India: Learning To Live With China

The 60th anniversary of Communism in China, has coincided with a lot of items in Indian and other international media, looking at various flash points in the relationship between the two of the largest countries in the world. Here is the latest by an Indian journalist.

Indrani Bagchi, the diplomatic editor at the Times of India, has written a detailed analysis in the Crest, the weekend paper, titled "CHINESE CHECKERS: Learning To Live With China". She quotes some of the strategic experts as follows:

• "With neighbours, China has been trying to prevent clashes, but that seems to have changed with India recently.” (Susan Shirk, China specialist).

• “The steady emergence of India as a powerful player is not looked upon favorably by China. China’s strategic culture is to distrust strong, powerful neighbors and prefer small, weak, subordinate or client buffer states. A theme dominant in all Chinese commentaries over the last few years is that India’s growing power — backed by the US — would bring about a shift in the Asian balance of power detrimental to China.” (Mohan Malik, professor Asian security at the Asia-Pacific Centre for Security Studies, Honolulu).

• "China has generally been muted with the countries on its periphery. Except India. China’s response has been atypical." (Ashley Tellis, Influential American strategic analyst).

• "India’s 1962 burden stems from the fact that the defeat of Sela-Bomdilla was papered over and the nation never had the chance of a catharsis." (K Subrahmanyam, Strategic affairs expert, former National Security Advisor, India).
  

Following is an excerpt from the article.

There was a surprise in store this week for those who chose to brave Arunachal Pradesh’s damp cold and the three-hour rough ride from Tawang up to Bum La Pass, on the border with Tibet. They were greeted by “happy” arches erected by Chinese soldiers on the other side, to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party in power. The Chinese were preparing to receive Indian soldiers for a celebratory lunch — and some unfinished business on border management.

Most of this bonhomie is likely to evaporate in just over a month’s time when the Dalai Lama reaches the 400-year-old Tawang gompa (monastery) to offer prayers. Historically, this region has had a close relationship with the Tibetan people. The sixth Dalai Lama, Tsangyang Gyatso, for example, was born in Tawang. So, it’s not unnatural for the current Dalai Lama (the 14th) to want to pay obeisance at the Tawang gompa. Still, anything that’s seen to accommodate the breakaway Tibetans gets Beijing’s hackles up, especially when it’s on land claimed by the Chinese.

And so it alternates — blow hot, blow cold — in the uncertain relations between India and China: one day, it’s jaw-jaw, another day it’s claw-claw. The inscrutable Chinese and the argumentative Indian find each other equally indecipherable. It’s not surprising, therefore, that India’s China policy rides a trough-peak roller coaster.

New Delhi has been playing down media reports of Chinese “incursions” in an apparent bid not to ruffle feathers in Beijing. Almost simultaneously, the ministry of external affairs was lashing out at China for stapling not stamping visas to the passports of Kashmiri Indians, a signal that J&K was disputed.

The rise and rise of China represents one of contemporary history’s tectonic shifts. For an India that fancies itself as an emerging superpower, learning to live with an assertive China is one of its greatest foreign policy challenges, especially as its ambitions are sometimes aligned with the Chinese and sometimes at odds. A People’s Daily commentary (Sept 15) points out, “India is still a lesser power than China in terms of its economic and military might, both conventional and non-conventional.”

How can New Delhi and Beijing achieve a steady state of equilibrium that gives both sides the comfort of predictability, and a resultant confidence in each other? That’s a question nagging not just India’s foreign policy mandarins, but students and practitioners of diplomacy worldwide. As one of the architects of India’s China policy (who will be unnamed as will be many interviewed for this story) says: “For India, coping with the rise of China is not a luxury; they’re right next door.”

Indian policy makers find China’s approach to India quite mystifying. On the border, China has vastly superior military machinery. Its economic muscle is much bigger. And yet it appears keen to avoid any confrontation along the 4,056-km undemarcated border. But on many issues of bilateral import, China takes a far more belligerent stand — like seeking to nix India’s bid for a place at the UN Security Council; mounting a last-minute scramble to stop the nuclear deal in Vienna; trying to keep India out of an Asian economic community; blocking ADB from giving Arunachal money for a water project; and denying Arunachal residents Chinese visas.

Please read the full article here.

Uneasy Engagement: China rises, Region worries

In a new series of articles in the New York Times, titled "Uneasy Engagement", reporters have been looking at the rise of China, and the worries that many in the region are beginning to share. This is a contrast with India's experience, where India's economic growth has not sparked any particular concern even among its immediate neighbours. India's uneasy relationship with some of its immediate neighbour seems to be rooted more in history, rather than in economics.
In the first article, in this series, "Australia, Nourishing China’s Economic Engine, Questions Ties", NYT provides a glimpse of the sentiments in Australia.

China has become Australia’s biggest trading partner, one of its biggest tourism customers, the largest single buyer of its government debt, a major buyer of farmland and real estate...

