Claude Arpi | Daily Guardian | 4 February 2021
In 1998, when George Fernandes, then Defence Minister, affirmed that “China is India’s enemy number one”, he was politely asked by his own government to keep his thoughts to himself; the last thing that the Vajpayee government wanted was to get “bad relations” with the powerful northern neighbour. The policy then was to “engage” China.
Twenty years of the engagement policy have not paid any dividends. However, since the beginning of the confrontation in eastern Ladakh and the spread of the Chinese virus all over the planet, the ‘official’ mindset has started to change, including in India. Experts and thinkers now believe that one should study China; it is happening late in the day, but as the saying goes ‘better late than never’.
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