India-China Ties

TIME TO REMOVE BLINKERS

It is going to be a slow, long haul before everything is hunky dory between India and China. That is the upshot of President Narayanan’s six-day visit to the Dragon country last week. The Chinese have in fact, once again shown that they can spit fire on India and get away with it!

True, the right noises have been made alongwith a large dollop of molly coddling of this ceremonial visit to commemorate the 50^th anniversary of diplomatic ties between the two countries. Adjectives so typical of such visits have been freely bandied about. The talks were “very warm and friendly,” the personal chemistry was “excellent,” the “atmospherics couldn’t be better” for taking a “strategic perspective of bilateral relations which would scale heights and look far ahead for constructive partnership and cooperation.” (sic). Towards that end, both agreed to set up an Eminent Peoples Group (EPG) to enhance bilateral ties. China added for good measure that though it has boundary disputes with some other nations too, it is only with India that its relations are strained.

Narayanan’s talks with President Ziang Zemin lasting over two hours (effectively about one hour after allowing for interpretation) included the strains in Indo-Pak ties and New Delhi’s concern about the menace of international terrorism, especially the militancy unleashed by Islamabad. Zemin concurred with Narayanan in principle on international terrorism and even called for greater cooperation. Importantly, however, he refused to make any specific reference to Pakistan. The stock reply was: work towards improving bilateral ties. Narayanan also used this opportunity to lobby for India’s bid for a permanent seat in the expanded UN Security Council. Reminding Beijing that India had hooted for Red China’s entry into the UN and its Security Council and, lately into the WTO. True to form, Beijing played poker.

The Presidential visit was not without its delicious irony. Fifty years down the line, has Beijing changed the way it looks at New Delhi! No. Has the decades-old mistrust, anchored in a volatile past and a present conditioned by India’s nuclear tests of May 1998, evaporated? Hasn’t Beijing been one of the stringent critics of Pokhran-II, viewing it as India’s grand “hegemonistic” and “expansionist” design? Isn’t it a fact that in geo-strategic terms the Chinese threat perception looms large on the horizon? Yes: Isn’t it a fact that Beijing minces no words about its all-weather friendship with Islamabad? Yes again.

Hasn’t China armed Pakistan with sophisticated and deadly missiles and other weapons system? True. Hasn’t it set up a blue water base in Coco Island in the Indian Ocean? Can we simply ignore its continuous inroads, including a direct highway to Myanmar? Or, for that matter, what about the “silk route” linking China with Pakistan? What about the stationing of strategic nuclear missiles in Tibet, pointing towards India? How are Chinese arms freely available in Bangladesh? Hasn’t Beijing cast a security net around us?

Tragically, if one had hoped that Narayanan’s visit would provide us clues, if not answers, to these uneasy questions which are the bed-rock of Sino-Indian ties, it failed. In fact, New Delhi lost a perfect opportunity to use an old China hand (Narayanan served as India’s Ambassador to Beijing in 1974) to take the dragon head-on and disapate the distrust once and for all. Preferring to be cocooned in its blinkered pre-1962 Hindi-Chini bhais. Nehru made that mistake in 1962 and India paid a heavy price in the India-China war that ensued. But successive governments failed to learn from history. They continued to believe that that magic wand of appeasement would suffice.

Rajiv Gandhi used the wand in 1988. His tryst with the Great Wall of China was touted as a breakthrough. Subsequently, there were a flurry of visits on both sides. Chinese premier Li Peng came to India in December 1991, followed by a return visit by the then President, R. Venkatraman in 1992. (China exploded its N-bomb, the day Venkataraman arrived in Beijing.) Narasimha Rao added “pragmatic and economic” to diplomatese. The Treaty of Peace and Tranquility on the LAC put the issue on the back burner. A Joint Working Group (JWG) and confidence Building Measures (CBM0 were set up to iron out all the creases. Both countries strove to further economic cooperation.

Beijing couldn’t have asked for a better deal. It merrily continued arming traditional friend Islamabad and made no bones. But as Kargil proved, once again, we were living in a self-created euphoria. Beijing was privy to all the preparations made by Islamabad, even as Prime Minister Vajpayee traversed the Lahore peace road. General Musharaff spelt out his war strategy to his officers from a Beijing hotel room. Surprisingly, New Delhi didn’t even make an effort to find out the Chinese involvement. It rested content with merely having scooped the Musharraff’s tell-al tapes.

