Too much worry; too much China relaxation

Whether others like it or not, China is zooming in the world skies. Its carefully crafted growth is creating unbelievable situations around the world. India being the long time foe of the dragon giant needs to be cautious about the galloping neighborhood. Although China extends warmth and a hand of friendship openly to India it encourages anti Indian elements in Pakistan and other countries. What Srinath Raghavan writes in the article may be an underestimate about China’s potential threat. But it is also true that India is over obsessed with China threat.



Srinath Raghavan writes in The Deccan Chronicle



China seems to have a knack for generating a periodic hubbub in our public discourse. The most recent one has been triggered by reports in Western media about the presence of Chinese troops in the Gilgit-Baltistan area and by the denial of a Chinese visa to the Northern Army Commander. Coming on the heels of the earlier controversies, these have yet again excited our imaginations over the “threat” from China. Notwithstanding interventions by a phalanx of experts, the current debate tells us more about our own discourse on China than about Beijing’s intentions or plans.

Consider, for a start, the claim that the recent moves indicate a significant hardening of China’s position on Kashmir. China’s stance on Kashmir has evolved in three distinct phases. In the 1950s, the Chinese took a largely neutral position. The evidence now available from Chinese archives shows that in their limited interaction, the Chinese were urging the Pakistanis to settle with India. Things began to change with the deterioration of the Sino-Indian relationship. For three decades, starting from 1963, the Chinese switched to a position of endorsing Pakistan’s demand for a plebiscite. From the early 1990s, the improving ties with India led the Chinese to shift their stance yet again. They now held that Kashmir was a bilateral problem to be solved by India and Pakistan. This is, of course, close to the Indian position on the matter.

However, the Chinese have never acknowledged sovereignty over Kashmir. Their visa policy is a way of simultaneously needling India and extending symbolic support to Pakistan. But it is nothing more than that. Indeed, given India’s ability to respond in kind — not least over matters like the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan exiles — the Chinese are unlikely to escalate tensions on issues of core concern. On more practical matters, such as developmental activities in occupied Kashmir or disaster relief, the Chinese will continue to extend assistance to Pakistan. And there is little that India can realistically do here. As Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel once remarked, possession is nine-tenths of the law. It is as unrealistic of us to expect our protests to bring these activities to a halt as it was of China to expect that it could block Indian developmental activities in Arunachal Pradesh.

The ongoing debate also highlights three important strands of our narrative on China. The first is the view that China is a highly strategic and deeply malevolent power that thinks in long-time horizons. The obverse of this is the claim that India lacks any strategic vision and is numbed by short-term expediency. In consequence, our experts urge us to remember that every small move by the Chinese is an integral part of a larger plan calculated to advance their power and interests and to undercut ours. That the Chinese have shown themselves capable of long-term planning, especially in economic matters, is undeniable. But the historical record also shows that they are capable of making enormous blunders — mistakes that have usually defied any strategic logic. Think of the Great Leap Forward and the break with their most important ally, the Soviet Union.

Take the more recent example of China’s position in East Asia. Until about a year ago, the smaller East Asian countries were loquacious in their admiration for China’s “peaceful rise”. But China’s swagger and assertiveness over the last year has nudged many of these countries towards a more wary stance. The retention of the American military base in Okinawa, the strengthening of US-South Korea ties, the US-Vietnam naval exercises in the South China Sea: none of these work in China’s interests, but all are a consequence of China’s stance on a range of issues which have not been clearly thought through. The Middle Kingdom, then, can also be the Muddle Kingdom. It is important, therefore, not to read too much long-term strategy into every Chinese move.

The second, and related, strand is the assumption that China is out to encircle and box-in India in the subcontinent. The numerous ports that China is building in our neighbourhood are held out as evidence of this intent. That the military aspects of the Sino-Pakistan relationship are aimed at balancing against India is clear. Not so the assumption that every port built by China in our neighbourhood is a potential naval base for them. For one thing, the military implication of these commercial activities is not at all obvious. More importantly, we need to ask ourselves why we are unable to undertake similar projects. The answer is simple: India does not yet have a competitive world-class port construction industry. Instead of inveighing against the Chinese for allegedly making inroads into our neighbourhood, we might usefully turn the searchlight on our own capacities.

