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न्यूज क्लिपिंग्स् | New stars in the East by Krishnan Srinivasan

New stars in the East by Krishnan Srinivasan

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published Published on Dec 17, 2009   modified Modified on Dec 17, 2009

Referring to China in 1947, Nehru declared, “A new star has risen in the eastern horizon,” and some years later predicted, “If you peer into the future, the obvious fourth country in the world is India.” One of the countries he had in mind has disappeared, and he did not imagine that the emergence of India and China on the global stage would lead to mutual friction. The Chinese are not so dim-witted that they are unaware that Indians unite only in the face of an external threat. So why would the official People’s Daily carry an article on the balkanization of India, and why the intrusions across the vaguely defined line of actual control and the largely undelimited Indo-China border — on which both countries in 1993 pledged to observe peace and tranquillity?

India has given China various causes for concern. The Chinese keep a vigilant eye on the Indian media, and were incensed by a false report of Chinese firing and injuring two members of the Indo-Tibetan Border Patrol troops in a story now known to be based on Indian government sources. Pranab Mukherjee was quoted as describing China as a “security challenge”, and our media have been speculating that China would attack India. Beijing has regarded such comments as reflecting aggressive Indian intentions. India raising anxieties about run-of-river dams on the Tsang Po are resented, the ‘quadrilateral’ promoted by George W. Bush comprising India, Australia, Japan and America to ‘contain’ China, though its nature and agenda have never been specified, creates disquiet, the continuing political crisis in Nepal reveals conflicting interests with India, and there is competition for global energy and other resources.

Beijing is opposed to the Indo-US nuclear agreement giving India special status as a country possessing nuclear weapons outside the non-proliferation treaty, and of utmost anxiety to China is the Tibetan government in exile, despite the fact that the government of India does not recognize it and acknowledges Tibet as part of China. Beijing’s supreme bête noir is the Dalai Lama, the ‘wolf in monk’s robes’, who represents a living symbol of the threat, as Beijing sees it, to China’s unity, stability and access to the status of a great power. Chinese sources for territorial claims in India are based on Tibetan sources, and Tawang has a special significance for Tibetans. It is an area in which the Chinese have a credible claim dating from the 17th century, so the visit of the Dalai Lama was considered a serious provocation.

Two countries in Asia can act as a brake on China’s dominance — Japan and India. No other ‘ally’ of the United States of America apart from Japan and India is apprehensive about the ‘peaceful rise’ of China. Beijing feels it has less to worry about Japan after the Hatoyama government came into office. That leaves India.

A geopolitical reality is being played out; China’s interests on its periphery inevitably clash with India’s, and its attempts for influence and control will at times be incompatible with Indian efforts to do likewise, such as, but not only, in Myanmar. Any action taken by one country in such spaces can be construed as threatening by the other, or at least as being against its interests.

China as a one-party State is never given any credit by Indians for having, like us, a domestic constituency to placate. Most of China’s actions seen as intimidating by India are actually for the Chinese audience and other countries in Asia. What the Chinese fear most is social unrest; most dynasties were brought down not by invasions but by internal uprisings. Chinese admit to as many as 75,000 large and social ‘disturbances’ each year, some of which require serious military interventions on the part of central and provincial authority. Tibet and Xinjiang are simmering with discontent and Xinjiang has seen the most violent riots in China in decades put down brutally. Some young Uighurs have indicated to the media that they will seek a better future by escaping to India, like the Tibetans.

There is a ‘Tibet card’ that could still be played by India. This issue is destabilizing and profoundly threatening to China, and includes the hostility of the Tibetan diaspora despite all the diplomatic, economic, security, military and political levers used by Beijing. The new generation of Tibetans, both in Tibet and among the refugees, may no longer heed the Dalai Lama’s appeals for moderation, especially now that he has indicated that the new incarnation may be identified outside China. In short, increased militancy in western China is predictable.

According to the Legatum Institute’s prosperity index, India is worsted by China in all economic fundamentals, but scores higher than China in social capital and community support, institutional maturity, governance, and personal freedom. In short, China gives better opportunity to business, India a better life to people. It is said that “the business of Asia is business”. China is attracted by the Hatoyama government’s idea of an East Asian community — the Asean 10 plus Japan, China, Taiwan and Korea — that would not only enhance trade, already at higher levels than the North American Free Trade Agreement and the European Union, but has security implications. But Hatoyama also mooted an idea of Asean plus Six with China, Japan, Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand, and China worries about such prospective groupings where democracies and multicultural entities like India would be in a majority, and where the Indian model might create an alternative pole of attraction for East Asia. China will not readily countenance a simultaneously rising India as potential competitor in Asia.

The People’s Liberation Army is an integral part of the Chinese establishment, and military thinking a natural component of State policy. Army deployment against dissident Tibetans and Uighurs has strengthened the hand of nationalist forces in the communist party, and China has been more assertive of late not only with India but with Pakistan and Myanmar as well. We should not assume that the PLA has any less traction on the party than our army on New Delhi.

China can provoke India at little diplomatic or military cost, and its low-level intrusions are to keep India off-balance; thus the stapled visas and objection to the village road at Demchok. Beijing’s aim is to shrink India’s strategic frontiers, to stop India breaking out as a potential Asian power, as a warning to others that India cannot be used as a ‘balancer’ against China, to caution the Tibetans not to look to India for succour, and to posit a ‘balkanization’ threat. Its all-weather friend, Pakistan, was first used as a blocking agent, but as that country descends into chaos, more direct methods are needed. China has unsuccessfully opposed the nuclear deal at the Nuclear Suppliers Group and a $60 million loan for Arunachal alias ‘Southern Tibet’ at the Asian Development Bank. It has suggested to the US that it could be the main custodian of Indian Ocean sea-lanes, and opposes expansion of the security council to thwart Japan and India.

But China, like India, has no intention of letting tensions get out of control; both know that stray incidents, such as on the high seas off Somalia, could turn serious. Both know that unlike 1962, the invasion of India will be no cakewalk. The two countries cooperate on the World Trade Organisation, climate change and for increased influence in the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. China is India’s biggest trade partner, and has recently offered India a consulate at Lhasa. India is not likely to respond to this offer. It lost bargaining leverage from the very start by giving up its diplomatic mission, three trade marts and managing the communications system in Tibet as “imperialist sequels”, accepting that there were “unequal treaties” in the past and agreeing to the five principles of peaceful coexistence in 1954 without linking any of these to a settlement of the border. Yet Nehru had been informed as early as 1951 about Chinese surveys for the road in Aksai Chin by our trade agent in Gartok.

India has learned some lessons from the past. It has taken a pragmatic and unemotional view of the relationship, kept calm while asserting its claim line in Ladakh and Arunachal, and does not conceal the dispute behind diplomatic courtesies. It has muffled any war hysteria and the converse — a 1950s-like complacency when it was thought “inconceivable” that China would attack us. It proved helpful to India that Obama postponed his meeting with the Dalai Lama till after Manmohan Singh’s visit. India is making preparations to enhance defence preparedness and to achieve greater strategic balance by more strenuous efforts at cooperation with nations bordering China. Following Oliver Cromwell’s dictum, we should trust in god, but keep our powder dry.
 
The author is former foreign secretary of India

 

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