China objects to the very idea of India, and not for what India does but for what it is: an ancient, sovereign civilisational state that refuses to be absorbed or erased by its enemies and frenemies. – Ravi Shankar Etteth
Aksai Chin or Galwan, it’s not just land that China wants from India. It wants the last word in Asia. India is the only force that will not be quiet. Beijing speaks with a forked tongue; when Indian missiles hit Pakistan bases, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi picked up the phone. He called NSA Ajit Doval to condemn the Pahalgam terror attack. He called Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar to urge “calm” and act in alignment with its “long-term interests.”
China’s long-term interests are what Wang Yi really meant. The history of conflict between the dragon and the elephant goes beyond a border dispute, or the 1961 war, or Chinese tourists posting selfies by the Pangong Lake. They are engaged in a civilisational confrontation in the guise of geopolitics. China objects to the very idea of India, and not for what India does but for what it is: an ancient, sovereign civilisational state that refuses to be absorbed or erased by its enemies and frenemies. Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution was both a political and a metaphysical purge in which Confucian ethics, Daoist cosmology, Buddhist compassion and ancestral rituals were declared counter-revolutionary. Temples were razed. Lineages erased. China is a nation with power, but no poetry. It is left with ideology, not history. Its true complexity lies in what was destroyed to make its rise possible. The concept of virtue, so central to traditional Chinese political theory, was replaced with the cold imperatives of state machinery.
The Chinese state killed its civilisation to create its power. Yet no civilisation dies without leaving ghosts. Under the skin of the People’s Republic, a far older impulse festers: Tianxia, translating to “all under heaven”—an ancient Chinese worldview in which China is the rightful centre of civilisation, with other nations existing in concentric moral and political ellipses. There is no Chinese civilsation now, only the mechanics of efficiency exist—a mongrel state ideology of techno-authoritarianism fused with nationalist capitalism, administered by fear and enforced by surveillance. Its soul has been substituted with software. Unlike Western imperialism, which rose on commerce and control, Tianxia presumes legitimacy through centrality that retains its imperial DNA. The Belt and Road Initiative is not merely a trade network; it is a cartographic assumption of China’s centrality. Its assertiveness in the South China Sea, the manipulation of smaller Asian economies, and the strategic encirclement of India are all extensions of this archaic worldview. However, without the ethical ballast of its ancient systems, Tianxia is just a husk. It’s here the contrast with India becomes civilisational, not just geopolitical. India is an ancient civilisation, one that survived conquest and colonialism without abandoning its metaphysical foundations. Its worldview is that Dharma manifests not through dominance, but through renewal: “Yada yada hi dharmasya glanir bhavati Bharata…”—“Whenever there is a decline in righteousness, I manifest myself.”
India may not manifest as an empire, but is a force that does not seek domination and will not be dominated. Beijing understands this power. That is why it encircles India through proxies, ports, and propaganda. It builds roads in PoK, lays debt traps in Sri Lanka, and tried to undermine Delhi diplomatically while claiming to want peace. This is not contradiction, it is choreography. It is not just a regional rivalry but a contest to define the architecture of Asian modernity. India cannot out-China China, and we shouldn’t even try. India’s strength is not uniformity, but resilience. Unlike China which erased its past, India is rebuilding it. In its past, perhaps lies its future. – The New Indian Express, 18 May 2025
› Ravi Shankar Etteth is an author, columnist and newspaper editor in New Delhi.
Filed under: china, india | Tagged: chinese imperialism, communist dictatorship, hindu civilisation, india-china relations, indian history | Comments Off on The Dance of the Dragon and Elephant – Ravi Shankar Etteth
