Are India and China doomed to opponent?

[iwumuyi]

The old Chinese proverb goes that "one mountain cannot accomodate two tigers", and Indians also have a common saying "a strong neighbor is a natural enemy" . As China and India, two regional leading nations, are eagerly pursuing their dream of becoming a worldpower. It gives us food for thought: Are they doomed to be opponents ?

[bolyer]

I don't think we are in one mountain,becasue of bad geographical environment of Tibet,both China and Inida can't step further.
So we are not opponent.
If you say world power,I think that's very far away.Now US is the real world power.

[Kabir]

Hello Iwumuyi,

Pleased to meet you.

The old Chinese proverb goes that "one mountain cannot accomodate two tigers", and Indians also have a common saying "a strong neighbor is a natural enemy" . As China and India, two regional leading nations, are eagerly pursuing their dream of becoming a worldpower. It gives us food for thought: Are they doomed to be opponents ?

Competitor and opponent are synonyms.
Please explain what do you mean.

Cheers

[observer]

Indians also have a common saying "a strong neighbor is a natural enemy"

I've never heard of any such Indian saying. As an Indian what I know is Indians are generally peaceful. They haven't indulged in the kind of aggression many other cultures have in their thousands of years of history.

One thing I observe is India and China have been around for very, very long and are both said to be the richest places on Earth thousands of years back (they had the 1st and 2nd biggest economies in the world for almost 2000 years - source "The World Economy: A Millenial Perspective" by economist Angus Maddison ), still there haven't been any wars or open hostilities between them before just the last 60 years.

Maybe this was because of the mountains between them, maybe they were just friendly (I've read about friendly Chinese scholars and researchers coming to India in the ancient past to learn). But then I wonder if we could be the richest countries/regions on Earth for 2000 years without any wars or hostilities then what's wrong with it now or in the future?

[India1989]

Yes India and China were both rich before. They both had one of the world's oldest civilizations. Later they became poor and now they are on a path of progress again. China's just progressing too fast. I checked out and i was impressed by seeing how China is progressing. THere was no hostility between us before but a bit of fight in near past. But i dont' think it will matter much.

I also don't quite understand what you mean by opponent. If you mean that we are going to be against each other and try to beat you guys then i don't know whether it will happen or not. But if you mean not going against each other but only try to beat other then we might be competing. But yeah we will be competing. But still I am not sure by what you meant by opponent and competitor.

[chooo123]

hello, there:

Maybe I should post my first message here.
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I am new to this forum. I am originally from China now living in North America. I happened to find this forum and spent a really long time to read through this thread. I feel sorry for some Chinese guys who used insulting language to India which made indian friends angry. I do think that's childish and personnel manner which can not represent most Chinese. Every country has its positive and negative respects. It's not wise to laugh others' short sides. I do think both India and China are great countries and the 21th century will belong to the two countries.

Here I just want to express my curiosity on some philosiph issues in India and have some questions to ask Indian fellows.

We all know both countries have very long history, we keep our culture although both countries were invaded or ruled by forigners. My questions are:

1. How Indians people treat the traitor of the country. I know in China, most people hate traitors a lot. Even after over 1000 years, some big traitors in China's history have not been forgiven and I am sure they will not be forgiven in the future. That's why we have our heros in different time, we are very proud of them. I wonder in India do you have many national heros in history when India facing invasion. How do you guys think about traitors. For example, I think those people who surrenderred to British in 17th or 18th century (I am not sure). Chinese have many common sense on the invasion by forigners, they hate to be invaded. They hate the people who help other country to destroy China. We have a list of those traitors, they will be spitted by generation and generation of Chinese.
I know Indian's religion claim tolerance and forgiveness. To such kind of national traitors, do you guys also forgive them?

2. How Indian people see the importance of a country's complete territory? China's history told us, we don't lack people who would die for the country. We have a famous saying: would rather be a broken jade instead being a complete tile.

Sorry my English is not very good if you can't understand me very well.

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I don't think China and India will be millitary opponent but unvoidable economic competitors.

I am interested in India's philosophy.

[India1989]

Welcome to this site chooo. Nice to meet you. I am Soumo. Hopefully you enjoy your time over here.

I can't tell much about India's philosophy. Different people have different philosophy but as far as govt is concerned i think that India as a whole will be competing with China but they have a doubt that whether they will overtake China or not.

i answered your questions before. But to make things clear we have a saying which generally farmers used to say is that having no animals is better then having a bunch of mad animals.

That's why we didn't stop when Pakistan and Bangladesh separated cause we knew they would create havoc. But the parts we want are ours and we know that they won't create any havoc.

[SLASH]

I don't think we are in one mountain,becasue of bad geographical environment of Tibet,both China and Inida can't step further.
So we are not opponent.
If you say world power,I think that's very far away.Now US is the real world power.

Its not really far away Bolyer.In less than 15 years you'll see your country go pass US as the biggest economy.But yes people from both India and China will still remain poor(although extreme poverty will be abolished).

In current scenario China and India aren't competing against each other.
India will remain the service hub and China will remain the manufacturing hub.Its next to impossible for either to overtake eachother in their respective departments.India doesn't have the infrastructure comparble to China and China doesn't have english speaking population.Even though India is pumping big money into infrastructure and China laying the base for the IT sector its highly unlikely that they could challenge eachother.

[India1989]

Yeah i think you are right slash. But i hope that we atleast have better infrastructure then what we have today and comparable to the developed world.

we also have a high infant mortality rate. We should try to reduce that. Although we have reduced it a lot but still its more the the world average. We need to reduce that.

Our manufacturing industries, infrastructure should be atleast comparable to the developed world if not better then them.

[SLASH]

odd poll?!
China and India are never become opponents in the past 3000 years.
How can they become opponents in the future?

The world has changed in the past few hundred years 靓虬客.Both Indians and Chinese were unaware how wealthy they were in the past.They were happy with what they had and did not cross their terrortorial boundaries.
Today the economic dynamics have changed,political diplomacy has changed(China supporting Pak doesn't sit well with many Indians).
Today oil is more important than gold.Both countries are power(energy) hungry which would lead to future economic clashes but military clashes is out of question.Two nuclear powered superpowers going into war would mean judgement day.By 2050 India and China would contribute to more than 40% of economy any conflict between them would result long term recessions/depression of global economy.

[India1989]

I am very much aware that in the past India and China were the richest countries and those white people were eager to come to our country because of our wealth.