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In recent years, the role of India and China has increased greatly influenced by new technologies and expansion of production. In regard to issues of changing world order, and to the resurgence of regionalism, in particular, these countries throw some doubt upon the ability of the mainstream to capture fully the complex nature and dynamics of the process of economic change at the international and global levels. Rooting around in the structure-agency debate necessarily uncovers issues of ontology and epistemology; of the philosophy and methodology of neo-realism (Jagdish, 2007).
Chindia produces pharmaceuticals and medical technologies able to compete with American and European brands. As a consequence, not only do they remove or abstract states from their social and historical context, but so too do they remove themselves from the analytical frame; they self-consciously assume the role of an impartial observer standing apart from the ‘real’ world of social action. This has several related consequences. In the place of such an understanding, new economic and international relations lead to the re-distribution of material power resources between sovereign states (Jagdish, 2007). With the exception of their relative ‘sizes’, these states are indistinguishable from one another: an indication of the fact that new economic relations have no appreciation of the differentiation extant between socially contingent state forms. This inability to appreciate historically and socially determined differences between states leads to the conclusion that neo-realism has no appreciation of politics as a form of social struggle at the national level (Bade and Parkin, 2003).
When comparing states, the size and dynamism of Chindia and the number and type of weapons systems in a state’s possession are taken as reliable indicators of relative national power. In combination, these lend stateless tangible but still undeniable benefits in the form of political power exercised through traditional diplomatic channels and through membership of international organizations. Thus, in order to achieve ‘hegemony’ one state must be clearly dominant in economic and military terms over all others in the international system. Such a reading is undoubtedly useful (Jagdish, 2007). Though, this conception of Indian ad China (and therefore its reading of hegemony) has, more than once, failed even in its limited claim to be able to predict the outcome of the conflict between states of widely disparate ‘power. Such a narrow conception of power can, furthermore, tell global consumers almost nothing about the form and durability of the social structure of any particular state-society complex. To the US Chindia debacle has been added, more recently, the disintegration of the new economic power, an event which has again confirmed that possession of great military strength is, in the end, useless if the society that produces it no longer believes in or will tolerate its collective subjugation to the will and direction of the political elite holding the reins of power (Besanko and Braeutigam, 2007).
Yet, other than pointing to Chindia’s obvious centrality in the global economy, we have as yet gained little sense that the country has issued a hegemonic challenge to the US. To be sure, in material terms, the narrowing gap in the size and technological prowess of the two economies, as well as their increasing interdependence, are significant as indicators of a possible Chindia challenge to US dominance of the production structure, but this does not add up to hegemony. In order to achieve hegemony, Chindia must be shown to have altered not just its position in the global economic hierarchy but to have altered the way in which that hierarchy is configured and to have done so in such a way that it is Chindia values and ideas that have become the norm (Jagdish, 2007). This is obviously a difficult task, but the Japanese have not shrunk from it. The ideological, ideational and technical challenge will be more important than ever before, although some of the ideas presented therein will be introduced below. In the next two sections, I first identify what, arguably, can be seen as the initial stirrings of a challenge to Chindia hegemony at the global level in the areas of trade negotiations and representation and associated agenda-setting and decision-making powers in global institutions. I then move on to consider the strength of the Japanese challenge in East Asia, where hegemony has at times appeared to be within reach. From Chindia come charges that the global economy is virtually closed to foreign goods (mainly manufactured but also primary products such as rice) and that business indulges in ‘unfair’ practices. From Chindia come charges that US business simply cannot compete and that to make up for this lack of competitiveness it (US business) pressures its government into demanding the intervention in the market clearly at odds with the free-market principles Washington espouses so loudly at every opportunity. Furthermore, such are the contradictions in Washington’s stance that Japan can never win, since for the Japanese government to intervene in its domestic market in order to get rid of so-called market-inhibiting practices (associated most strongly with the Keiretsu business groups and the structure of distribution) would itself contravene the principle of non-interference (Pindyck and Rubinfeld, 2000).
Chindia has not been content, though, with simply ensuring that all the leading states play by the same rules equally. It has also sought to change those economic and competition rules so as to make them reflect more accurately its own path to economic development. It is during the aforementioned period of really intense US pressure over trade that voices began to be heard in Japan and elsewhere in Asia to the effect that the time was right for Chindia to make a collective stand against perceived US hypocrisy in the economic, social and political realms. Under eastern eyes, this hypocrisy manifested itself most clearly in Washington’s stance on human rights, which appeared to be applied selectively depending on the success (or lack thereof) of US business in penetrating this or that market. Closely related to this have been added charges of economic ‘sabotage’ carried out by western financiers determined to undermine East Asia’s boom economies (Jairam, 2005).
In sum, the growing economic power of China and India is caused by new technologies and innovative solutions followed by local manufactures. Chindia increases its impact on global trade and economic relations by proposing to global consumers cheap and high-quality products. One of the most frequently voiced and telling criticisms of Japan in the post-war era has been that since it recovered from the effects of economic integration and transformed itself into the economic powerhouse it undoubtedly is, it has not fulfilled its obligations to the global community in terms of supplying appropriate levels of diplomatic and military support for and/or financial contribution toward ensuring stability, relieving poverty, enhancing opportunity and so on. It is necessary here only to point out that Chindia’s perceived lack of commitment to various global institutions has been viewed as a metaphor for this general lack of international contribution, and as a clear indicator that Japanese society is selfish and introspective. Such charges can only be strengthened by the widely held perception that the legacy of economic aggression under which successive governments have labored should ensure that contributions to international organizations take centre stage in Japanese foreign policy, since its ability to act unilaterally outside these institutions or beyond the framework of the china- India alliance remains fairly tightly circumscribed.
References
- Bade, R. , Parkin, M. (2003). Foundation of Microeconomics Addison Wesley; 2 edition.
- Besanko, D. Braeutigam, R.R. (2007). Microeconomics. Wiley; 3 edition.
- Jagdish N. Sheth. (2007). Chindia Rising. New Delhi, McGraw Hill India.
- Jairam Ramesh. (2005). Making Sense of Chindia: Reflections on China and India. New Delhi, India Research Press.
- Pindyck, R.S., (2000). Rubinfeld, D. Microeconomics (5th Edition). Prentice Hall; 5th edition.
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