Newsday (New York)
Wednesday, April 13, 2005

Editorial: Megapower rises in Asia; China-India bloc may have global clout

Alone, China and India always had the potential of each becoming an economic megapower. But together, they could create an even more formidable economic and political bloc that should give the world pause. That's on the way to becoming a reality of deep concern to the West.

On Monday, the two Asian giants - accounting for a third of the world's population - signed a landmark accord to create a "strategic partnership" in an effort to resolve their long-running dispute over the Himalayan border and, more important, create the world's largest "free trade" zone, boosting economic and diplomatic cooperation between Beijing and New Delhi.

At the very least, this astonishing development should be a wake-up call to Western powers, encouraging the United States and the European Union to establish closer ties as a potential trans-Atlantic trade bloc to counter the power of an Asian mercantile colossus.

Whether or not this landmark accord will work as well as both nations predict is open to speculation, even skepticism, given the two nations' historical animosities and cultural differences. But the bubbly optimism expressed by Indian and Chinese leaders on signing the pact borders on the grandiose.

"India and China can together reshape the world order," Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said after welcoming his Chinese counterpart, Premier Wen Jiabao, at India's presidential palace. In a joint communique, the two leaders said that India-China relations have now "acquired a global and strategic character."

This is nothing less than a sea change in the two nations' prickly relations, which have been marred by deep distrust and the open sore of a dispute over their mountainous, largely unmarked 2,500-mile border. The two nations went to war over the disagreement in 1962. But relations had soured even earlier when Tibet's spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, fled Chinese communist persecution and was given refuge in India to form a government in exile with 15,000 of his followers.

If this week's agreement results in a resolution of the two giants' political disputes and the forging of the largest free trade zone in the world, the India-China pact could alter the balance of economic and political power in Asia and beyond.