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India frets as China and Pakistan
embrace
By Sudha Ramachandran
BANGALORE - Pakistan President General Pervez
Musharraf's three-day visit to China has concluded with
the two sides signing about eight agreements. While the
visit did see the usual cooing and billing that marks
Sino-Pakistan interactions, Musharraf described the
relationship as being "deeper than the oceans, higher
than the mountains", that they failed to finalize a
nuclear deal has been noted with some satisfaction by
their common neighbor, India.
The agreements
that were signed include a preferential trade agreement,
a US$500 million loan from China to Pakistan and an
extradition treaty. But more significant than what they
did sign is what they did not. In the runup to
Musharraf's visit, media reports indicated that a deal
on Chinese assistance to the construction of a nuclear
power plant in Pakistan was in the cards. "China has
agreed to build a 300 megawatt civilian power plant in
Pakistan," the Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokesperson
Masood Khan had told the Agence France Presse news
agency in Islamabad. That agreement, however, did not
materialize.
Musharraf's visit to Beijing comes
close on the heels of a great leap forward in
Sino-Indian relations. In June, Indian Prime Minister
Atal Bihari Vajpayee visited China. During that trip,
the two Asian giants sent out unambiguous signals that
they were keen to transform their troubled relations.
Delhi and Beijing have since taken steps forward towards
resolving their border dispute. Last month, an attempt
to resolve the border question through a new political
framework was made when the first round of talks between
"special representatives" of the two countries took
place in Delhi. Bilateral ties will touch another high
next week when India and China hold joint naval
exercises.
Sino-Indian relations have improved
dramatically in recent years. After the 1962 war in
which China inflicted a humiliating defeat on India,
ties went into deep freeze. It took several decades
before relations could be normalized somewhat. Bilateral
ties suffered a deadly blow soon after the Indian
nuclear tests in 1998 when India's Defense Minister
George Fernandes described China as India's number one
enemy.
Unlike this bumpy Sino-Indian
relationship, the Sino-Pakistan relationship has been
warm and durable. The bonds, as the two sides frequently
proclaim to the world, are "time-tested" and an
"all-weather friendship".
"China's partnerships
with other countries, both large [the USSR and the
United States] and small [Albania, Vietnam, Algeria and
North Korea] have waxed and then waned into coldly
proper relations at best," writes John Carver in the
book, Protracted Contest: Sino-Indian Rivalry in the
Twentieth Century (Oxford University Press, 2001).
"China's partnership with Pakistan, however,
emerged during the mid-1950s, when China was trying to
make friends with all developing countries, deepened
during the radical anti-imperialist phase of Chinese
foreign policy in the early 1960s, persisted unmolested
under the direct protection of Mao Zedong during the
upheaval of the Cultural Revolution, proved useful
during the anti-Soviet hegemony phase of Chinese policy
in the 1970s and 1980s, and continued with vitality
after the dissolution of the USSR and the end of the
Cold War. The Sino-Pakistani entente can be traced back
to the heyday of Sino-Indian amity in the mid-1950s, it
deepened during the long period of Sino-Indian hostility
and has continued as China and India restored a level of
comity during the 1990s."
India provides much of
the cement for the Sino-Pakistan relationship. A
Sino-Pakistan friendship keeps India under pressure of a
two-front threat in the event of military confrontation
with either. Consequently, India has had to spread its
security forces along the borders with both countries.
It has had to take into account the combined might of
China and Pakistan in charting its strategy.
There is more to the Sino-Pakistan bond than
their common hostility to India, though. Pakistan
provides China with the gateway to the Islamic world,
and Pakistan is an important market for Chinese goods.
And China is Pakistan's largest supplier of arms.
One of the most important dimensions of the
Sino-Pakistan relationship is China's sustained military
assistance to Pakistan. China and the US have been the
top providers of military equipment to Pakistan and of
the two, China has been the more reliable supplier,
stepping up its support to meet Islamabad's needs
whenever the US suspended arms supplies to it. Beijing
provided Pakistan generous shipments of arms in the
runup to the 1965 and 1971 wars with India. And
following Pakistan's defeat in 1971, China deferred for
20 years payment on a 1970 loan of $200 million and
wrote off another $110 million in earlier loans. It has
robustly supported modernization of Pakistan's military.
However, it is the Sino-Pakistan nuclear and
missile cooperation that has bothered India the most.
China has repeatedly denied assisting Pakistan's nuclear
program, but there is enough evidence to prove that this
is not so. American analysts have blamed Chinese
assistance to Pakistan for the failure of US-led Western
efforts to deny Pakistan's nuclear program. It is said
that in around 1983, China supplied Pakistan with the
design of a nuclear weapon.
China has played a
critical role in Pakistan's guided and ballistic missile
programs. In addition to whole missiles, Beijing has
provided technology to facilitate Pakistan's
indigenization of these weapons systems. It has also
supported Pakistan in developing missiles capable of
carrying nuclear warheads.
