Why China Will Be Great Power and Bharat Not

Atanu Dey, on his blog Deesha, while writing about his admiration of Sri Lee Kuan Yew, former ruler and current chief mentor of world's most significant city-state Singapore, declares him Confucius genius. Atanu's has link to the transcript of Sri Lee's speech in US few months ago. We have seen Sri Lee interviews (link to our old blog site) and his speech itself is not so remarkable for those who follow global geopolitics. But we did find one sentence that was remarkable that could help explain the future trajectory of China and India.

Unlike other emergent countries, China wants to be China and accepted as such, not as an honorary member of the West.

This to us is the most significant statement of his speech. Bharatiya elites and self-proclaimed liberals whose understanding of India comes from the west's interpretation of this country - not a new intellectual phenomena by any means - need to chew on this statement.

Note: Sri Lee talks of developing East Asia, presumably including India, as restoring a global balance to pre-European-imperialism globe, significantly ignores largely Islamic west Asia. It is perhaps time to create a separate continent splitting continental Asia near the west of Pakistan along with western border of China and southern border of Russia and give the west Asian Islamic world a new name and leave them to themselves.