China and India are trying to figure out how to relate to each other, economically, culturally, militarily. I'm not going to make predictions off the top of my head, because both countries are changing so rapidly that extrapolation from their direct pasts is a pretty weak tool ("more of same" only gets you so far when tectonic shifts are involved), they are very different countries outside of some superficialities (developing economies with really big, Asian populations; you can get a lot of the vital statistics here, in neat comparative table form) and I don't have a really good analogy in mind. I will say that there is a great deal to look forward to, since both seem to be moving in pretty healthy directions, but both have troubling undercurrents of nationalism, festering regional disagreements and their very size makes them very challenging to understand or to run. Suffice it to say, for now, that anything that concerns these two countries, particularly when it concerns both of them, concerns us. I don't care who you think"us" is, either.....

Jonathan Dresner - 4/11/2005

Both countries have problems, for sure, though I'll take India's democracy in tension over China's authoritarianism any day.

Late Imperial Britain and France is an interesting analogy, thanks. I never was much at the Great Power politics, myself.

Oscar Chamberlain - 4/11/2005

This meeting is historic. One reason India began a nuclear weapons program was their disagreements with China. Now they see themselves (and each other) as striding out to dominate the next century. And they are finding a kinship in this--though I suspect it will always be a restless one, at best like Britain and France in the mid to late 19th century.

And for all their problems and limitations, they just might make this an Asian century.

One disconcerting element in their new cooperation. The Indians suppressed attempts by Tibetans to demonstrate against China. See this wired.com article.