|
|
|
|
Beijing mixes business with
politics
By Ranjit Devraj
NEW
DELHI - Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao
kicked off his four-day visit to India on Saturday
from the southern city of Bangalore - the information
technology hub of the sub-continent and
one of world's four biggest technology clusters.
But it was not all business - the two countries
Monday announced a road map to end their
long-running border dispute.
Wen spent the
weekend touring private institutions such as Tata
Consultancy Services (TCS), a global software
giant, as well as government institutions like the
Indian Institute of Science and the Indian Space
Research Organization that exports satellites and
space services. "Business is more important for
the [Chinese] people than the border," China's
ambassador in New Delhi, Sun Yuxi, himself a
graduate of the London School of Economics, told
reporters.
India's software skills
combined with China's dominance in hardware could
trigger a tectonic shift in the global
technological landscape, Wen said in Bangalore.
"Cooperation is just like two pagodas. One
hardware and one software. Combined, we can take
the leadership position in the world. When that
particular day comes, it will signify the coming
of the Asian century of the IT industry," he said.
Indian IT giants Infosys, Satyam, Wipro
and TCS have established a toehold in China's
fledgling software industry, while NIIT and APTECH
have been there for quite some time, teaching
software to students in franchised training
centers. Faced with rising business from the West,
the spiraling salaries of high-cost, job-hopping
Indian employees and a predicted shortage of
skilled workers, Indian IT firms are even
outsourcing work from the United States to China.
Chinese companies are also investing in
India. Telecom major Huawei Technologies, which
opened a research and development center in
Bangalore in 2000, wants to expand its base in
India. It currently employs over 800 engineers and
is Huawei's largest R&D center outside China.
Huawei now plans to set up a manufacturing
facility in India. ZTE Corp, a telecommunications
equipment vendor in Shenzhen, recently announced
that it has set up a manufacturing facility in
India.
The National Association of
Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM), India's
apex software industry body, has offered to help
China in establishing a similar body of IT
companies. "The interests of the Indian IT
industry are taken care by NASSCOM, a body of
software firms. A similar model could be initiated
in China for promotion and growth of IT industry,"
NASSCOM chairman and TCS chief executive officer S
Ramadorai told Wen during the leader's visit to
TCS. According to Ramadorai, the idea was mooted
as there is no official data about the Chinese IT
industry. "We have suggested that we form a body
of software companies for them and help them
organize the fragmented industry."
TCS was
the first Indian software firm to set up base in
China in June 2002. It employs 200 professionals,
mostly Chinese, at its global development center
at Hangzhuo. Expressing satisfaction over the
presence of TCS in China, Wen said it demonstrates
"we have the desire and foundation for cooperation
between the two great nations". At the TCS campus,
Wen was shown the engineering lab of US car maker
General Motors, where components and car designs
are made by Indian engineers, while the vehicles
themselves are produced in General Motors
factories in China.
Wen, who is
accompanied by a 140-member entourage, attended to
the vexed border problem between the Asian giants
on Monday when he was in the national capital for
a meeting with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh and other top Indian leaders. The Chinese
leader's visit coincides with the 55th anniversary
of the Himalayan neighbors establishing formal
diplomatic relations with each other. Nonetheless,
the intervening years have really been nothing
much to write home about and have been hostile
after the border dispute spiraled into a brief but
bloody border war in 1962.
On Monday
afternoon, India's national security adviser
Adviser M K Narayanan said India and China had
signed an agreement aimed at resolving a
long-running dispute over their Himalayan border
in "one of the most significant documents" signed
by the two countries. Narayanan told Indian
television that Indian and Chinese officials had
worked out a roadmap for resolving the disputed
3,550 kilometer border. No details were given.
Before he set out on his South Asia tour
covering Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, Wen
told Indian correspondents in Beijing that he had
reason to believe that relations between India and
China were presently at an all-time high and the
border issue was solvable. "Our two countries see
eye-to-eye and share common interests on many
major international and regional issues, as
demonstrated by the successful strategic dialogue
we had for the first time," Wen was reported as
saying.
