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Book Review: Choosing China’s Leaders

The narrative covering the cultural routes and connections of the two neighbouring countries is also interesting. According to ancient belief in China, there used to be a ‘strong desire among the Buddhist-inclined Chinese intellectuals to pay homage to the ‘Country of the Buddha’ (Foguo), there was even a wider tradition (call it superstition if you like) to wish the deceased to ascend to the ‘Western Heaven’ (xitian)—which was a synonym of Foguo, that is, India. (The catch phrase is ronggui xitian, that is, ‘May the departed soul return gloriously to the Western Heaven’ and it has been a standard condolence message for more than a thousand years which survives even today among the Chinese both in the mainland and overseas’.) Patil refers to this tradition saying, ‘according to a Chinese belief spoken of even by Mao Zedong, “if a man lived a good life then he would be reborn in India”’ (p. 255). In the last section of the book, ‘Culture’, Patil covers in detail the cultural interactions between India and China. She details the moral influence of Mahatma Gandhi on some Chinese, especially among the young generation of Chinese. This highly readable book can be recommended to both professional China watchers and to any reader with some interest in India–China relations as well as in contemporary international relations. If the author desires to bring out a second edition of the book, she can with her background knowledge, certainly bring out even more sharply the interactions between these two Asian nations and some of the nuances in the decision-making process in India and China.