The third strand is the entrenched belief that China has deliberately refrained from coming to an agreement with India on the disputed boundary. This is a seriously one-sided reading of the record. For two decades after 1962, India was as uninterested as China in resuming the negotiations. Thereafter, too, India dragged its feet on a sensible framework for discussing the boundary and insisted on subsidiary negotiations to clarify the Line of Actual Control. It was only in 2003 that we agreed to a viable framework for political negotiations. True, the Chinese have adopted a tough stance over the last few years. But this is only to be expected in any such negotiation. Instead of harping that India is the only country with which China has not settled, it might do us some good to consider why India is the only country which has been unable to settle with China. The strategic thinker Basil Liddell Hart’s prescription is apt for our China experts: “Avoid self-righteousness like the devil — nothing is so blinding”.

Taken together, these three assumptions seriously distort our debates on China. This is problematic because .international politics is an interactive game. Our narratives about other states invariably end up influencing their behaviour. Unless we are careful, the “China threat” might well become a self-fulfilling prophecy

Equations with China

Fears over Chinese growth and its influence around South Asia is creating sleepless nights for Indian foreign policy makers. Due to this fear they react bitterly sometimes and sometimes sweetl towards Chinese. This half-heartered reactions are bad for the long term foreign policy matters and national security. It is important to go with China and dig their motives indirectly. Any direct salvo fired against Chinese is deterimental but at the same non seriousness towards Chinese control over India's neighbhours will be explosive.

Dilip Padganokar writes in The Times of India (21 September 2009)

To listen to scholars, journalists and politicians from Japan and South Korea discuss what China's emergence as a world power means
to them is a sobering experience for an Indian. Their thoughtful analyses, presented at a forum hosted by the influential newspaper JoongAng Ilbo, focused on present and future opportunities and challenges rather than on past fears and animosities. This is in sharp contrast to the discourses on China one hears in the corridors of power and influence in New Delhi.

Let us leave aside the Left parties who, given their congenital anti-Americanism, disregard China's sustained efforts to make life difficult for India. It has gained a foothold in our neighbourhood; it has increased its presence in the Indian Ocean; it frowns at our nuclear power status; it opposes India's legitimate quest to gain the permanent membership of the UN Security Council; it shows no genuine interest to solve the boundary issue.

However, important sections of the Indian establishment, unable to forget or forgive China's aggression in 1962, and convinced about that country's expansionist designs, are still wary of a serious engagement with our northern neighbour. They appear to envy China's stupendous achievements in every conceivable field of endeavour bar its political system. Envy, in turn, generates suspicions about its real as against its stated ambitions.

None of this figures in Japanese and South Korean assessments of China. For both, that country's rise to economic, military and even cultural pre-eminence is no more and no less than a fact of life, a reality that needs to be acknowledged, accepted and respected in order to develop mutually beneficial relations. Indeed, China, now poised to become the second most important nation in the world in GDP terms, is destined to grow stronger and stronger in the years ahead.

One paper presented at the forum listed China's plans to expand its economy between now and 2020. They make an Indian squirm in his seat with embarrassment. During the next decade, China hopes to build 500 coal-fired plans, 97 new airports (bringing the total to 244), thousands of kilometres of roads and railways and an ever more extensive communication network. At the end of this period the country will have 160 cities with a population of more than one million as against nine in the US and two in the UK.

To sustain this pace of growth, China leaves no stone unturned to gain access to energy resources and raw materials. Already the country is either the first or the second consumer of most commodities. It is first for nickel, copper, aluminium, zinc, steel, coal, sea-borne iron ore and tin and second for oil and lead.

Coupled with this aggressive buying are China's efforts to enlarge its trained manpower. The figures here are equally revealing. In 1977, 2,70,000 students graduated from Chinese universities. Thirty years later the number stood at 5.7 million. In 2008, China boasted of 30,000 fresh MBAs. Thirty years earlier the number hold your breath was zero. Add to this some 7,00,000 new engineers who join the workforce every year.

