India quietly elbowing out China on the world stage
There was a time in the very recent past when the world looked nervously as the Chinese economy surged and grew to the number 2 spot in world rankings. The veritable manufacturing headquarters of the world, as China’s wealth and profile grew, so did its geo-political ambitions. Its ambitious global infrastructure project Belt and Road dazzled the world and drew support from nations across the continents who lined up to be part of the project that seemed to show the path to a whole new golden age of economic growth.
India was one of the few countries in the world that refused to toe the Chinese line and made it a point to object to the very idea of the grandiose infrastructure project, which it saw as nothing more than a land-grabbing exercise on a global scale combined with trapping struggling nations in a pernicious debt cycle. The incredible growth of the Chinese economy over the past two decades occurred because the Americans had turned an indulgent eye to the former slowly and inexorably becoming a global manufacturing hub and the fulcrum of the global supply chain.
With success came hubris and China under its new dictatorial president Xi Jinping embarked on a revisionist path that involved making outlandish territorial claims vis-à-vis its neighbours and behaving roguishly with any nation that didn’t agree with their point of…
