Breaking the India-Pakistan Impasse

Breaking the India-Pakistan Impasse

The trade deal has provoked much excitement in business circles in India and Pakistan. Still, the question needs to be asked: Can economic ties between India and Pakistan flourish when political conflicts remain unresolved? And can commercial integration in the long run defuse political animosities? Some instructive lessons for South Asia’s great rivals can be found in relations between the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of Taiwan.

Visiting Taiwan for the first time in 2006, I braced myself for strident rhetoric about the PRC’s claims on the island’s sovereignty -- the issue that has kept both countries on a near- war footing since 1949. At the time of my trip, Taiwan was ruled by Chen Shui-bian of the Democratic Progressive Party whose claim that Taiwan was independent of China had provoked the mainlanders to threaten an invasion.

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