Interesting thoughts about the long relationship between india and china. what with them being the likely superpowers of the 21st century, given their size, population and long history of civilisation (far longer than Europe's or North America's) they are always worth looking at. The i thing is that their relationship now is very similar to what it has been throughout history. i remember reading somewhere accounts of chinese scholars going to india in the early part of the first millenium in order to gain knowledge. They had acquired from india, not only the religion of buddhism but also information on medicine and other important ideas. that journey mirrors todays relationship, of china sending students to India's silicon valley in order to learn more about software design. though china is wealthier and more powerful than india at present it lacks valuable knowledge, it is a major producer of computer hardware, but in software terms lags far behind india.
culturally too it will be interesting to see how global culture is changed by the increasing consumer voice of India and china. while in britan now we end of consuming almost anything american, even when it has no relevence to us and is culturally alien. the best case of this is films which cover things like baseball or american football, they mean bugger all to us. i can see a situation where asian culture becomes the major one exported to us, the fact that i am sure in the next few years software programs will be able to easily dub films into any language without any trouble. it can already be seen in the way the influence culturally of japan has changed the cultural climate in europe and america, not only in the huge demand for Manga comics and films but in terms of japanese films, which are being remade by hollywood, theough rarely with any great degree of success but featuring a list hollywood actors.
It has to be understood that the West is no longer the cultuarl powerhouse it was only a few years ago. i am sure the US will be able to dominate culturally for a few years yet but asia is comiong up swiftly behind.