Rising To The China Challenge: Winning Through Strategic Patience And Economic Growth | Book Spotlight: Ajit Ranade

Motivation for the book

So, just around the time when the pandemic began early 2020, some of us started discussing the issues around pandemic, which was a major event and disruption, but also the global geopolitics around it and geoeconomic disruption around the world. It was an amazing and incredible period where economic activity came to a standstill, at least the activities which require people to be in offices, factories, and yet in some other ways life continued and some activity continued. So, some of us started talking about, since the pandemic had China connections and there was also discussion about India-China relations, so the book started off with a discussion around that theme, and over a couple of months we realized that we had enough material to actually put it all together in the form of a book.

The pandemic restrictions of online meetings, of being stuck at home mostly, of catching on readings, whether offline, online, all that helped and six of us actually managed to put it all together and it came in the form of a book, eventually got published towards the third quarter of 2021.

Themes explored

So, the book title is Rising to the China Challenge and even though as I mentioned the discussions around the book started during the pandemic, the book is really about India's economic relations with China. So, in that sense, it doesn't really deal with the issues of the pandemic or the health episode or vaccines per se, it's more about the economic relationship.

So, the book deals with the fact that India-China economic relations, that includes trade and commerce and perhaps investments, this relationship is a very dynamic, one of the most dynamic relationships in the world in the 20th century or 21st century and in fact the trade has been growing at a galloping speed, but one aspect of this trade is that it is asymmetric. China's exports to India have grown dramatically, whereas India's exports to China have grown, but at a much slower speed. India used to be destination number 19 in terms of its importance back in 2001 and it rapidly grew to position number 5 or 6 in the next 15 years.

So, that's how rapidly the trade increased, especially India's relative importance in China export destinations. So, that is one. Secondly, apart from the trade asymmetry, the increasing dependency of India on key critical inputs for its industrialization, whether it was equipment for its power sector or telecom sector, whether it was ingredients for its pharmaceutical industry, which are very important exporting sector or consumer electronics, telephones.

So, a variety of sectors, there was a critical dependency, which was something that we looked at, I mean, how to reduce this dependency. As you know, in the middle of 2020, there was a major clash in Galwan. In fact, that is also one of the reasons why this book came about, that after a gap of almost 58 years, there were casualties, I mean, soldiers died.

And although the border issue remains unresolved, there's a lot of heat, and sometimes tensions and tempers rise. But somehow, since the previous 58 years, there has been no incident of having people getting killed. But in 2020 summer, that changed.
In fact, India responded by putting a lot of restrictions on trade as well as investments. So, this also led to this important question of how can India reduce its dependency on critical Chinese inputs. And this book talks about this in great detail.

Misconceptions Challenged

Very importantly, as I said, India-China relations, whether it's economic relations, political relations, geopolitics, or even people-to-people relations, government-to-government, university-to-university, business-to-business, it's a very important relationship. India and China make up one-sixth, sorry, 40 percent of humanity. And they are also neighbors, and they make up a large part of the Asian economy.

So, it cannot be wished away, the relations cannot be wished away. At the same time, while there are points of conflict like the border issue, there are also perhaps points of mutual benefit and where our interests are somewhat aligned. Like, for example, climate change, which is an international issue or the nuclear non-proliferation proliferation is also something that perhaps India and China are aligned.

So, the fact is that this relation, this India-China study, is very important from India's perspective. I also must mention that the level of China scholarship in India, that is understanding in depth of Chinese economy, their politics, their society, their history is not as deep as it needs to be. I would say even a country like United States, which is far away, has a much deeper understanding of Chinese society.

So, our book is also a kind of a contribution towards understanding China better. Of course, thankfully, in the last few years, there have been a huge number of books. There are specific books on Chinese economic policy or some of the recent political developments or the prospects of China for the next 20 years.
So, there's many aspects that are coming out of India, which is a very heartening feature. Our book, which came out early in 2021, is a contribution in that direction. I mean, I would say that it gives you a good perspective of the last couple of decades of India-China relations and the prospects for rising to the China challenge, as the title says.

China to India poses a challenge because on one hand, it's a very important and strong trading partner. On the other hand, it is an asymmetric relationship. So, India needs to engage, but it needs to also reduce its vulnerable dependency.

Takeaways for readers

I think the readers will get a good understanding of the historical evolution, especially in the last two or three decades. See, in 1990, India and China roughly had the same GDP and roughly, of course, the same per capita income. So, in a way, they started together.

But in the next 30, 35 years, the Chinese economy is five times larger. And of course, they are now close to being a superpower, whether it's in economy, military, technology, space and so on. In fact, remember that the book was written in 2021, but it's become very relevant even in 2025 and in President Trump's second presidency, it is clearly seen as now a rivalry between two superpowers.

So, readers will get a good sense of how this economic relationship between India and China evolved in the last few decades, which are the specific industrial sectors where there is critical dependency, and what can we do and how can we do it to reduce this dependency, what kind of domestic strategies we need to pursue. There's also a great amount of discussion because one of the authors is a diplomat and a geopolitical expert on what India needs to be doing on the international scene, on an international aspect of developing coalitions of countries with aligned interests when it comes to engaging with China. So there's a discussion of that.

There's a discussion about technology and how India can reduce its dependence or leverage. So I think there's a lot of points of takeaway. And the China question remains extremely relevant even today, or if anything, it's become more relevant.

The book also talks about the various vulnerabilities about China. I mean, we all know about Chinese trends, but we also need to know about some of the weaknesses or vulnerabilities, whether it's their aging demographics, the plateauing labor force, the fact that there are border issues not just with India, but several other countries, the fact that their perception in Africa is not exactly very warm, the issues of some of the large failures like the real estate, the issues of non-performing assets and the challenges of the financial sector. So these are all mentioned in the book. And I think it would be a good book for students to catch up on India-China dynamics.