By Ambassador T.P.Sreenivasan
Although differences remain, an increasingly powerful and assertive China is pushing New Delhi and Washington closer together.
The possibility of a looming new cold war was on most attendees’ minds at the recent Asia-Pacific Roundtable on Asian Security Governance and Order in Kuala Lumpur. Hanging over the meeting was the reality of an increasingly influential and assertive China, and the anxiety this has created in the United States.
What was striking, however, was that, at least among some of the regional states in attendance, the perception is that China’s growing power in the region is wholly benign. Malaysian Prime Minister Razak, for instance, said that he would not belittle “the positive transformational effects China’s ascendancy has and will continue to have on Asia and beyond.” Mahathir Mohammed, the elder statesman of Malaysia, went even further by suggesting that because China has never colonized Asian countries in the way Europe once did, Malaysia might have more reason to fear modern Europe than modern China.
Read the full story at The Diplomat