This is not the best of times to look at China, especially its South and South Western provinces, from a Northeast geo-economic perspective. It is important to note some good practices as the Chinese move in renaming six habitations of Arunachal Pradesh in Chinese following the recent visit of the Dalai Lama to Tawang has caused uneasiness in Sino-Indian relations.

However, this didn’t deter a high-level Indian business delegation from visiting Shanghai last month soon after this development; and this gives rise to the hope that the Sino-Indian trade, hovering around $60 to 70 billion, will not be affected by border tension.

This, in a way, proves Henry Kissinger right when he said “successful diplomacy is generally more about managing problems rather than solving them outright.” Keeping this practical definition of diplomacy in view, it seems reasonable that interest in development in its Chinese neighbourhood, other than Tibet, in areas like Sichuan, Yunan, and Guangxi provinces of South and South-west China, especially in successful building of a science and technology system, is warranted.

Mainly because it has not only triggered growth within but also laid the foundation for economic integration of South China with its three neighbours — Myanmar, Vietnam and Laos. This has made the border regions integrated growth centres rather than points of confrontation. In this scenario, Yunan holds a key position, being the gateway to Myanmar; and not long ago Stillwell road, built during World War II, connected its capital Kunming to Ledo in Assam through North Myanmar.

This road was extended to Chongqing, the temporary capital of China during the war and then celebrated as the Chongqing-Delhi road. And here the geo-economic dictum — “geography is the economic destiny of nations” — seems to be working, as it suggests that once neighbourhood economies develop they generate opportunities for integration and hold important lesson for growth in terms of system and product development through application of science and technology and management.

While economic integration involves trade and investment agreement with China, drawing lessons from that country for improving our own science and technology system, entails adoption of “best practices” for system improvement, as no patent rights are involved.

From this angle let us look at Sichuan and Yunnan, which were once linked to the North-east through an ancient second Silk route. Sichuan in South West China is a huge province with an area of 4.88 lakh sq km and a population of 87.26 million.

It is a major industrial hub, producing a wide range of value-added products and services such as silk, wine, processed fruits and vegetables, meat and processed food, apart from construction materials, automobiles and hi-tech defence equipment.

Sichuan is rich in mineral deposits of 132 kinds, including 13.3 per cent of China’s iron and its largest proven natural gas reserve. Its GDP of $ 340 billion, as per the 2011 estimate and foreign trade growing at a tremendous 50 per cent annually from its 2008 base of $ 22.04 billion, have given Sichuan a vital role in the economy.

The possible areas of interest to North-east are sericulture, silk, fruit and food processing. Yunnan, with an area and population of 3.94 lakh sq km and 45.7 million, respectively, borders Myanmar, Vietnam and Laos.

It is more relevant to the North-east because of its ethnic and bio-diversity, 4,060 km of border with Myanmar and increased economic interaction with that country. This is being achieved through an integrated programme of border trade and industrial growth towards a balanced and diversified economy, which holds some important lessons for the North-east.

Firstly is the development of the Lancang River as the upper Mekong waterway of South-east Asia. Second, development of the steel, chemicals and fertiliser industry, textiles and manufacturing of automobiles, along with agriculture, tobacco, mining and hydro-power development, as they enabled Yunnan to derive 45 per cent of the GDP from industry, 40 per cent from tertiary and 15 per cent from agriculture.

It thus has a balanced economy. Third, Yunnan’s innovative institutions for development of border trade and technology-based development, namely border trade economic cooperation zones, the Kunming airport economic zone and economic and technical development zones, these type of institutions still need to come up in the North-east. While Yunnan’s border trade zone at Muse handles chemicals and motor vehicles, the one at Ruili on the Myanmar border deals with export of electrical machines, chemicals, fertilisers and tobacco.

Trade through Ruili has already reached $ 96 billion apart from attracting foreign direct investment of $1.96 billion. Ruili has also recently been opened as the entry point of the 800-km oil and gas pipeline that China has constructed from the Myanmar port to pump oil and gas, brought from the Gulf to power industries in Yunnan.

These pipelines are a strategic asset for China and it has made Myanmar a crucial part of the connectivity route of China’s “One Belt and Road” initiative designed to create a durable basis of China-Myanmar economic cooperation that the latter could not do away with easily.

Economic and technical development zones, on the other hand, provide integrated support to develop special capabilities, for example, in bio-technology, computer hardware and pharmaceutical industries, which also serve as an experimental zone for the township and village industries that contribute about 26 per cent to the Chinese GDP.

There are also six tourism and vacation zones to attract visitors from abroad. The point to note is that the border trade economic cooperation zones, spread along China’s borders with Vietnam, Myanmar and Laos, have not only facilitated its trade but also promoted growth of industry and infrastructure across the border, often with Chinese aid.

Thus mutually beneficial economic zones have come up triggering growth in the region. Such a coordinated development strategy in the Bay of Bengal region is still not there in India’s ambitious Act East Policy. Perhaps a beginning could be made with the adoption of tourism and vacation zones and border trade economic cooperation zones, and economic and technical zones later in selected fields.

Guangxi province, adjacent to Yunnan, is a major producer of maize — it is the most important fodder crop and the third most important food crop of China after rice and wheat and covers 10 million hectares in North and South China.

Developing region- specific improved varieties of maize and checking its genetic erosion while conserving bio-diversity have been a major challenge to scientists and a factor of farmers livelihoods strategy. A participatory plant breeding programme was taken up mostly in farmers’ fields and not in research farms, enabling farmers to develop a sense of ownership of the research results and this fact really facilitated quick spread of the new variety and not extension efforts of the department.

This mingling of crop breeders and farmers is on a regular basis and not programme-specific. The other striking feature is China’s decentralised science and technology system for development and dissemination of technical and scientific inputs.

In every province, a provincial academy of science, and a science and technology commission function under the provincial government to provide support to the departments while the research institutions operate under the provincial academy of agricultural and allied disciplines.

An innovation eco-system, capable of promptly responding to the farmers need to bridge the technology gaps that China has put in place, deserves close study by the policy makers of the North-east, and for that, the region should have an Institute of Chinese studies to look at China and its southern part from the perspective of North-east India.

Briefly stated, China has put in place effective support mechanism at the grassroots level to assist innovators by provisioning scientific validation of their innovation, patenting and commercialisation. It is a kind of package of rural innovation development services that the Chinese decentralised science and technology system has been providing to farmers.

Indeed there is much that the North-east could learn from South China in science and technology system improvement. And experience elsewhere in the developing world suggest that skill development, unconnected with innovation development policy, is unlikely to produce entrepreneurship or jobs.

The Chinese success in joining the ranks of the world’s 25 most innovative economies in the Global Innovation Index 2016 is the outcome of strategising innovation for development.

The writer is a retired IAS officer of the Assam- Meghalaya cadre and has served as a scientific consultant in the Office of the Principal, Scientific Advisor to the Government of India.