“You just look around. You go to Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, all of them have disputes, you know Philippines too. The whole of southeast Asia is about Chinese expansionism in the South China Sea. But is that going to lead to a war? Is it preventing commerce? Is that preventing people from visiting these places? That’s not the case.”
Satish Mishra, head of the Arthashastra think tank in Bali, Indonesia, believes that China’s presence and role in the region has to be seen in perspective. Talking to SNG on The Gist, Mishra says that disagreements or even a ship entering certain waters is not an extinction threat.
Mishra was implying that when India and Indonesia meet, the talk does not centre solely around China or the perceived threat from it.
“Indonesia wants a stable market for their largest export to India palm oil, which is mired in non-tariff barriers .. so they would like that reduced … the problem is there is a structural deficit, the Indians can buy $8 or $9 billion of palm oil but the Indonesians buy only $1.5 billion of Indian goods.”
The Indonesian market is open to all, the government does not restrict anyone but Indian brands are not known there, he noted. Ninety per cent of the Indian businesses that have entered Indonesia do not have a strategy.
“So it would appear that the lack of information coming out of India, also there’s a lack of information coming out of Indonesia. When I talk to diplomats in Jakarta … or in Delhi, the first thing is are the Indians really interested in us?”
Mishra argues that India and Indonesia comprises an Asia with 50% of the world’s population and in a bi-polar Asia, where China leads one bloc, India and Indonesia could be the drivers of the other bloc. The latter, he pointed out, have young and growing populations while China and much of Japan and South Korea are in demographic decline.
Tune in for more in this conversation with Satish Mishra of the Arthashastra Institute in Bali, Indonesia
