- Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was returned to power in elections this week.
- The day also marked the 35th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre in China.
- This week has highlighted the contrasting political paths of Asia’s major powers.
Narendra Modi’s ambitions to become a dictator suffered a setback this week.
His Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) fell short of the landslide victory many had predicted in India’s elections.
If Modi becomes India’s prime minister for a third time, his party will need to strike a power-sharing deal with its allies.
It’s a harsh lesson from Indian voters, who have accused Modi of stoking division and undermining Indian democracy even as he boosts India’s global standing.
On the same day that India’s election results were announced, the world commemorated the 35th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre of June 4, 1989, when pro-democracy protesters were brutally suppressed in Beijing.
Decades later, China has reverted to Mao-style authoritarianism.
Events this week have made it clear that the rivalry between India and China is not just one of power — it is also one between two very different political philosophies.
India is a flawed but thriving democracy.
India is the world’s largest democracy. India held its first elections in 1951-52 after gaining independence from Britain. Since then, almost every election has been free, although a coup in 1975 briefly threatened India’s democratic status.
It’s a rare bright spot in a world where democracy appears to be in retreat. Even in the United States, the world’s champion of democracy, former President Donald Trump has been accused of illegitimately trying to cling to power after losing the 2020 election.
“India is not a perfect democracy, but it is a model for developing countries, big and small, and given what some Western countries are doing, I have to say there are some things they can learn from India,” said Javin T. Jacob, an expert on India-China relations at Shiv Nadar University in India.
But critics say India’s democracy faces severe challenges under Modi’s rule. Global democracy watchdog Freedom House downgraded India’s democracy in 2021, saying Modi’s Hindu nationalist movement has threatened journalists, attacked Muslims and undermined civil liberties.
Jacob said this week’s election results showed India’s democracy remained resilient despite pressure, but dealt a blow to leaders who are seen to have overstepped their mandate.
“We have witnessed an election in which Indian voters have decided that their interests are best served by a more equal distribution of power among a range of political organisations representing diverse interests and aspirations. That is the very essence of democracy,” he said.
“Indian voters are very mature and have always made timely interventions against the authoritarian tendencies of their rulers.”
It remains to be seen whether Prime Minister Modi will double down on his nationalist stance or seek a more moderate path based on economic reform.
China’s rise comes at a high cost
But some in India are astonished at the speed and efficiency with which China has emerged as an economic powerhouse.
China has become the world’s second largest economy, transforming the lives of millions of ordinary Chinese. India has made great economic progress under Modi’s government, but it still lags behind.
“Perhaps the biggest challenge facing democracy in India is its failure to deliver the kind of sustained economic development that its neighbours, such as China, have enjoyed over the past four decades, nor to eradicate extreme poverty,” Chatham House analyst Gareth Price wrote in 2022.
But with prosperity in China comes restrictions on freedom.
Since the Tiananmen Square incident 35 years ago, the Chinese Communist Party has taken away many of the freedoms that its people once had.
The current leader, Xi Jinping, has imposed a strict surveillance state and is considered China’s most authoritarian ruler since Mao Zedong.
Dominic Chiu, an analyst at Eurasia Group, told Business Insider that the Chinese system has given China an economic advantage, but it has come at a cost.
“China’s one-party system during the Reform and Opening Up era allowed for consistent long-term policy making and economic planning,” he said. “When the leadership decided to liberalize markets, privatize industries and open up to foreign investment, this brought enormous benefits to the Chinese economy.”
But China’s repressive one-party system is also scaring away investors, he said, and this poses serious problems for China’s future growth at a time when the country’s economy is experiencing a sharp downturn.
China and India compete for supremacy
Having achieved economic superpower status, China is now seeking to assert its power more aggressively, both regionally and internationally.
Tensions with India have been rising: clashes along the two countries’ Himalayan border left 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers dead in 2020.
Analysts told BI that building stronger alliances to counter Chinese aggression will be one of Modi’s key objectives for his third term.
And that commitment to democracy gives it a key advantage, Jacob said.
“India’s democratic status is crucial to the country’s international standing. This is an opportunity to build a fair and democratic model of economic and political development different from aggressive US capitalism and Chinese authoritarianism,” he said.
In 2021, India forged a “Quad” partnership with the democracies of the United States, Japan and Australia to counter what it sees as growing Chinese aggression in the Pacific and Indian Oceans.
Observers say it would have been much harder to broker this political alliance if India had been ruled by an authoritarian regime.
Competing nationalist visions
However, some analysts point out that the competition between India and China is essentially one of competing nationalist visions rather than competing political systems.
According to this interpretation, both President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Modi are committed to restoring their countries to their rightful place at the top of the world order.
But critics have warned Modi, in his quest to strengthen India, not to undermine the commitment to democracy and pluralism that they believe are central to its post-independence success.
Jacob said Indians who envy China’s economic power should take a closer look at reality.
“Indians who oppose democracy while comparing it to China clearly have no understanding of the reality of China and the Chinese people,” he said.
