Illustration: Liu Rui/GT





On Wednesday, China and India held a new round of strategic dialogue in Beijing. Co-chaired by Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Yesui and Indian Foreign Secretary Subrahmanyam Jaishankar - who was also India's longest-serving ambassador to China between 2009 and 2013, this series of upgraded dialogue marks a major joint effort to shore up the bilateral relations amid vocal differences and sensitive issues.



While most Chinese scholars and critics received the dialogue positively, believing it may thaw the atmosphere and propel the bilateral relations into a new era, their Indian counterparts turned out to be rather pessimistic - if not cynical, quoting the "unsolved" issues regarding India's NSG bid as well as the UN ban on JeM chief Masood Azhar. Understanding this critical difference between the two is the key to capturing the shifting dynamics between the two emerging economic giants.



The difference can be safely distilled into one essential question: can China and India's strategic interests converge with each other?



There are at least two factors that may push India and China to a strategic convergence. First, China and India both receive a large dividend from each other's economic development via optimizing their capital, entrepreneurship, and market and resources endowment. Second, as a result of such rises, both China and India want to see the unipolar world order replaced by multipolarity, in which each of them can play a larger role and command an effective sphere of influence that is more proportional to their sizes.



If these two forces are pushing China and India together in an irresistible fashion, then what prevents them from pursuing such a strategic convergence in a more coordinated way?



Certainly, there are many misunderstandings. In India, it is not uncommon for the average people to believe that China has been fixated on containing and frustrating India. Also, issues with complicated nature or multilateral implications are often targeted and then singled out as proof of China's ill-intention toward India.



Recent history of the Sino-US relations since the waning years of the Cold War sheds much light on how India may maximize its interests by restructuring its tie with China. Despite major ideological differences and geopolitical confrontations, market forces in the US and China went hand in hand to tap each other's comparative advantages, delivering unprecedented economic prosperity on both sides of the pacific. While China and the US successfully captured the historical trends, can it be repeated by India and China today?



One lesson India may learn from China is to be honest with oneself. Asymmetry in economic and geopolitical power is natural for any bilateral relations. China has rarely complained about taking a backseat in its relations with the US, as long as such pragmatism and entrepreneurship help it to catch up quickly. Rather, it was the idea of "G 2" that troubles Beijing, for such artificial parity brings self-complacence and nothing helpful to the cause.



The moral of the story is straight forward: existing gap - even if it seems wide - should not be the major concern; what's more important is the ways by which such gap can be closed most effectively.



As South Asia scholar Daniel Markey insightfully notes "China's leaders simply do not wake up every morning thinking about South Asia." Acknowledging this asymmetry in a hard-headed pragmatism, rather than obsessing with the false parity, may better help India to achieve its emulation quickly.



While it is understandable that if India makes up its mind to play second fiddle to its stronger neighbor, its cherished self-esteem may be troubled, from time to time, by any condescension it would perceive, be it real or self-imposed.



It is in India's interest to rationalize the concerns over its disparity with China and embrace it as a helpful catalyst to closing the existing Sino-Indian gap. In this regard, lowering expectation and situating the bilateral ties in a greater historical-strategic context certainly helps India to better tap any opportunities China brings to the table, like the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar (BCIM) economic corridor.



Fortunately, this round of upgraded strategic dialogue has signaled some heartening changes of bilateral ties in this direction. Let unimportant matters be unimportant - China and India should learn to live with, what Jaishankar puts, "natural issues which neighbours have" and join efforts in finding "more common ground on more issues."



After all, as India and China both benefit tremendously from each other's rise and a world of multipolarity, a strategic convergence should be approached in a more coordinated way.



The author is a visiting scholar at Tsinghua University. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn Follow us on Twitter @GTopinion