That positive comment can be
attributed to the work of the special
representatives appointed by the two sides during
the June 2003 summit between India and China in
Beijing to tackle the boundary dispute. Wen has
expressed satisfaction that the special
representatives have conducted "useful
discussions" on the political guiding principles
and had made "sound progress".
Wen's visit
to India came about when Singh invited him to
visit New Delhi after the two met on the sidelines
of a summit of the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations (ASEAN) held in the Laotian capital of
Vientiane last year. The 1962 India-China war left
unresolved the status of some 40,000 square
kilometers on the Aksai Chin plateau in Kashmir
that India accuses China of occupying. China in
turn claims that India holds some 90,000 square
kilometers of its territory, mostly in the
north-eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh.
But Wen and Singh are also interested in
setting the stage for a new strategic and economic
relationship that would include an ambitious free
trade agreement and build on the fact that two-way
trade has soared to US$13 billion in 2004 from a
paltry $100 million a decade ago. The two rapidly
liberalizing neighbors, already being widely seen
as global growth engines in the coming decades,
are aiming to boost their bilateral trade to $50
billion by 2010.
So far, relations between
the Asian giants have resembled a roller-coaster
ride. Bilateral ties hit a low spot when New Delhi
carried out surprise nuclear weapon tests in 1998
and India's leaders said they were prompted by
security interests vis-a-vis China rather than
rivalry with Pakistan. Curiously though, analysts
have noted that since the nuclear tests, relations
between India and China have been on an upswing
and there has been subsequently better cooperation
at several international forums - in particular at
the meetings of the World Trade Organization
(WTO).
Irritants, however, remain. In the
1950s, when India was invited to take a permanent
seat in the United Nations Security Council, it
declined and instead allowed China, as a bigger
country, to take its place. Now Beijing has
reciprocating as India tries to seek a seat in the
Security Council, which is set to be revamped with
an expanded membership.
Much of the
hostility between the two countries go back to
over 45 years ago when India offered sanctuary to
the Tibetan leader Dalai Lama and his followers
when they fled over the Himalayas following a
failed Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule.
India has since formally recognized Tibet as an
integral part of China. Wen, however, had a taste
of continuing resistance on Sunday when a Tibetan
refugee positioned himself on a high balcony of
the main tower of the Indian Institute of Science
building and threatened to kill himself by jumping
on to the Chinese leader's limousine.
The
protestor, believed to be a member of the
40,000-strong Tibetan expatriate community in the
southern Karnataka state of which Bangalore is
capital, was quickly whisked away. But his efforts
were not wasted. Before he was bundled into a
police car, he managed to unfurl a large red
banner that read "Free Tibet" and drape it down
the side of the institute's tower. But it will
take more than such isolated protests to derail
the steadily warming relations between New Delhi
and Beijing.
Since the Doha Round of the
WTO talks, the two countries have been
coordinating trade positions on agriculture,
development, service, investment, intellectual
property rights, public health and many other
agenda items. Beijing and New Delhi have also
supported each other in efforts to protect the
interests of developing member states in the world
trade body. Realizing that the two countries have
emerged as major consumers of energy and raw
materials, their leaders have seen the benefits of
cooperation in the international arena if only to
better safeguard their own national interests.
The National Intelligence Council, the
premier think-tank of the US, has sounded warning
bells that increasing Sino-Indian cooperation
could soon irrevocably change global geopolitics.
There are other modern-day issues that are
bringing two of the world's oldest civilizations
together and Jairam Ramesh, author of the recently
released and aptly named book Making sense of
Chindia, includes the threat from HIV/AIDS
that both countries now face.
Ramesh notes
that at the moment there are two schools of
thought, one that fears China and the other that
is enthralled by it. But the author admits the
answer could lie somewhere in between. Wen himself
pointed out before embarking on his tour that
cooperation between the two countries far
outweighs competition. "We have every reason to be
friendly and cooperative. There is no reason for
conflict or confrontation."
(Inter Press
Service) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
All material on this
website is copyright and may not be republished in any form without written
permission.
© Copyright 1999 - 2005 Asia Times
Online Ltd.
|
|
Head
Office: Rm 202, Hau Fook Mansion, No. 8 Hau Fook St., Kowloon, Hong
Kong
Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
|
|
|
|
