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Council is first step to closer ties with India

Prior to the inauguration of the Taipei-based Taiwan-India Cooperation Council (TICC) on Feb. 11, former National Security Council deputy secretary-general Antonio Chiang (江春男) and National Security Council Deputy Secretary-General Parris Chang (張旭成) made private visits to India.

These trips came on the heels of visits to Taiwan by Indian politicians, such as Narindra Modi, the secretary-general of the Indian Bharatiya Janata Party, followed by George Fernandes, a House of the People member and former defense minister, and Jaya Jaitly, former head of the Samata Socialist Party, who were both here to attend an academic conference at the end of last year.

On Feb. 15, Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Hou Shui-sheng (侯水盛) led a delegation to India to discuss the establishment of an organization to facilitate exchanges between lawmakers of both countries.

The media has largely viewed the founding of the TICC and Taiwan's efforts to strengthen bilateral relations with other Asian nations as a strategic move, especially in light of the recent comparisons between China and India.

In his book entitled India: Emerging Power, Steven Cohen points out that while China claims to be a Third World country, India has one foot in the developing world and the other firmly on the road to advanced nation status, with the prosperity and military strength that this entails.

China continues to keep a wary eye on India, given New Delhi's granting of asylum to the Dalai Lama and its plan to convert Tibet into a buffer state, along with its concerted efforts with the US to establish a mechanism for a strategic dialogue between the two countries and push India toward becoming a major power in the 21st century to contain China's expansionist ambitions.

According to statistics compiled by the World Economic Forum, India has the third-largest number of engineers in the world and nine times the number China has. In addition, 20 percent of India's population is classified as belonging to the middle class. China, on the other hand, has 800 million people that continue to live in poverty. India is certainly following a path to development and moving in a sphere different from China's.

To aid the development of Taiwan's information technology (IT) industry, the Institute for Information Industry has, under the Cabinet's program for training and utilizing scientific and technical personnel, brought over nearly 1,000 Indian software engineers, who are currently employed by Taiwanese companies.

Last year, Acer Group chairman Stan Shih (施振榮) sought to redefine the nation's IT sector, saying that the integration of Taiwan's expertise in hardware and India's software resources could further advance the nation's technological development.

International conglomerates such as Nokia, Microsoft and Intel have all recently announced investments in India. Similarly, Taiwanese trade delegations have begun to find India a new, favorable target. These are all an indication that India's growing influence is overtaking that of China.

It is also worth noting that while the world is concerned about China's development in aerospace technology, India is planning to send astronauts to outer space within six years. The Indian Navy is also looking beyond the Indian Ocean, aiming to establish a naval presence in the Strait of Malacca and projecting itself as far as the South China Sea. It is also developing longer-range ballistic missiles.

A strategically important nuclear power, India is going to play an important role in Taiwan's drive to strengthen relations with Central Asian and Southeast Asian nations. The inauguration of the TICC is the first step toward improved bilateral relations.

Kuo Hua-ho is a journalist.

Translated by Daniel Cheng
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