Earlier this year, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi paid a visit to America.
This visit was not a casual meet and greet between the leaders of both countries. It was a grand ceremony — a cluster of pleasantries, rituals, crowds, celebrities, concerts and speeches aimed solely toward letting the world know that America is aligned with India. The world’s biggest economy is tying knots with the world’s biggest democracy. A couple of weeks back, the same theatrics were mirrored, this time with the United Kingdom and China. President of the People's Republic of China Xi Jinping was welcomed into the British Isles with colossal grandeur and awe-inspiring intricacy. The world turned its head with curiosity as to what was developing between the two countries.
Both these stunts are the perfect kind of advertisement created by panels of analysts who are quite possibly paid a six-figure salary in American dollars. They expertly crafted the image of Modi as the poster boy for developed India. They delicately put forward the idea that Jinping is going to be the savior of the shaky Chinese economy. Of course these advertisements are nothing short of being perfect. We all bought the relationship-tightening agendas of these two handshakes, but the reality is that all of this is just a pretense for grabbing foreign investors for India and China. Foreign investments are a necessity for the rising nations, and it is not hidden that both India and China exhibit their special kinds of dirty politicians.
Once one big Western economy announced its association with one rapidly developing eastern economy, another had to do the same. India-China relations have never been pleasant, despite — and indeed because of — the fact that they’re neighbors. And it was but natural for them to make moves in opposite directions. The U.S. and U.K. have ulterior motives, though. While the U.S. wants to infiltrate the exponentially growing Indian marketplace, the United Kingdom wants to retain its access to cheap Chinese labor, among other things. While most of the negotiations, policies and new reforms were made public, both couples are still withholding information from each other.
Despite these new stronghold techniques, both plans might still fail — or they could be a blockbuster success. Only time will tell. For now, India is focusing on extensive investment intake while promoting the Make in India initiative, and China is focusing on changing the dynamics of how their system works by balancing the economic scales. The ultimate goal of this charade is open to speculation. At least as of now, the doubles teams have been formed, but no one knows what trophy, if any, they will be battling for.