Author: ICS

Indian students in professional education abroad: The case of medical education in China

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Madhurima Nundy, Associate Fellow, Institute of Chinese Studies.

The commercialisation of medical education in India has led many students to study medicine abroad especially in China. The Indian medical education is in a state of crisis but there is no sense of urgency to address the serious issues of maldistribution of resources, the unregulated growth of the private sector, dearth of faculty, a lack of uniform admission procedures and dated curricula that needs to undergo a review. The commercialisation of medical education has raised concerns over issues of quality, regulation and increasing corruption in selection and recruitment procedures as has been exposed by the Vyapam scandal leading to the ‘criminalisation of medical education’.

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Health Tourism in India and China

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Rama Baru, Professor, Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health, JNU and Adjunct Fellow, ICS and Madhurima Nundy, Associate Fellow, ICS.

Health tourism includes travelling for medical care, wellness and relaxation. According to UNESCAP (2007) medical travel refers to international phenomenon of individuals travelling, often great distances, to access health services that are otherwise unavailable due to high costs or limited supply. The reasons for the rise of health tourism is located in the rising cost of medical care in developing countries and the overall crisis that has affected health service systems in developed and developing countries.  Incomplete insurance coverage, long waiting lists for interventions, poor care services after hospitalization are all important reasons for rise of this industry. Another important segment for medical travel is dental, optical and cosmetic surgery. Five distinct industries come together to form the complex for health tourism. These include tourism, hospitality, airlines, insurance, medical care and wellness services.

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A Story of Two Ports: Chabahar vs. Gwadar

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Virendra Sahai Verma, Honorary Fellow, Institute of Chinese Studies.

India-Pakistan rivalry in Baluchistan-Iran coast line is hotting up to become a new nerve centre of geopolitics with direct involvement of US and China. Pakistan’s media is flush with hailing China’s promised investment of US$46 billion for China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) as a game changer which will make Pakistan as the ‘next Asian Tiger’. The coast line sits at the mouth of Strait of Hormuz and 17 billion barrels of crude oil pass through from here every day. It connects central Asia, south Asia and west Asia.

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For Sub-regional Cooperation on the Yarlung Tsangpo-Brahmaputra River Basin

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Mirza Zulfiqur Rahman, is a PhD candidate at Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Guwahati, Assam and Panchali Saikia is Scientific Officer-Social Science, International Water Management Institute, New Delhi at the International Water Management Institute, New Delhi. Both were part of ICS delegations of scholars to China in December 2015 and April 2016 respectively.

China’s engagement with India on Yarlung Tsangpo/ Yaluzangbu-Brahmaputra water cooperation has been limited to mere Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) – mostly related to hydrological information (limited to water level, discharge and rainfall in flood seasons) on the river by China to India. These MoUs fall short of the objective of ‘Strengthening Cooperation on Trans-Border Rivers’ or of the obligations of a bilateral treaty.  Beijing has time and again spurned India’s proposal of having any water treaty or establishing institutionalized cooperation towards having mutual rights and responsibilities on management of the shared rivers. It is often seen that Chinese officials and academics are either reluctant to address or ambiguous in their responses to questions concerning YarlungTsangpo-Brahmaputra River. This strongly supports the general impression that China stresses on the full sovereignty of the riparian state over the water within its boundary and may use it according to its needs, even in the case of transboundary rivers. As an upper riparian, China’s approach towards engaging with the lower riparian countries, be it on the Mekong or the Brahmaputra, has been strategically placed rather than establishing commitments or acknowledging any regional concerns of the river basins.

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The Indian President In China: Snippets from Shanghai

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Alka Acharya, Director, Institute of Chinese Studies is visiting Shanghai to participate in the Shanghai Forum 2016, 28-30 May 2016.

