XI JINPING IGNORES PAST PRECEDENT, USES EUROPE’S OLD PLAYBOOK

Although the conventional wisdom is that Xi would direct his firepower across the Taiwan straits, the probability is higher that he may instead seek to challenge India by 2023 on some of the battlefields of the Himalayan massif.

The race in Asia to modernize was first launched by Japan in 1868, with the restoration of the Imperial system under

Emperor Meiji, casting aside the oppressive rule of the Shogunate. Certainly from the time of Emperor Meiji onwards, the Imperial system gave substantial latitude to large segments of Japanese society. Such a downward dissemination of Imperial authority generated forces within Japan that placed the country on the track towards modernisation. In India, after getting free of the debilitating rule of the British Empire in 1947, Mahatma

Gandhi sought to return India to the past, the pastoral paradise that he believed once existed and was the best way to the future. His chosen Prime Minister of the Republic of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, turned to the Soviet

Neeraj Chopra in action during the Olympic javelin throw final at the Olympic Stadium in Tokyo, Japan, on Saturday. Chopra made history by winning India’s first Olympic gold in track and field (inset), as well as the country’s first gold after the 2008 Olympics.

Union for inspiration, straitjacketing the private sector and giving the state-owned sector the “commanding heights” of the economy, a process carried forward by his daughter and eventual successor as PM, Indira

Gandhi. From the start, the post-1947 Government of India neglected to spread the dissemination of knowledge of the English language to the wider population. This was under the belief that the language was an instrument of colonial oppression rather than a means towards modernisation, although this view did not prevent the political class as well as the higher rungs of the administrative system from rely