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These days, aware that nuclear energy may become the ticket to economic success in the future, the Western world is seeking to ensure that this technology remains its exclusive preserve, with only the Chinese and the Russians reluctantly admitted as secondary partners. Thus, Iran's Non-Proliferation Treaty-assured right to reprocess nuclear fuel has been arbitrarily taken away by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the very entity that is supposed to protect that treaty. Even India -- a democracy of more than 1 billion souls -- is being arm-twisted by the United States into giving up the advanced nuclear technology that the country has developed over five decades, the way Brazil and South Africa already have.
There is a historical parallel to such exclusionary tactics in the Hindu caste system, which allowed only specific groups to access knowledge while the rest were condemned to eternal ignorance and thereby second-class, and worse, status. The caste system has fallen apart over the last four decades in India, thanks to the ballot box as well as the needs of a modern economy. The need for skills has permeated huge swathes of the population and generated trained human power in order to expand.
In Iran, the rule of the mullahcracy can be trusted to ensure a continuing retardation of the country's scientific capabilities. Should a modern, secular administration ever come to power in that ancient country, however, it would be impossible to confine it in a "low caste" box.
Rather than seeking to block non-Western countries from access to a technology essential for clean growth, it would make more sense for the United States and the European Union to set the parameters within which a country can be trusted with knowledge of the nuclear fuel cycle. These would include both democracy and a secular polity -- with China as the exception. The country is simply too powerful to trap into a low-technology cycle, much as many other countries may wish to do so, including most of China's neighbors.
The Chinese leadership wants the "best" of what is available in the world -- firstly for themselves and next for the country. This is why resources have been lavished on luxuries such as the maglev train in Shanghai. Having seen the concessions wrung from the rest of the world by the United States and the European Union, the Beijing ruling caste would like a similar result for their country.
However, there is still a considerable difference between China and the West. Militarily, the country is still far inferior, having to depend on Russian systems for its punch. Its economy is almost completely dependent on Western markets. China needs to squeeze out concessions from the West, even while not crossing a red line that would so anger U.S. and EU public opinion as to bring pressure on local corporations to temporarily suspend some of their short-term interests in favor of a hard-line policy toward Beijing.
The Chinese leadership is achieving this balancing act by perching on the shoulders of three countries that are completely different from China in both scale and chemistry --Brazil, South Africa and India. All three are vulnerable to the siren call of "third world unity" warbled by Chinese diplomats in the privacy of meeting rooms. In the World Trade Organization in particular, Beijing has secured a lot of the concessions it sees as essential to continued expansion by having the trio of Brazil, South Africa and India bat for it.
The same situation is developing with climate change. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh recently scurried to Germany on a summons from Angela Merkel "because Hu Jintao would be there." Although the scale of pollution from the trio is not comparable to China's, yet they have once again agreed to act as human shields for Beijing.
The reality is that its distinct political framework and its growth methods and trajectory have placed China on a unique path -- one that no longer shares common interests with Brazil, South Africa and India. By linking up with Beijing rather than acting as a separate bloc in cutting deals with all three super states -- the United States, the European Union and China -- the three underdeveloped countries are short-changing the interests of their own people in favor of the interests of the Chinese Communist Party.
Unlike China, India has a lot to gain from liberalized trade in services and relatively less to lose from tighter emission standards, in view of the smaller role played by traditional manufacturing in its economy, a situation akin to Brazil and South Africa. Even in agriculture the three have interests that are much closer to each other's than they are to China's. On climate change, linking up with China makes about as little sense as teaming up with George W. Bush. Next to the United States, China is now the biggest polluter on the planet. It is in the interests of the rest of the world to seek to alleviate this situation.
Since the Jiang Zemin period, Beijing has mastered the art of gaining concessions without giving up anything in exchange. While, for example, India has been ever ready to do the heavy lifting for China within the United Nations, the WTO and other international agencies, Beijing has been vicious in its attack on India's independent nuclear assets, seeking to gut the country of its homegrown technology. While India has bent over in numerous yoga positions to accommodate China on Tibet and even on Taiwan, all that New Delhi has received in exchange is Chinese diplomatic backing for Pakistan and transfer of sensitive technologies to that country.
All that the Communist Party leadership in Beijing seems interested in is that Wall Street passion -- profits. Today, in a promiscuous dalliance that embraces Iran and Israel, India and Pakistan, the United States and Russia, rich and poor, black and white, China is cozying up to the United States and the European Union even while its diplomats talk of "third world unity" to eager listeners from the underdeveloped world.
It seems the moment has arrived to acknowledge that China has today become a developed economy with some poor people, very much the same as the United States. It may be time for Brazil, South Africa and India to free themselves of Beijing's embrace and work toward concessions that benefit the three, not China at their expense.
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(Professor M.D. Nalapat is vice-chair of the Manipal Advanced Research Group, UNESCO Peace Chair, and professor of geopolitics at Manipal University.)
