A More Comprehensive Diplomacy

The growing importance of Chinese provinces and Indian states presents a challenge to both the U.S. government and the private sector. Our leaders and diplomats, bankers and businessmen are accustomed to dealing with countries only through their political and economic capitals. A more effective approach would have at least four dimensions.

First, we would significantly deepen and extend our presence in both countries. The United States is significantly underrepresented, as illustrated by the absence of consulates in Chongqing and Gujarat, as well as Bihar.

Location of US consulates/ embassy As of 2013, there were only six U.S. consulates in all of China—one for every 200 million people—and five in all of India—one for every 240 million. By comparison, the United States has 54 consulates in the EU and 55 consulates in the Western Hemisphere—almost one outpost for every ten million people.

Location of US consulates/ embassy While there will surely be resistance to such a major expansion at a time when our government faces budget deficits and the consequences of sequestration, our thin official presence in these developing economies could hurt us in the long run. The United States is being short-sighted in overlooking economic and political opportunities in precisely those places—the provinces and states of China and India—that are most rapidly climbing the economic ladder and opening up new markets. To be sure, this will be a delicate diplomatic balancing act. National leaders will not want western countries to interfere in state and local affairs. But there also will be many cases where Beijing and New Delhi will allow or even urge American states and cities to help their counterparts integrate into the global economy.

That points to a second dimension to how to engage with China and India: we can mobilize the natural diplomats we already have in the form of our own governors and mayors, who have the potential to change the way global business is done. Many have already begun to lead trade missions to China and India, and vice versa. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton launched a U.S.-China Governors Forum, with strong encouragement from Jon Huntsman—then U.S. ambassador to China and former governor of Utah. The first forum was in 2011 in Salt Lake City, another was held in early 2013 in Beijing-Tianjin.

China's Premier Li Keqiang (R) shakes hands with California Governor Jerry Brown during a meeting at the Zhongnanhai Leadership Compound in Beijing, April 2013.

Reuters / China Daily The leaders of the United States’ metropolitan revolution have begun dealing with global issues, too, among them climate change. And some of them are interested in testing out ideas coming from state and province-based governments in China and India. California Governor Jerry Brown, for one, is looking to China to see how its more advanced, coastal provinces are grappling with issues similar to those he deals with in Sacramento. He is comparing China’s six-province carbon emissions trading program, launched in the fall of 2012, with ideas being developed for emissions trading programs in California as well as in New York and Massachusetts.

In India, the three forward states of Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Tamil Nadu are in the early stages of building bridges to American states. City-to-city collaboration is happening, too. Bangalore, as the high-tech capital of India, is already closely tied to the San Francisco Bay area. Automotive powerhouses in Ahmadabad, Pune, and Chennai are poised to connect directly with Detroit. The biotech revolution spearheaded in Boston and Seattle has natural partners in Chennai and Bangalore, an affinity only now beginning to be exploited. At multiple levels and in many sectors—city- to-city, state-to-state, NGO-to-NGO, university-to-university, business-to-business—there is huge potential to grow the interactions between the countries and promote local growth.

Third, we need to reset our expectations about what central capitals can do. Western diplomats must understand that a handshake in Beijing or New Delhi is often only the beginning of getting to a final deal. If we do not take local concerns into account, we may be able to get signatures on climate change proposal and trade agreements such as the WTO or the Trans-Pacific Partnership, but in the end they are doomed to fail.

And if we really want to make progress, we may have to bring key local leaders directly into the negotiations. That will be a major change in the way diplomatic business is done. Inviting mayors and governors into negotiating sessions will make those efforts far more complicated, but it will also increase the chances of eventual success. Global agreements designed to keep the “end users”—i.e., those most affected—in mind, are those more likely to be enacted.

The United States is being short-sighted in overlooking economic and political opportunities in precisely those places—the provinces and states of China and India—that are most rapidly climbing the economic ladder and opening up new markets.

Lastly, western policymakers and corporate leaders need to adopt a more sophisticated and differentiated understanding of governance within China and India. While it is easy—and often appropriate—to see China as a dictatorship, there are people and groups within China working actively toward democracy with Chinese characteristics. Academic and press freedom is far more advanced than many westerners understand—though Chinese government for the most part is still far less transparent than in India. Given the opacity built into the system, the more we know about what is happening in the provinces, the more we will understand the forces operating below the surface of the system.

By actively engaging with the entrepreneurial sector—particularly in the coastal provinces—we may also be able to better anticipate change. The most competitive Chinese private firms are not seeking to remake the world system in China’s image. Quite the contrary: they want to join the international community as equal partners, and they have as much to gain from the enforcement of property rights—or as much to lose from the lack of enforcement—as businesses elsewhere do. Over time, those companies may well be the leading edge of China’s legal and political reform.

As for India, western policymakers need to appreciate that the world’s largest constitutional democracy is going through a bottom-up revolution of its own. Not only are state level leaders seizing the agenda, they are also feeling the push from below. Mayors and other local elected leaders are tired of being powerless figureheads. They are pushing to have greater control of the ability to tax and spend—breaking not just the grip of the national bureaucracy as run out of New Delhi, but also as run out of state capitals. At its best, that revolution is an attempt to meet the expectations and aspirations of a vast and diverse population. At its worst, state-level and city-level leaders are taking India in a vast number of different directions.

An Indian trader, in the old quarters of Delhi, raises his hands to protest against a 2005 tax reform policy.

Reuters / B Mathur India’s ability to forge unum out of pluribus has become a much harder task, despite the progress it has already made. There have been effective examples of crafting bottom-up national policies on some technical issues. Over the course of nearly a decade states have learned from one another how to assess and collect value added taxes, replacing an outdated sales tax system. But for every successful attempt to coordinate from the bottom up, there are other instances where states have undermined national policymaking, or where the center has hewed to a top-down approach that ignores local concerns. A major challenge in the next stage of perfecting its federal system, the world’s largest democracy must learn to empower local officials while still preserving national unity.

The very fact that all the sixty-four nations of the Western Hemisphere and the European Union combined have a population about the size as either India or China individually underscores the need for greater attention to what is going on inside the Asian giants. If the outside world factors the importance and complexity of those internal complexities, there is a better chance for stable and successful world order in the twenty-first century.

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Like other products of the Institution, The Brookings Essay is intended to contribute to discussion and stimulate debate on important issues. The views are solely those of the author.

* An earlier version of this essay incorrectly stated that Wang Yang had served for a decade and that Uttar Pradesh had voted out Singh's Congress party.