When speaking with an Indian internet celebrity recently about Sino-Indian border disputes, I found that we have very different views.

His view represents the opinions of the majority of Indian people, which is that China has always been a hegemony and has always had the ambition to expand its territory. Well, it is true that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which encompasses most Chinese people obsessed with the idea of Greater China, is keen to demonstrate its desire for power. But the territory China is fighting for in its border dispute with India is basically barren land where supplies are difficult to transport. To say the CCP has the ambition to occupy it would be underestimating Beijing.

But my friend continued to challenge me. He asked why China has had conflicts with all of its 20-odd neighbors except Russia and North Korea. I was speechless.

I oppose the way the regime handles Hong Kong, but I believe Beijing was genuine when it repeatedly said it has no intention to challenge America’s military leadership. Drawing lessons from the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union, the CCP is well aware that at a time when “the country is still not truly rich and people still haven’t been lifted from poverty”, spending money on an armament race with the US is tantamount to seeking the country’s demise. Just look at Russia. Although it is still good at making its own weapons, in terms of economic strength, it can hardly be deemed a powerful nation. China’s strength today is its economy. Beijing knows this well, and that is why it keeps emphasizing the need to maintain multilateral trade. It wants to use its economic clout to buy time so that it can boost its military strength later.

My Indian friend and I notice that patriotic sentiments run very high among young people in both China and India, and that populism and even xenophobia are rampant in both countries.

It has been more than 70 years since the Second World War ended, and five decades since China and India joined a large-scale war. Young people in both countries have never tasted the brutality of war. Their patriotic sentiments are tempered with a kind of romantic fantasy. Their irrational excitement is also fanned by official media outlets that want to prop up their respective regime and by school textbooks and propaganda machines.

I have my view on the cause of the Little Pink phenomenon in mainland China. These young people born after the Cultural Revolution have never suffered in any political movement but have been enjoying the dividends brought by the reform and opening up. So they are full of hope for the future. In investment term, they are friends from the bull market, thinking that there is no reason for China not to be a strong nation. The level of patriotism of a people is closely related to the level of their country’s economic development. This is why it is unreasonable and not a popular thing to do to impose the mainland way on Hongkongers.

(Water Cheung Chung-wing, senior partner and Asia Pacific CEO of Carbon Care Asia Pte Ltd.)

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