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1、fixedEconomist 英汉 双语阅读 “经济学人”杂志 2010年8月19日正文:China and IndiaContest of the centuryAs China and India rise in tandem, their relationship will shape world politics. Shame they do not get on betterAug 19th 2010A HUNDRED years ago it was perhaps already possible to discern the rising powers whose intera
2、ction and competition would shape the 20th century. The sun that shone on the British empire had passed midday. Vigorous new forces were flexing their muscles on the global stage, notably America, Japan and Germany. Their emergence brought undreamed-of prosperity; but also carnage on a scale hithert
3、o unimaginable.Now digest the main historical event of this week: China has officially become the worlds second-biggest economy, overtaking Japan. In the West this has prompted concerns about China overtaking the United States sooner than previously thought. But stand back a little farther, apply a
4、more Asian perspective, and Chinas longer-term contest is with that other recovering economic behemoth: India. These two Asian giants, which until 1800 used to make up half the world economy, are not, like Japan and Germany, mere nation states. In terms of size and population, each is a continentand
5、 for all the glittering growth rates, a poor one.Not destiny, but still pretty importantThis is uncharted territory that should be seen in terms of decades, not years. Demography is not destiny. Nor for that matter are long-range economic forecasts from investment banks. Two decades ago Japan was se
6、en as the main rival to America. Countries as huge and complicated as China can underachieve or collapse under their own contradictions. In the short term its other foreign relationships may matter more, even in Asia: there may, for instance, be a greater risk of conflict between rising China and an
7、 ageing but still powerful Japan. Western powers still wield considerable influence.So caveats abound. Yet as the years roll forward, the chances are that it will increasingly come down once again to the two Asian giants facing each other over a disputed border. How China and India manage their own
8、relationship will determine whether similar mistakes to those that scarred the 20th century disfigure this one.Neither is exactly comfortable in its skin. Chinas leaders like to portray Western hype about their countrys rise as a conspiracya pretext either to offload expensive global burdens onto th
9、e Middle Kingdom or to encircle it. Witness Americas alliances with Japan and South Korea, its legal obligation to help Taiwan defend itself and its burgeoning friendships with Chinas rivals, notably India but also now Vietnam.This paranoia is overdone. Why shouldnt more be asked from a place that,
10、as well as being the worlds most-populous country, is already its biggest exporter, its biggest car market, its biggest carbon-emitter and its biggest consumer of energy (a rank China itself, typically, contests)? As for changing the balance of power, the Peoples Liberation Armys steady upgrading of
11、 its technological capacity, its building of a blue-water navy and its fast-developing skills in outer space and cyberspace do not yet threaten American supremacy, despite alarm expressed this week about the opacity of the PLAs plans in a Pentagon report. But Chinas military advances do unnerve neig
12、hbours and regional rivals. Recent weeks have seen China fall out with South Korea (as well as the West) over how to respond to the sinking in March, apparently by a North Korean torpedo, of a South Korean navy ship. And the Beijing regime has been at odds with South-East Asian countries over its gr
13、eedy claim to almost all of the South China Sea.India, too, is unnerved. Its humiliation at Chinese hands in a brief war nearly 50 years ago still rankles. A tradition of strategic mistrust of China is deeply ingrained. India sees China as working to undermine it at every level: by pre-empting it in
14、 securing supplies of the energy both must import; through manoeuvres to block a permanent seat for India on the United Nations Security Council; and, above all, through friendships with its smaller South Asian neighbours, notably Pakistan. India also notes that China, after decades of setting their
15、 border quarrels to one side in the interests of the broader relationship, has in recent years hardened its position on the disputes in Tibet and Kashmir that in 1962 led to war. This unease has pushed India strategically closer to Americamost notably in a controversial deal on nuclear co-operation.
16、Autocrats in Beijing are contemptuous of India for its messy, indecisive democracy. But they must see it as a serious long-term rivalespecially if it continues to tilt towards America. As recently as the early 1990s, India was as rich, in terms of national income per head. China then hurtled so far ahead that it seemed India could never catch up. But Indias long-term prospects now look stronger. While China is about to see its working-ag