Realising the potential of the Chinese market, Tokyo and Seoul moved swiftly to do business with Beijing. Growing economic interdependence gradually paved the way for a better understanding of how the three countries should address their security concerns. Both Tokyo and Seoul are fully aware that their biggest security challenge North Korea cannot be met without the active connivance of Beijing. Its considerable influence in Pyongyang is required to check that country's nuclear weapons ambitions and indeed even to help determine the future course of North Korea once Kim Jong-Il dies.



Therefore, without in any way minimising the problems facing China on the home front seething discontent in Tibet and Xinjiang and social tensions caused by unemployment, regional disparities, large-scale corruption and the grip of the Communist Party on public life they avoid doing anything that might needlessly irk the Chinese. However, both Japan and South Korea are firmly opposed to China's efforts to persuade the two countries to distance themselves from the United States. And this on the grounds that America makes a to-do about human rights, supports the separatists in Tibet and Xinjiang, denies advanced weaponry to modernise the Chinese military and often resorts to unfair trade practices.

To this a Japanese editor gave a telling rejoinder: ''When Japan takes actions either together with the US, or with US backing, China tends to listen to what Japan has to say. If Japan does not have that support, China is unlikely to listen to it.'' That holds good for South Korea too. Under no circumstance is it prepared to loosen its alliance with the US. What these experts propose instead is that the US, China, Japan and South Korea engage in sustained, multi-cornered parleys to address issues of common interest and concern. That alone can reassure Beijing that its neighbours and America are not in cahoots to encircle it. Is New Delhi listening?

Vicious Chinese Whispers

The Asian time has come finally. China and India are racing to be the bright spots at the world stage. In this game one is trying to knock down the other through fault methods. The idea of splitting India through nefarious designs have been long pending in the minds and hearts of Chinese. Now they are openly proclaiming their evil intentions to balkanise India so that there won't be challenging nation to the Chinese juggernaut from Asia. Will this work?

The Times of India writes (12 August 2009)

India may have survived doomsday predictions — once a favourite pastime of the West — of its balkanization but that does not seem to have
deterred the Chinese. On Tuesday, New Delhi took exception to an article on a quasi-official Chinese website, which boasted that the “great Indian federation” was ripe for dismemberment if Beijing tried just a little.

Posted on April 8 on the website iiss.cn (International Institute for Strategic Studies), the article detailed a roadmap for breaking up India. “To split India, China can bring into its fold countries like Pakistan, Nepal and Bhutan, support Ulfa in attaining its goal for Assam’s independence, back aspirations of Indian nationalities like Tamils and Nagas, encourage Bangladesh to give a push to the independence of West Bengal and lastly recover the 90,000 sq km territory in southern Tibet,” the write-up said.

The article claimed that India as a nation never really existed in history. It was held together by “decadent” Hinduism which “encouraged caste and exploitation”.

“...China in its own interest and the progress of whole Asia, should join forces with different nationalities like Assamese, Tamils, and Kashmiris and support the latter in establishing independent nation-states of their own, out of India,” the article said.

The ardent hope has been sought to be justified by using the rhetoric of change. “Only after India has been broken up into 20-30 pieces will there be any real reform or social change in the country,” stressed the article meant for Chinese audience.

Hopes of a rebellion by Tamils may appear outlandish, but the article serves to corroborate fears in India about Beijing’s gameplan to encircle India in alliance with regimes in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal, of its support for Ulfa and other insurgent groups in northeast and its designs on Arunachal Pradesh which the Chinese insist on referring to as south Tibet. Not amused, India’s foreign ministry cautioned China, asking it to express opinions “after careful judgments based on the long-term interests of building a stable relationship”.

Seeking to hold Beijing to its official statements, an MEA spoksperson said the article “appears to be an expression of individual opinion and does not accord with the officially stated position of China on India-China relations conveyed to us on several occasions, including at the highest level, most recently by state councillor Dai Bingguo during his visit to India last week”.

Realising Indirect Chinese Threats

China remains as the indirect enemy for India's growth. By aiding Pakistan and other neighbhours against India the red nation plays its danger card safely without revealing to the external world. Now India should safely steer clear the evil designs of Chinese and ensure its supremacy in the world stage soon. Expecting Chinese to help India in the global arena will be foolish.

