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of the following article: “While the People’s Republic of China celebrated sixty years of existence in 2009, neighbouring India, with an equally huge population, began its sixty-second year as an independent country.” Taking into account such an occurrence, this section presents two contrastive views on the “peaceful rise of India”. The first, already quoted, is that of an insider, well placed to analyse the strengths and weaknesses of his homeland. Seeing through the progress of democracy, exemplified by the recent fifteenth parliamentary elections, and the “steady growth” of the economy, he does not ignore what he calls the “backlash of the exploited”, the large majority of the country in which he sees, in his very human conclusion, “some hope, much despair”. In a different tone, writing from China, the views of two outsiders follow: Shi Yinhong and Song Dexing, both professors of international relations in prestigious universities, develop how they understand the rise of India since the nineteenth century. They focus on the driving strategy that the leaders of India have used to make the best of the constraints present in the nation’s predicament and the effects that India’s rise will have on international world politics.
The Editor |
