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Sino-India ties marred by the
'P' word
By Sudha Ramachandran
BANGALORE - Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's
four-day visit to India starting on Saturday is
expected to put Sino-Indian bilateral relations on
a higher plane. But even as India and China shake
hands and reach agreement on various issues,
China's "all-weather friendship" with Pakistan
will cast a long shadow on the Sino-Indian
interaction.
The Pakistan leg of Premier
Wen's South Asia visit was very successful. China
and Pakistan signed a "Treaty of Friendship,
Cooperation and Good-Neighborly Relations" under
which they agreed to safeguard each other's unity,
sovereignty and territorial integrity, and
maintain a regular high-level strategic dialogue.
Twenty-two agreements and memoranda of
understanding to enhance bilateral cooperation in
defense, trade, development, diplomacy, education
and research were signed. These include a deal for
the construction of four F-22P frigates for the
Pakistan navy. China has also agreed to provide
financial assistance of US$350 million to
Pakistan's Chashma-II power project.
The
interaction between Wen and his hosts would no
doubt have been closely monitored by India. After
all, the Sino-Pakistan defense and security
cooperation has serious implications for India's
national security.
New Delhi believes that
it is a desire to contain India that brought China
and Pakistan together and provides the glue for
the decades-long Sino-Pakistan relationship. There
are other benefits that China and Pakistan draw
from their bilateral bonding. For instance, it was
Pakistan that brought China and the United States
together in the 1970s, and continues to be a
useful link between Beijing and the Islamic
countries. However, it is their common hostility
to India that is the main factor that fuels their
"all-weather friendship".
A strategic
partnership between China and Pakistan presents
India with pressure on two fronts in the event of
Indian military confrontation with either country.
India therefore is compelled to spread its forces
thin along two fronts.
What bothers India
about the Sino-Pakistan military and security
cooperation is that Pakistan, which on its own
would have been a far less potent threat to India,
has with China's help become a threat. In an essay
in P Kumaraswamy's book Security Beyond
Survival, J Mohan Malik, a Sino-Indian
specialist, argues: "For India, Pakistan is not
and cannot be a threat without China's military
support just as Taiwan cannot constitute a threat
to China without the support of the US."
What is more, India believes that the
military muscle and shield that China has provided
Pakistan has encouraged the latter to indulge in
military adventurism against India. "It was the
provision of Chinese nuclear and missile shield to
Pakistan during the late 1980s and early 1990s [at
the height of India-China rapprochement] that
emboldened Islamabad to wage a 'proxy war' in
Kashmir without fear of Indian retaliation,"
points out Malik.
What began as supply of
conventional weapon systems to Pakistan came to
include over the years nuclear and missile
technology and systems. For several years now,
India has been drawing international attention to
their nuclear and missile cooperation. Beijing has
not only provided Pakistan with missile-related
technology, it has transferred complete M-11
missiles to Pakistan. China has played a major
role in the development of Pakistan's nuclear
infrastructure.
It has supplied Pakistan
with nuclear materials, expertise and provided
critical assistance in the construction of its
nuclear facilities. In fact, China's significant
role and input in Pakistan's nuclear program
prompted former Indian defense minister George
Fernandes to describe China as the mother of
Pakistan's nuclear bomb. Given the serious
implications that the Sino-Pakistan military and
defense cooperation has for India's security, it
would seem that India would raise the issue during
Wen's four-day visit to India. But as Raja Mohan,
professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in
New Delhi, points out in the Indian Express, "Going
by recent tradition in Sino-Indian relations, not
a word about Pakistan is likely to figure in the
conversation between Wen and Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh in New Delhi."
Although India is seriously
concerned about the Sino-Pakistan entente
cordiale,
it has been
reticent about raising the matter in its
interactions with the Chinese. Drawing attention
to "this curious Indian silence on Sino-Pak
strategic collaboration", Raja Mohan observes that
"while the subject of Pakistan pops up in the very
first five minutes of any official conversation
between India and the US, it hangs like Banquo's
ghost over the meetings between Indian and Chinese
leaders".