G. Parathasarthy writes in The Times of India (29 June 2009)

Dwelling on the prospects for Sino-Indian relations just after his meeting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at Yekaterinburg, on the sidelines of
the BRIC summit of emerging world economies, Chinese president Hu Jintao said: "Both sides should make steady progress in pushing for dialogue and cooperation." The two Asian neighbours have cooperated closely in international forums on crucial economic issues like global economic recovery and the restructuring of international financial institutions. India and China have made common cause on vital issues of climate change, indicating that while they share a common interest with the developed world in arresting global warming, they would not succumb to pressures that would limit their common quest for economic development.

Sino-Indian cooperation on such issues has, however, been overshadowed by some disturbing policies adopted by China in recent days. Quite evidently bolstered by US secretary of state Hillary Clinton's comments that US-China relations are the most important bilateral relationship in the 21st century and by a realisation that the US needs its cooperation to revive its crisis-ridden economy, China has become more assertive in recent days in flexing its muscles across the Asia-Pacific and Indian Ocean regions. It has overridden the concerns of its neighbours on its territorial claims in the South China Seas by extending its maritime boundaries with Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippines unilaterally.

This has been combined with a continuing barrage against India, not only denigrating India's economic development and its approach to neighbours like Pakistan, but also issuing not too thinly veiled warnings about its territorial claims to Arunachal Pradesh, which it refers to as "Southern Tibet".

The policy of denigrating India picked up steam after the 26/11 terrorist carnage in Mumbai. Government-controlled media organisations in mainland China and Hong Kong launched an anti-India barrage claiming that "the Indian government's eagerness to declare the attacks were carried out by foreign forces was an attempt to cover up internal contradictions". The official mouthpiece of the Communist Party, the People's Daily, proclaimed on December 2 that the attack was "a major blow to India's big power ambitions". More recently on June 19, it claimed that the "mindset" of people in India towards China is one of "awe, vexation, envy and jealousy".

What has raised concerns in New Delhi is that, as China now displays its military might openly and calls on the commander of the US Pacific Fleet to recognise the Indian Ocean as a Chinese sphere of influence to be managed by Chinese nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers (a suggestion the Americans rejected), we are also witnessing growing aggressiveness in Chinese claims to the entire territory of Arunachal Pradesh. This is a far cry from China's position in 2005, when it implicitly agreed that in resolving the border issue, the status of populated areas on both sides of the line of control would remain unchanged. Just after the Mumbai attack, a publication in a Chinese government-linked think tank noted, even before Pakistan claimed that India was manifesting aggressive intentions, that "China can support Pakistan in the event of a war". Post-Mumbai, China has blocked attempts in the UN Security Council to impose sanctions on Maulana Masood Azhar, head of the Jaish-e-Mohammed.

Matters came to a head when China formally blocked the passage of a $2.9 billion assistance programme for India, from the Asian Development Bank (ADB), merely because it contained provisions for aid to developmental projects in "Southern Tibet". New Delhi reacted strongly and China stood isolated when every other ADB member including Pakistan rejected its objections and endorsed the assistance package for India. The Americans appear to have signalled that they do not favour Chinese aggressiveness in putting forward claims to Arunachal Pradesh. And Pakistan realised that backing the Chinese line could result in the end of international developmental assistance for projects in PoK. What now appears clear is that while the US and its European partners would seek Chinese participation and support in dealing with international issues, they will not endorse manifestations of Chinese aggressiveness.

India has complemented its diplomatic success on Arunachal Pradesh in the ADB by deciding to bolster its defence preparedness in the state, with the decision to enhance military deployment with two additional mountain divisions and supporting artillery. New Delhi has also boosted its air power with the induction of frontline SU 30 aircraft into the north-east.

But both our service officers and defence scientists would be well-advised to remember that mature nations do not speak strongly or publicly about military deployments on disputed borders. Statements and leaks to the press about troop and air power deployments in Arunachal, or about development of China-specific Agni 3 and Agni 5 missiles, are uncalled for and appear to forget the old adage that actions speak louder than words. There are areas where we can and should cooperate with China on the global stage. At the same time, proactive diplomacy can deal with the strategic challenges that China poses in our Indian Ocean neighbourhood.