China’s hunger for steel gobbles up half of Australia’s iron ore exports, and its textile factories buy more than half of Australia’s wool. Over 120,000 Chinese students throng to Australian schools and universities...

Three state owned Chinese companies said they would buy stakes in Australia’s storied mining industry totaling $22 billion — as much as China’s entire investment here in the last three years — some of this nation’s 21.3 million people have reacted with aggrieved nationalism...

Nor is Australia alone. From the Philippines to Vietnam, China’s neighbors are recalculating the benefits — and potential deficits — of life in the shadow of a newly dominant nation...

In the second of the series, "China and India Dispute Enclave on Edge of Tibet", NYT visits the predominently Buddhist area of Tawang in India's north eastern province of Arunachal Pradesh, and experiences the tension between China and India over this part of the border.

This is perhaps the most militarized Buddhist enclave in the world...

Though little known to the outside world, Tawang is the biggest tinderbox in relations between the world’s two most populous nations. It is the focus of China’s most delicate land-border dispute, a conflict rooted in Chinese claims of sovereignty over all of historical Tibet.

In recent months, both countries have stepped up efforts to secure their rights over this rugged patch of land. China tried to block a $2.9 billion loan to India from the Asian Development Bank on the grounds that part of the loan was destined for water projects in Arunachal Pradesh, the state that includes Tawang. It was the first time China had sought to influence the territorial dispute through a multilateral institution. Then the governor of Arunachal Pradesh announced that the Indian military was deploying extra troops and fighter jets in the area.

The growing belligerence has soured relations between the two Asian giants and has prompted one Indian military leader to declare that China has replaced Pakistan as India’s biggest threat.

Economic progress might be expected to bring the countries closer. China and India did $52 billion worth of trade last year, a 34 percent increase over 2007. But businesspeople say border tensions have infused business deals with official interference, damping the willingness of Chinese and Indian companies to invest in each other’s countries.

Many of us believe that open trade and commerce is one of the key factors in building peaceful relationship between communities and countries. But China's economic rise has generated admiration as well as triggered apprehension.

Indian strategic thinkers concerned about China

The economic ties between China and India has been growing. China has become the leading trading partner of India. On international issues such as climate change, both countries seem to share a lot of common ground. Yet, defence and foreign policy experts on both sides periodically express grave concerns. Last month, there was that report from a Chinese think tank which said that fragmentation of India was an option for India. This week there are three Indian experts who have expressed their concerns about Chinese design on India.

In an article published in The Telegraph newspaper, "Diffident diplomacy: China continues to outmanoeuvre India", on September 1, 2009, former Indian Foreign Secretary, Kanwal Sibal had warned about "strengthening suspicions that China will do everything possible to thwart India’s rise as a rival power," "its propensity to disregard agreements arbitrarily," and with India’s politically

Harsh Pant, a scholar at King’s College, London, wrote an article titled, "China Tightens the Screws on India", in the Far Eastern Economic Review, Sept 2009, (subscription required).

Even as the two countries sign seemingly important documents year after year, the distrust between them is actually growing at an alarming rate.....The two sides are locked in a classic security dilemma where any action taken by one is immediately interpreted by the other as a threat to its own interests... ... ...

Sino-India frictions are growing and the potential for conflict remains high. Concern in India is increasing over China’s frequent and strident territorial claims along the Line of Actual Control in Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim... ... ...

To strengthen its bargaining position with China, India will have to gain some sort of leverage over its neighbor, something it could possibly achieve by cultivating states along China’s periphery. Indian policy toward China continues to be viewed largely through the prism of economic growth, with the assumption that the only way to match up to the challenge posed by Beijing is to grow at 7% to 8% over the next decade or so. Yet India will have to work proactively to achieve greater strategic balance in the region over the next few years if it wants to preserve and enhance its own interests. As of now, Indian policy makers have not found a way of doing this... ... ...

Brahma Chellaney, a strategic scholar, at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi, wrote another article titled, "India’s Growing China Angst " in the Far Eastern Economic Review, Sept 2009, (subscription required).

The strains in Sino-Indian relations have also resulted from sharpening geopolitical rivalry. This was evident from China’s botched 2008 effort to stymie the U.S.-India nuclear deal by blocking the Nuclear Suppliers Group from opening civilian nuclear trade with New Delhi. In the NSG, China landed itself in a position it avoids in any international body—as the last holdout. Recently, there has been an outcry in India over attempts to undermine the Indian brand through exports from China of fake pharmaceutical products labeled “Made in India.”... ... ...

India can expect no respite from Chinese pressure. Whether Beijing actually sets out to teach India “the final lesson” by launching a 1962-style surprise war will depend on several calculations, including India’s defense preparedness to repel such an attack, domestic factors within China and the availability of a propitious international timing of the type the Cuban missile crisis provided 47 years ago. But if India is not to be caught napping again, it has to inject greater realism into its China policy by shedding self-deluding shibboleths, shoring up its deterrent capabilities and putting premium on leveraged diplomacy.