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  India   PM: Positives outweigh race with China

PM: Positives outweigh race with China

AGE CORRESPONDENT | SHUBHRANGSHU ROY
Published : Mar 29, 2013, 12:09 am IST
Updated : Mar 29, 2013, 12:09 am IST

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has admitted to an element of competition between India and China at multilateral forums, such as Brics, but said the opportunity to cooperate and collaborate far outweigh the concerns of China overshadowing international engagements.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has admitted to an element of competition between India and China at multilateral forums, such as Brics, but said the opportunity to cooperate and collaborate far outweigh the concerns of China overshadowing international engagements. The PM’s observation came in response to a question during media interaction about major multilateral negotiations being eventually hijacked by bilateral engagements between individual member countries and China. Dr Singh’s five-point roadmap for future collaboration among Brics members, reported earlier in this paper, found no mention in media discourse or public debate. Chinese President Xi Jinping converted his Durban visit into a massive display of financial clout, silencing India’s sober call for multilateral collaboration. China sewed up several big deals in shipbuilding-cum-dry docks facility in Richards Bay, revival of a defunct gold mine and a five-star hotel project. It has also signed a $5 billion deal to upgrade railway tracks and transportation infrastructure to ship huge quantities of mineral resources to China. India, on it’s part, ended up haggling over the initial corpus to be invested in the much-touted Brics development bank, holding up finalisation of its capital and governance structures. Cash-rich China had suggested initial capital investment of $100 billion, while India has insisted on half that amount with equal contribution from each of the five member countries, to assure equal control over governance. Notwithstanding this show of oneupmanship by China, Dr Singh said Brics continues to be a very important forum for India, given that Brics economies control 27 per cent of the global GDP and about 40 per cent of the world population. “There is growing complimentarity. Of course, this relationship between India and China has elements of coordination, cooperation and competition. But for us, it is very useful to have a forum like Brics whereby we can exchange views not only on events which have implications for the management of our bilateral relationship, but also how the global system affects our interests and our concerns. So I find this as a very useful forum,” Dr Singh said. Indian officials confide that the country’s approach to Brics has been to achieve long-term incremental gains as opposed to China’s big bang policy of landing with all guns blazing. Beyond the obvious advantages that China seems to derive from his investment-led engagement with Africa, voices are beginning to emerge across the continent about resource-hungry China’s one-sided neocolonialism of the continent.