About 50 people gathered in the ASEAN Auditorium yesterday for the final panel in a four-day-long symposium on China and India's emergence as global powers.
The panel, entitled "State, Party and People: Can the Center Hold?" addressed whether today's political systems in India and China could adapt as the two countries improve their economic standing in the world. Sponsored by the Institute for Global Leadership's (IGL) Tufts Initiative for Leadership and International Perspective (TILIP), the panel featured speakers with a variety of perspectives on the future of the two rising powers.
While each predicted some measure of stability for the "center" of each country in the 21st century, at least in the short term, each had very different takes on how it would be maintained.
Dr. Robert Ross, a professor of political science at Boston College who introduced the speakers, expressed concern that the United States lacks respect for China as a superpower. In his view, 99 percent of nations in the world see China as "great power order," with the United States being the exception.
Ayesha Jalal, a Tufts history professor, spoke next about the role of religion in government.
India, she said, will have to "rethink relations between the center and religion" to take varying beliefs into account, and China can learn from India's shifting position on religion and the center. Reliance "on one party may be China's undoing," she said.
Joseph Fewsmith, director of East Asian Studies Program and professor of international relations and political science at Boston University, began by saying, "Will the center hold? Sure." But he cited a number of problems that might erode the power of India and China's respective centers.
Fewsmith first cited weaknesses in the social order in China, resulting from corruption, local conflicts of interest and income inequality. "China was one of the most equal states in the world 15 or 20 years ago," he said. Now, inequity is very high, he said.
While Fewsmith argued that China needed to focus on major health care reforms and to attack corruption, he did think the system would remain stable for the foreseeable future of 10 to 15 years.
Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence at the U.S. Navel Academy Kingshuk Chatterjee spoke next, beginning by saying that he disliked the title of "rising giant" for his home country of India, a term that for him carries a bully-like connotation.
"I'd like to rise but not as a giant," he said, doubting whether the term was appropriate for the world's largest democracy.
Chatterjee discussed the importance of both growth and development in India. While encouraged that India is considered an emerging superpower, he pointed out that per capita income is still low and development is spread unequally over regions.
"The strength of the state should not be the strength of the government, but rather the strength of the people," he said.
Suisheng Zhao, the executive director of the Center for China-U.S. Cooperation and a professor at the Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Denver, next turned the discussion back to China.
Zhao said that while democratization is most likely in China's future, the change will not be immediate. Currently, he said, efficiency is the single-party government's greatest hurdle.
Angela Capati-Caruso, an Economic Affairs Officer for the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the U.N., took a slightly different approach, addressing how rather than if the centers of the India and China will hold. She used slides to show how technology can help with governance and improve public well-being.
Capati-Caruso presented the U.N. Global E-Government Readiness Report, which gave both China and India low ratings in the use of technology in government.
"It doesn't help if the national GDP increases. If the per capita income doesn't change, nothing has been helped," Capati-Caruso said.