Explaining India's reluctance to
raise the P word with China, a retired Indian
diplomat points out that the Sino-Indian war of
1962 - when China inflicted a humiliating defeat
on India - has cast a long shadow over India's
diplomacy with China. "It seems India has
reservations over direct confrontation with China
whether on the battlefield or the negotiating
table," he told Asia Times Online. A sense of
powerlessness pervades India's interaction with
China as India does not have significant leverage
to use against China, he said.
However, an
official in India's Ministry of External Affairs
(MEA) said that India's diplomatic strategy toward
China is based on the principle of not allowing
the bilateral relationship to be held hostage by
contentious issues. That is, India and China will
build on issues of agreement and not allow issues
of disagreement to dominate the relationship.
Consequently, India and China are working on
building their economic relationship. "While we
are not ignoring the contentious issues such as
the border dispute and the question of
Sino-Pakistan military collaboration, we are not
allowing these issues to define our ties," the MEA
official told Asia Times Online. India is hoping
that China will come to see the gains in economic
cooperation with India and that as this
consolidates, the anti-India content of the
Sino-Pakistan relationship will gradually fall.
A Beijing-based Chinese journalist told
Asia Times Online that India's diplomacy with
China is based on a realistic assessment of the
situation. India is not calling on China to
downgrade its relations with Pakistan, as that
will not happen. "The relationship has endured for
decades and China is not going to abandon Pakistan
because Delhi demands it," he pointed out.
Indeed, the most remarkable aspect of the
Sino-Pakistan relationship is its durable quality.
As John Carver points out in his book
Protracted Contest: Sino-Indian Rivalry in the
Twentieth Century, while China's relations
with other countries "have waxed and then waned
into coldly proper relations at best, [its]
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".
Given the enduring nature of the
Sino-Pakistan relationship, India's strategy
appears to be to build economic ties with China.
"India expects its growing economic engagement
with China to prompt Beijing to adopt a more
even-handed policy in South Asia," explained the
MEA official, adding that confronting China on the
impact that its military co-operation with
Pakistan is having on regional stability is
unlikely to be rewarding.
The government's
approach of not uttering the P word in Sino-Indian
discussions has several critics. They insist that
by not standing up to the Chinese on the question
of Beijing's military cooperation with Islamabad,
India has gained little. In fact it has allowed
China's "creeping hegemony to go unchecked".
However, others point to the fact that
China's position on the Kashmir issue has
undergone significant change and in favor of
India. If in the 1960s China was calling for the
resolution of the Kashmir dispute in accordance
with the wishes of the people of Kashmir,
incremental pro-India shifts were evident in
Beijing's Kashmir policy as the Sino-Indian
rapprochement gathered momentum in the 1990s. In
fact by 1996, China stated its opposition to the
internationalization of the Kashmir issue.
Addressing the Pakistani senate during his visit
to Pakistan in 1996, former president Jiang Zemin
urged resolution of India-Pakistan disputes via
"consultations and negotiations".
MEA
officials maintain that while China might be
expressing happiness over Pakistan's role in
tackling terrorism, India remains dissatisfied
with Islamabad's efforts. The infrastructure of
terrorism has not been dismantled in Pakistan and
this is a point that India will raise when Wen
comes. As for the issue of Sino-Pakistan military
collaboration, officials insist that Indian
concerns will be raised quietly. India is hoping
that concrete progress will be made with regard to
the resolution of the border dispute during Wen's
visit to India and this, together with economic
cooperation, will be the focus of the diplomatic
engagement.
Indian officials point out
that after many years of leaving the border
dispute on the backburner, India and China have
now reached a position where they can negotiate
the border in a spirit of give and take.
Similarly, India is hoping that China will in a
few years be willing to address India's concerns
on the Sino-Pakistan defense relationship.
India's concerns over Sino-Pakistan
defense cooperation seem likely to remain on the
backburner in the foreseeable future.
Sudha Ramachandran is an
independent journalist/researcher based in
Bangalore.
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online
Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us for
information on sales, syndication and republishing.) |
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