By isolation I meant friends or foes. India has only one sworn enemy - Pakistan. It has major adverserial relationship with China, and unfriendly relationship with Sri Lanka. There are some tensions with Bangladesh as well, but overall we have many friends in Bangla. Being democratic, we sit in the ideological coalition of the west and liberal countries. Japan, Russia and US are major friends.
Compared to that, China has more enemies. The public image perception can tell you that.
Public perception depends on how you want to see it, people don't see India as "good," they see it as no threat, people see US as "good." but also a bring of war, people see China as a "threat," due to our economy taking massive jobs away, our different ideology, and more, but mostly, who would you call China their enemy?
Maybe Philippines, not even Vietnam government, or any of the other ASEAN, and Japan Korea China, China Japan are hard at work on a new FTA.
Asian Infrastructure bank has Philippines and just short of Japan and Korea, while Korea may soon join.
So this is not a world perception problem, it's a your perception problem.
I am sorry, I should have been more careful with words. It is not really isolation that you I'm talking about. The isolation here is meant to tell the perception of country in their neighbourhood etc. You also face an ideological isolation, and if everything was equal, the west would choose India over China.
Doubt that, aside from the fact it isn't equal, but the only reason India doesn't have as much hate, is because you need to be very successful to be hated. Indian GDP is still only 10th, so it's not a big deal to the West, yet.... Go on to a Indian bad video or article, and you will see just as many hate as China, while some may even bring up China as better.
The problem is China's wealth, you think if Taiwan and HK was reversed and in India's lap it be better with the "soft power?"
For HK and Taiwan. Yes, part of the problem is wealth. But a larger part is ideological, and spiritual gap between people. Had it only been wealth, why would then the HK problem worsen in the recent years? HK identity is getting stronger and stronger, and Chinese identity is weakening there. Also, you people are totally weak in explaining your situation to the rest of the world. Do I think India would have dealt with both the issues in a much better way? Yes. Actually wealth is a very good way to isolate people and gain support. Everyone likes to go after rich guys. India has already proven immense assimilation potential by building an Indian identity where there was none. Democracies, which by their definition involve public opinion and image, are much better in soft-power and creating common identity.
Some people really did protest for identity and democracy, but most for wealth, you can clearly see the unhappy mood in HK due to our growing wealth that's pushing them out of HK cause they are poor as a mother, you can clearly see others cannot find jobs that pay more or even equal to what's available in Shanghai, Beijing and other major cities, you can see all of that if you want to see it.
Indians are in HK and Taiwan, ask them to rate India then if you think India is better at it, or any poor country can handle them any better.
Even Sri Lanka and Maldives are sort of looking down on Indian wealth, and they are not a 55,000 USD per capita place.
Korea-China. Yes. I am not asking you to make them vassals again. I am asking you to make them the modern equivalent of vassals. The kind of relationship US has with Canada. Is your relationship that strong? No way near. And relationship with Vietnam, Japan and Philippines is altogether a different story.
Why do we have to have a sphere of influence, why is that so important. Korea is richer than us by a mile, so.....
Wait I'm writing a post about that. I will prove to you that by many metrics Bollywood and other Indian cinemas are better than Chinese mainland one. (not including HK, because while HK comes under China technically, it still can't be counted completely. And since, we are talking about soft-power issues of systems, we must focus on cinema that has been brought up in Chinese system.)
Bollywood... you do know our domestic market is far bigger than India, we are a close second, in fact soon to be first.
If you mean Chinese movies usually sucks, then yea, they do suck, if you mean Bollywood has more influence than a Chinese film, you obviously don't know that nobody anywhere likes to watch foreign films, unless it's made by America.
bollywood is watched by Indians overseas, I never knew this until I thought about it, all the Chinese stuff are mostly bought by overseas Chinese, I mean the speciality Chinese products.
You may not know this, if you aren't overseas.
Well, China reached this in 3 decades, we may not surpass you, but a lot can be done surely.
Also, this all, again, is not soft-power.
Also, sorry to say, this is not the most respectful way to talk to anyone. You yourselves don't have soft-power. Showing ones success in this way normally doesn't earn friends. Money and Power is not everything in the world.
money and power are not everything, but you know what they can do?
Translate into more money for sanitation, higher expectation of living standards, higher education, more world view, travelling, and a ton of stuff that only money can buy.
Yes, by themselves it be useless, but you can do non of the things that lead to respect that I have listed without money.
I know you are patriotic and most of the things you see are Indian sourced or concerns India, but there's a whole world out there.