Beijing couldn’t have asked for a better deal. It merrily continued arming traditional friend Islamabad and made no bones. But as Kargil proved, once again, we were living in a self-created euphoria. Beijing was privy to all the preparations made by Islamabad, even as Prime Minister Vajpayee traversed the Lahore peace road. General Musharraf spelt out his war strategy to his officers from a Beijing hotel room. Surprisingly, New Delhi didn’t even make an effort to find out the Chinese involvement. It rested content with merely having scooped the Musharraf’s tel-all tapes.

Worse, when India’s Defence Minister tried to cry a halt to this appeasement policy and called China Enemy No.1, a horrified Foreign Office rushed to placate Beijing’s ruffled feathers. The Foreign Minister left no stone unrutned to allay Beijing that New Delhi did not consider China a threat. If New Delhi was trying to ape the US in dealing with China, it fell flat. India is not the world’s super cop, who can take on another nation and hope succeed. It’s all very well for Clinton to play footsie with Beijing and grant it a most favoured nation status even as the Pentagon goes about diabolically leaking reports about Beijing’s continued arming of Pakistan to its teeth.

Beijing, on the other hand, suffers from no such inhibitions. It has made it unequivocally clear that it will not sacrifice its all-weather friendship with Islamabad to improve and develop Sino-Indian ties. A Chinese official commenting on the talks Narayanan had with Chinese leaders on the tense Indo-Pak ties asserted: “China and Pakistan enjoy traditional friendship and Chinese policy is to further consolidate and develop its relations with Islamabad. The development and improvement of Sino-Indian relations will not have any adverse impact on the friendly relations and cooperation between China and Pakistan and vice versa”.

Beijing also went full steam ahead to obliquely accuse New Delhi of colluding with the Dalai Lama to split Tibet. The Dalai clique and some foreign forces have always tried to use the 14-year old Karamapa Lama to achieve their own goals. We are strongly oppoed to anybody using the Karamapa to try to split China.” New Delhi’s reply” A lame mumbo jumbo of Karampa is merely being allowed to stay in India.

Beijing continues to sidestep the sensitive boundary issue. Post-1962 China occupied vast Indian territories. It still claims 30,000 sq km in the Western sector and does not recognize the McMahon Line. While New Delhi asserts that 90,000 sq km in the eastern sector and 2,000 sqm km in the middle sector are part of India. Despite the innumerable meetings post the Peace and Tranquility Pact of 1993, we have failed to draw the LAC. While we continue to harp on “a fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable settlement”, Beijing suffers from no such illusions. Boht Li Peng, Chairman of the National People’s Congress and Li Ruihuan gave priority to improvement of atmospherics as a prelude to resolving the issue. Clearly, Beijing is in no hurry; it will suit its timing whenever it chooses to!

Evidently, New Delhi is so caught up in its Pak-centric policy that it fails to look at the larger picture. Pakistan may be a threat in the short term but its China India needs to worry about in the long term. We continue to display reactive tendencies rather than evolve a proactive policy. A policy to deal with the emerging China-Pakistan-US axis. At another level, Beijing continues to apply two yardsticks when it comes to dealing with Tibet and Kashmir. While Tibet is viewed as an “internal problem”, Kashmir is described as a “disputed territory” which can be resolved bilaterally between India and Pakistan.

Besides, it defies logic that nations fighting for the same space in the Asian continent can ever strike friendship and invoke trust. Both India and China are immersed in radical economic reforms and are competing to capture the global market. China’s sway over South East Asia stands undisputed. Its growing economic clout, military strengths and political stability is way ahead of India, which would like recognition as a major player. It is no secret that China has been listed as the world’s second largest military power. In India’s perception this is alarming.

What next? More than anything else, China and India need to build mutual respect when a sea-change is sweeping over international relations. New Delhi cannot afford to take any chances with what constitutes a threat to India’s security. No doubt both have a stake in peace and stability. But it is not a one way street. It cannot be achieved at the cost of ones self interest. New Delhi needs to be careful and circumspect before it embraces Beijing. Both are quite some distance from becoming friends. They have still a long way to travel. New Delhi needs to remove its blinkers. As Woodrow Wilson once said: “Only a peace among equals can last”.