Had I been in Beijing during the Indian President’s visit to China from the 26-28th May – or even in Guangdong – the impact and sense of the visit could possibly have been different. As it happened, I landed in Shanghai the day the President reached Beijing from Guangdong – and I had the opportunity to assess the visit from China’s commercial capital. Reports on President Pranab Mukherjee’s China visit were routinely issued in the various bulletins – more regularly in the CCTV English channel – but they were quite pro forma in fact and not every hour – it did not appear to be billed very high. Scholars I interacted with at Fudan University or even those who had come from other parts of the world to attend the Shanghai Forum, were more interested in discussing the G-7 meeting that was taking place and what China thought of it. The newspapers too made a brief mention of the visit, noting that the two countries had pledged to maintain peace in the border areas and that the visit was expected to advance the relationship. The buzz was all around the G7 meeting in Tokyo, Obama’s visit to Hiroshima (that occupied huge media attention); the statement on the South China Seas made from the G7 platform and the upcoming G-20 summit in Hangzhou.

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Parsing Tsai Ing-wen’s Inaugural Presidential Speech

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Jabin T. Jacob, Assistant Director and Fellow, Institute of Chinese Studies.

Tsai Ing-wen and Chen Chien-jen were sworn in on 20 May as the 14th President and Vice-President of the Republic of China on Taiwan, marking the third successful peaceful transition of power on the island through democratic elections. Tsai, the first female president of the island, is expected to take a more moderate position on Taiwan’s relations with China, even if her Democratic Progress Party is not likely to give up its pro-independence stance. It is this latter reality that is likely to keep the Chinese on tenterhooks about Taiwan’s direction under Tsai.

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China’s Strategy to Implement OBOR

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K. Yhome is a Research Fellow with the Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi. This article is based on interactions with Chinese government officials and think-tankers during a visit to China as part of a delegation organized by the Institute of Chinese Studies, Delhi from 21-29 April 2016. 

Since Xi Jinping announced the ‘One Belt, One Road’ (OBOR) initiative in 2013 this has become another name for China’s diplomacy. Not only is the entire Chinese diplomatic and economic energy being directed towards this one project, the ancient Silk Roads that once connected China with the outside world, are now being presented through art and cultural heritage not only to popularise it within and outside the country, but also as a strategy to counter the growing perception that the OBOR is China’s grandstrategy for dominating the region.

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Tax Reforms in China: The Year Ahead

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Aravind Yelery, Associate Fellow, Institute of Chinese Studies.

China’s ‘new normal’ rate of economic growth also means fall in revenues and possible uncontrolled expenditure patterns in China. In this situation “deepening the reform of the tax system [and] establishment of a modern financial system”[1] become important. The leadership is under overwhelming pressure to revamp its tax system to suit changing fiscal dynamics. The People’s Bank of China (PBoC) is planning to reduce the tax burden on Chinese businesses and raise hopes of economic growth. Since April 2016, the PBoC has convened a series of meetings of its various departments in Beijing to discuss the way forward and plan the ground for the upcoming 13th five year plan and tax reforms were flagged as the top priority.[2] The closed-door meeting called for tax cuts and a gradual expansion of tax bases. This signals a willingness of leadership to take new and concrete steps toward reducing business taxes in China, streamlining the tax system and integrating various tax-related laws in 2016.

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Understanding Recent US-China Dynamics in a Theoretical Context

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Kajari Kamal, PhD student, University of Hyderabad.

The Pentagon recently submitted its 2016 Annual  Report to the US Congress on ‘Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China’[1], hitting hard at China’s military growth and drawing attention to China’s efforts to enhance its reach and power, especially evident in the territorial and maritime sovereignty claims in the South and East China Seas. China retaliated by condemning the report and calling it a deliberate distortion that has severely “damaged mutual trust.” This geopolitical cut and thrust witnessed in the last few days was a rather enigmatic sideshow to the larger strategic contest that has been playing out ever since the Obama administration’s famous strategic “pivot” from the Middle East to East Asia, was announced.

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Changing Chinese Diplomatic Approaches – From ‘ABC’ to ‘Indo-Pacific’

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K. Yhome is a Research Fellow with the Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi. This article is based on interactions with Chinese government officials and think-tankers during a visit to China as part of a delegation organized by the Institute of Chinese Studies, Delhi from 21-29 April 2016. 

An interesting abbreviation that tells a lot about the concerns of the strategic community of China today is the so-called ‘ABC approach’. An official in the China’s ministry of foreign affairs (MOFA) opined that Beijing would stand against any regional or global move that adopts what he called the ‘All-But China’ or ABC approach.

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