The growing rapprochement between India and China could have implications far beyond bilateral trade and investment, with economist and Columbia University Professor Jeffrey Sachs saying cooperation between the two Asian giants could help make a multipolar world a reality.
Speaking to CNBC-TV18 ahead of the BRICS Summit in New Delhi, Sachs said India and China should position themselves as a stable base for global peace and cooperation rather than as competing alternatives for the world.
“These are the two giants, each one representing nearly 20% of humanity, and we, all of us in the world, need peace and cooperation between the two giants,” Sachs said.
His comments come as Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping have stepped up engagement. The two leaders met at the SCO Summit recently, while Xi is expected to visit India for the BRICS Summit, although his visit had not been officially confirmed at the time of the interview.
Sachs said the economic case for greater cooperation between India and China was strong, arguing that their shared interests in a stable global environment outweighed the issues that have historically divided them.
“The common interests of China and India in a stable world and in bilateral cooperation is so much vaster than the issues which have divided them,” he said.
According to Sachs, closer India-China ties would also alter the wider geopolitical equation. He argued that the two countries could jointly signal to the US and the West that they were willing to cooperate internationally but would not accept a US-led global order.
“We want to cooperate, but we will never be subservient. And we do not accept a US-led world. We do not accept unipolarity,” Sachs said.
He said tensions between India and China had allowed the US to exercise greater influence, whereas cooperation between the two countries could strengthen the broader principle of multilateralism.
“As long as the two are in tension with each other, the United States plays its games. But if the two giants are cooperative with each other, to my mind, that makes multilateralism real,” he said.
Sachs also pointed to the historical roots of India-China tensions, saying a boundary drawn by a British official in 1914 had contributed to decades of difficulties between the two civilisations.
He argued that the economic benefits of cooperation could extend across trade, investment, technology and global value chains, while the geopolitical gains could be even broader.
The BRICS Summit, which India is hosting from September 12, comes at a time when the grouping is seeking to give greater weight to the Global South. Sachs said stronger India-China ties would be central to that effort.
For Sachs, therefore, the significance of the Modi-Xi engagement extends beyond a bilateral thaw. A sustained improvement in relations between the world's two most populous countries could, in his view, become one of the foundations of a more genuinely multipolar international system.
