Singapore cultivates India as counter-weight to China in South-East Asia (Wikileaks)

Tue, 09/06/2011
Submitted by Prashant Duggal
RTN (India)

Singapore consciously cultivates its relationship with India as a way to counter-balance China's growing influence in South East Asia, according to a cable written by American ambassador to the city-state, Franklin Lavin in 2004.

According to Lavin's reading of the country's new "India fever", Singapore does not want China to dominate South East Asia and would rather have India as a counter-force to balance out the dragon.

For this purpose, Singapore is taking several actions to deepen its economic, military and political ties to India.

"The Government of Singapore is sending a concerted message that India is both wanted and needed in Southeast Asia to balance the rising influence of China and to further expand regional economic prosperity.

ADB's Arjun Goswami: India-ASEAN-China relationships

Column : Angkor What?

Feb 26, 2009
ARJUN GOSWAMI

When my family and I moved to Cambodia over two years ago I was aware of the historical and cultural traditions that bound India and Cambodia together. Viewing the reliefs of the Mahabharata at the famous temples of Angkor Wat, seeing the Hindu gods carved into the river bed at the site of the thousand lingas and on various pre Angkorian temples over 11 centuries ago, showed me how deep that connection was. Yet, the question in my mind was whether these links had translated into vibrant trade and investment connections. Had modern India built on the links that ancient India had wrought?

In the early 1990s the Government of India launched a so called “Look East Policy” (LEP). There may have been three possible motivations behind such a policy. The first was to complement the emerging liberalization of the Indian economy with an export link to fast growing ASEAN economies and diversify away from excessive dependence on the US and Europe. The second may have been the desire to develop the North Eastern region of India by linking it to ASEAN states. The third may have been a sense of strategic competition with the People’s Republic of China's (PRC) influence within ASEAN.

Measured by those motivations of 20 years ago, what has LEP amounted to? In terms of commercial diplomacy there are some signs of progress. The ASEAN – India Free Trade Agreement (AIFTA) is due to be signed at the next ASEAN summit and take effect as of 2009. Should this happen, it suggests a step in the painful road back from India’s rejection of ASEAN’s invitation to join it as a founder member given non alignment compulsions at the time. AIFTA is expected to boost India-ASEAN trade from the current level of $ 38 billion in 2007-2008, by $ 10 billion in 2009-2010. Yet, as the global financial crisis of 2008 has unfolded resulting in the onset of one of the severest recessions in decades in the US and Europe, the knock on impact on India and on ASEAN countries like Cambodia has shown that “decoupling” is far from evident as yet. The forging of closer links between India and ASEAN has therefore been given added urgency.

Unless the LEP’s key direction changes from an inadequate tool of bilateral competition or internal development into an instrument for responsible development of economic integration of all Asian countries, the inevitable conclusion is that Indo-China will be an appropriate description of India’s relationship with Cambodia. The “Indo” portion will represent primarily a backward looking historic and cultural past, whilst the “China” portion will be the dominant force in terms of the economic and commercial future. It will be a test of India’s public private partnership to see if India can change the dynamics of the LEP to make it a meaningful dynamo for the emergence of an inclusive new Asian economic community.

—The author is country director, Cambodia Resident Mission, Asian Development Bank. These are his personal views