--Srikanth Kondapalli, Professor & Director, Center for East Asia Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India

Abstract

China's new leader Xi Jinping had galvanized China's discourse recently with his speech late last year on "China dream" (中国梦), national rejuvenation and revitalization. Although not elaborated officially, we can argue that Xi's "China dream" possibly has the following components- to make China into a "rich country and strong army" (富国强兵), "civilized country" (文明国家), "harmonious society" (和谐社会) and "beautiful country" (美丽的国家) and complete the process of building a "well-off-society" (小康社会) by 2020 and indicates to the influence of his predecessors Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao's expositions. These suggest that the policy formulations of China in the coming decade could undergo major transformations in the fields of strategy, foreign and security relations, economy and other inter-related fields.

Specifically, at the economy level, as China had become the 2nd largest economy in 2010 and poised to become the largest economy in the coming decades, it had also become the largest trading partner for a number of countries. President Xi had stated that China in the next decade would be importing $10 trillion worth of goods, export $500 billion in investment and see tourist outflow of over 100 million. These have major consequences for economic interdependence with several countries. In the foreign policy domain, President Xi's "new type of major country" relations and his October 2013 speech on neighbouring countries, State Councilor's comments on "innovations in diplomatic theory" and foreign minister Wang Yi's comments recently have consequences for the ordering in the international system. At the strategic and military level, the United States rebalancing and growing defence budget of China have far-reaching consequences.

All of the above trends have a bearing on India. As the largest neighbour and trading partner, with traditional and civilisational links and similar socio-economic developmental agendas, China and India relations are poised to acquire strategic depth in this decade. Both have initiated "strategic and cooperative partnership" since April 2005 and configured "enough space in Asia" as their operative interaction in the larger region. Both are engaged in multilateral dialogues to refashion the regional and international order and suggest to engagement as the dominant policy option in their interactions. Both have similar views on Iran, Libya and Syrian developments. Both are seized with the agenda of domestic rejuvenation as their respective national goals. Both have initiated structured dialogue mechanisms on Central Asia, West Asia and South East Asia. Both are concerned – given their national security priorities of countering "three evils" and "cross-border terrorism" respectively – and about the post-2014 situation in Afghanistan and concluded so far six rounds of counter-terrorism discussions.

This essay analyses firstly the concept of China Dream and then outlines its possible impact on India in terms of foreign and security policies, economy and military spheres. It is argued in this paper that as rational actors both have followed an overall engagement policy and it remained a dominant theme between Beijing and New Delhi vis-à-vis each other.

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