Chinese Premier Li Keqiang waves at the media in front of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during his ceremonial reception at the Indian President's palace in New Delhi, India, Monday, May 20, 2013. (Saurabh Das/AP)
This post is adapted from a conversation on ChinaFile, an Atlantic partner site. See the full exchange here.
The significance of Li Keqiang's visit to India can be overstated, as is true of any state visit, but I do think that it's a sign of a continued willingness to improve relations with India by putting aside the difficult issues, especially those surrounding the border dispute. The improvement in relations over the past ten years shows that a border dispute, to paraphrase Alexander Wendt, is what states make of it.
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What is of greater concern than the border dispute is the fact that in both countries, understandings of each other's history, culture, and much else remain quite shallow among political elites and professionals, to say nothing of the public. Both governments devote ample resources for the training of specialists in general security studies and foreign policy within a handful of top-tier universities and research institutions. Most of these become diplomats or analysts in think-tanks, and few have country-specific training on China or India. This means that only a handful of scholars in China possess a deep knowledge of Indian culture and history, including skills in Hindi and other Indian languages. The same is true for Indian scholars who can speak and read Chinese for their research and who work outside the usual areas of foreign policy and economics.
This too often results in a distorted view of how Indians perceive China and how Chinese look at India. News outlets, blogs, and other foreign policy forums are dominated by non-specialists who nonetheless speak with authority and credibility on how India should handle relations with China, and vice versa. Most often, hawkish views grab the headlines.