In 1988, the two
signed an agreement to cooperate in Pakistan's
acquisition of the long-range M-11 missiles. Carver
writes that under this deal: "China agreed to train
Pakistanis in the operation of M-11, transfer necessary
equipment and technology to Pakistan, transfer 30 or so
completer M-11s, and build a factory in Pakistan for
indigenous production of the missiles ... in the early
1990s, Beijing transferred M-11-related technology and
components to Pakistan. In 1995, complete M-11 missiles
arrived in Pakistan." China has also supplied Pakistan
with the medium range M-9s and intermediate range M-18s,
as well as ring magnets for its nuclear weapons program.
Incidentally, the Sino-Pakistan nuclear
relationship has blossomed parallel to Sino-Indian
rapprochement. The latter has witnessed a gradual change
in China's position on disputed Kashmir. From 1964 to
1979, China supported the right of the Kashmiri people
to self-determination. After 1980, Chinese officials did
not endorse this position, and in fact, said that the
Kashmir issue was a bilateral dispute between India and
Pakistan and should be solved peacefully. China called
for settlement of the problem in the spirit of the
Shimla Agreement and in accordance with United Nations
resolutions - an attempt at straddling the Indian and
Pakistani positions.
In the 1990s, China
declined support to Islamabad's attempts at
internationalizing the issue. In December 1996, during
then president Jiang Zemin's visit to India and
Pakistan, China explicitly expressed support for the
Indian position of addressing India-Pakistan disputes
through "consultations and negotiations". And during the
Kargil crisis of 1999, while Jiang drew attention to
China's "all-weather friendship" and "all-round
cooperation" with Pakistan, China told the Pakistani
leaders that they would not support Islamabad's effort
to raise the Kashmir issue in the UN Security Council.
A section of analysts in India argues that the
Sino-Pakistan relationship is just too solid for India
to expect major improvements in its ties with China, and
that the changing Chinese position on Kashmir does not
mean that Beijing will respond to Indian concerns more
sympathetically.
However, others argue that in
the long term an intensified Sino-Indian engagement is
bound to have an impact on Sino-Pakistan ties. In an
op-ed article in The Hindu, C Raja Mohan, professor at
the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, points out,
"The way Sino-Indian trade is booming, it is likely to
reach the target of $10 billion next year itself. And
within another five years, and certainly by the end of
the decade, it could double again to $20 billion. The
intensifying trend and commerce should naturally raise
the stakes for China in its relationship with India -
and Beijing will have to factor this into its larger
policy towards the subcontinent."
Both India and
China are affected by Pakistan's support of Islamic
extremism and terrorism. Since the late 1990s, China has
raised the issue of use of Pakistani soil by Uighur
separatists and links between the latter and other
terrorist groups operating from Pakistan. The issue has
upset the Sino-Pakistan equation to some extent and was
raised by the Chinese during Musharraf's recent visit.
State-run television in China said that Musharraf
pledged that he would not allow anti-China forces to use
Pakistan as a base.
India and China have a
shared interest in reining in Islamic extremism and
ensuring political modernization in Pakistan. "In the
past, India had tried, without much success, to keep
China out of the sub-continent. If India can now think
out of the box, leveraging Chinese power to restrain
Pakistan becomes an interesting option," writes Raja
Mohan.
The India-China-Pakistan relationship
cannot be explained just in bilateral or even trilateral
terms. For instance, India's relationship with the US
has cast its shadow on Sino-Indian ties. In the 1950-60s
for instance, Beijing believed that India was working
with the US to destabilize China by supporting armed
uprising in Tibet. China's supply of ballistic missiles
to Pakistan in defiance of US requests was said to have
been a response to Washington's sale of F-16 fighters to
Taiwan in 1992.
If India wants to improve ties
with China, it would have to stop expecting Beijing to
dilute the intensity of its ties with Pakistan. China
has managed to skillfully balance its relations with
countries in conflict with each other. One example of
this is the way it has balanced its relations with
Israel and the rest of the Middle East. China and Israel
buy and sell weapons from each other. At the same time,
China supplies nuclear and missile technology to
countries such as Iran and Saudi Arabia.
China's
assistance to Pakistan's nuclear program is no doubt an
area of concern for India. Telling the Chinese that
behind closed doors as India does, or complaining
loudly, which India has tried, have failed to yield the
desired results. China and Pakistan might have failed to
sign a nuclear deal during Musharraf's visit. But there
is little to indicate that their cooperation in that
area is in trouble. Sino-Pakistan nuclear cooperation,
therefore, remains an important irritant. Enticing China
with trade and business might be the only way for India
to wean it away from assisting Pakistan's nuclear
program. It is a strategy worth pursuing.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All
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