BUTTER BEATS GUNS, THIS TIME...
One of my earliest memories as a toddler was my parents talking about a war that had started between my birth country India and China in 1962, ending with a ceasefire in 1963. I was too young to understand what any of it meant other than it was a scary fight, with tanks, planes, guns, and soldiers involved, and most of all, my parents were very worried about it.
So it was with some satisfaction after 42 years to see that the heads of both countries signed an accord to finally settle their border differences peacefully over the next few years, and cooperate more closely on the economic opportunities for the number one and two most populated countries on the planet.
It was ironically difficult to find details in the mainstream media of my adopted country, with even my favorite New York Times opting to use a Reuters feed to tell the story in a perfunctory fashion.
However, the US financial press was more on the ball, with the Wall Street Journal carrying the story on page A20 (hey, it's still the "A" section), as well as Bloomberg News, which did a more thorough job. Here is the story from IndiaDaily.com.
Here are some key takeaways from the Bloomberg piece for you "executive summary" types:
- Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh signed an accord aimed at ending their decades-old border dispute and agreed to explore the possibility of creating the world's biggest free trade zone.
- China last year said it favors a free-trade accord with its southern neighbor to create a single market of 2.4 billion people, by far the world's largest. India, wary of opening its doors to cheap Chinese toys, clothes and mobile phones, has import tariffs of 15 percent for most goods, compared with China's 10 percent.
India and China, the world's fastest growing major economies, today agreed to boost two-way trade to $20 billion by 2008 and Wen called for as much as $30 billion by 2010.
Trade in 2004 was $13.6 billion, 79 percent more than in 2003, according to China's customs bureau. India had a $1.75 billion trade surplus with China, the second-largest overseas market for Indian goods after the U.S.
- China is the world's second-largest consumer of oil after the U.S. and India relies on imports to meet 70 percent of its energy requirements. China's economy expanded 9.5 percent in 2004. India's grew 6.9 percent in the year ended March 31, the government estimates.
- The dispute over their mountainous 3,500-kilometer (2,175- mile) border led to a short war in 1962 and has marred relations between countries that are home to two-fifths of the world's people.
- India claims 38,000 square kilometers (15,000 square miles) of Chinese-controlled territory in Kashmir, an area the size of Switzerland. China claims 90,000 square kilometers of land in India's northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh.
Now it'll take a number of years to settle the border disputes (click on map for larger image), but it's a start. 
To put this forty plus year conflict in context, the war started on the 20th of October, 1962, at the height of the superpower nuclear conflict, six days after the US called the USSR on its missiles in Cuba (October 14, 1962). The Cuban missile crisis didn't end until October 28, 1962.
The two most populous nations in the world starting a war with this back-drop in Southeast Asia, less than a decade after the Korean war had ended in a stalemate and stand-off, was of global concern.
Amazingly, the one year of bitter battles between the two soon to be nuclear powers resulted in casualties of "only 500" on each side, but poisoned the relationship between the two countries for decades to come. China "went nuclear" two years after the start of the war in 1964, with India following in 1974. The history of the individual battles are well known to Indian, and I presume Chinese kids, growing up in those times and I'm sure fueled many adolescent fantasies of joining the armed forces for their respective country.
To this day, there are differences amongst historians as to who started the war, with both sides likely to share the blame. The other regional backdrop was the on-going multi-decade state of war between India and Pakistan with the US and China supporting Pakistan, and the former USSR supporting a socialist India.
The point of this mini-recap of history is to provide some context on how far these countries have come, not because of their politicians, but in spite of them. It's nice to see that economic greed is now driving these two countries closer, while for the longest time, it was political fear that was the most convenient currency the leaders of all the countries involved used to distract their own populations.
The best part of today's meeting between the two leaders for me, a self-professed technology geek, is the following "coming down to brass tacks" quote from China's premier Wen Jiabao while visiting Bangalore, the silicon valley of India, on Sunday as part of his visit to India:
"It is true India has the advantage in software and China in hardware. If India and China cooperate in the IT industry, we will be able to lead the world ... and it will signify the coming of the Asian century of the IT industry,"
Very cool, especially for a kid who grew up wanting to be an Air Force fighter pilot for his birth country, and who now is looking forward to being a successful technology investor in both these countries.
p.s. I did end up learning to fly planes, although of the more sedate civilian kind.
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