Yew got it

Writing in Forbes, Singaporean elder statesman Lee Kuan Yew - possibly Asia's most respected modern leader - explains why nations fear the rise of China, but not the rise of India. It's simple, he says - India is a democracy, China isn't. And when Lee Kuan Yew says this, I tend to believe him - after all, he's a former dictator who gave up power and instituted democracy.

He writes:

Even though the economy's annual growth rate has been 8% to 9% for the last five years, India's peaceful rise hasn't led to unease over the country's future. Instead, Americans, Japanese and western Europeans are keen to invest in India, ride on its growth and help develop another heavyweight country...

Why has China's peaceful rise, however, raised apprehensions? Is it because India is a democracy in which numerous political forces are constantly at work, making for an internal system of checks and balances? Most probably, yes...

India's navy has an aircraft-carrier force; its air force has the latest Sukhoi and MiG aircraft; its army is among the best trained and equipped in Asia. India can project power across its borders farther and better than China can, yet there is no fear that India has aggressive intentions...

What if India were well ahead of China? Would Americans and Europeans be rooting for China? I doubt it. They still have...memories of the outrages of the Cultural Revolution and the massacres in Tiananmen Square, not to mention...Chinese government censorship.

Well said.

I don't think most countries are afraid of being invaded or attacked by China. What they do fear is that China will overturn the existing international system, a remarkably stable and secure ordering of relations among nation states. The fear is that China seeks to - and will be able to - supplant the America/Europe/Japan alliance as the maker of international rules. We've made good rules over the last half century, and the world has prospered. India doesn't seem to want to mess with a good thing; China does. China's failure to embrace democracy seems to be just one more way of saying "We're not with you."

The fact that Lee Kuan Yew is saying this, now, should not be ignored. Southeast Asia, much of which reveres Yew as a towering figure, is a powerful bloc of nations with over 500 million people, sandwiched between China and India, wavering between democracy and autocracy. Close friendship with Southeast Asia is going to be essential if we, the United States and our democratic allies, are going to hold the line against the rise of authoritarianism, behind which I think China's rise is unfortunately a driving force. The Southeast Asian countries, I'm sensing, would rather live in the old, multilateral, democratic order than roll the dice on a new Chinese-dominated system. That's why we have to spend more diplomatic resources on that region than we are currently spending.