister Dr. Subrahmanyam Jaishankar spoke about relations with China in his Jan. 18 “India and the World” address. “As immediate neighbors and the only two societies with over a billion people, their dynamic could never have been easy,” he commented, even discounting their boundary dispute, “some baggage of history,” and “differing socio-political systems.” He argued, however, that “more thought needs to be given to the longer-term evolution of ties,” and offered the following thoughts:
“India’s approach can be summed up in terms of the three mutuals, i.e., mutual respect, mutual sensitivity and mutual interests. Bilateral ties can also benefit from a greater realization that what is at stake is actually the larger prospects of both nations and, in fact, even of the global order. It needs an acceptance that the emergence of a multipolar Asia is an essential prerequisite for a multi-polar world.”
Today, at the Chinese Foreign Ministry press conference, CCTV asked for a response to Jaishankar’s statement. Spokesman Guo Jiakun replied in a similar spirit: