Asia Times: COMMENTARY<BR> Sino-Indian relations: A new beginning


	January 19, 2002	atimes.com

China

COMMENTARY
Sino-Indian relations: A new beginning
By Jing-dong Yuan

As Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji wraps up his India visit, a trip overshadowed by the continuing Indo-Pakistan standoff, Beijing and New Delhi have at least made some modest progress in bilateral relations.

Almost four years after the Pokhran II nuclear tests, the long-awaited visit has put the bilateral relationship on a more stable basis. The official meetings and Zhu's subsequent tours to Mumbai and Bangalore have generated concrete results. The two countries have signed a number of agreements to strengthen their economic ties, including resumption of direct flights, and memoranda of understanding (MoUs) on tourism and for cooperation in space, science and technology.

However, the more substantive result, as far as India is concerned, is China's willingness to cooperate with India in combating terrorism, a term Beijing has shunned in the past in consideration of the sensitive nature of the is sue to its longtime ally Pakistan. A joint working group will be set up to address this issue. Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh will visit China in late March.

China and India have come a long way to restoring the tattered relationship in the wake of the May 1998 nuclear tests. The animosity and enmity between the two countries immediately after Pokhran II are all but gone. Since Jaswant Singh's visit to China in June 1999, a post-test normalization process has gradually taken place.

The two sides have on many occasions publicly announced that they do not view each other as a security threat. The Joint Working Group (JWG) on border issues has resumed its regular meetings and in November the two sides for the first time exchanged maps on the middle sector of the line of actual control (LAC). A security dialogue has been initiated and a number of meetings have been held. And leaders from the two countries, including high-level military officers, have exchanged visits.

Despite these welcome developments, serious obstacles to normal relations remain. These include the unresolved boundary issue, Tibet, and the Sino-Pakistani nexus.

The boundary issue, which involves more than 125,000 square kilometers in disputed territories, continues to elude solution and remains a sticking point in bilateral relations. While both governments have agreed to speed up the process of LAC demarcation, at the moment neither side is strong enough to overcome the still enormous domestic popular sentiment (more so in India than in China) to achieve a final settlement.

Tibet will likely constitute another possible point of contention. The strategic significance of Tibet to both India and China is obvious. New Delhi has always regarded Tibet as a security buffer between itself and China. Indian security analysts argue that China's deployment of nuclear missiles on the Tibetan plateau seriously threatens Indian security. For Beijing, the very fact that India provides refuge to more than 120,000 Tibetans, the Karmapa and the Dalai Lama will always be a touchy issue between the two countries.

Perhaps the most contentious issue for bilateral relations is China's strategic relationship with Pakistan. China's alleged nuclear and missile assistance to Pakistan continues to prove to New Delhi that Beijing intends to tie India down. While Beijing rejects charges of involvement in Pakistan's nuclear and missile programs and maintains that improved Sino-Indian relations should not be based on a distancing of the Sino-Pak relationship, New Delhi insists that this should be a litmus test of China's sincerity. Over the years since the process of normalization began, Chinese support of key Pakistani positions such as the Kashmir question has weakened and become more ambivalent. This was demonstrated during the 1999 Kargil crisis and continues amidst the current crisis as well.

Beijing's interest in continued support of Pakistan, including endorsement of General Pervez Musharraf's government, lies in a desire to maintain stability in Pakistan against the backdrop of rising Islamic fundamentalism. The US war against terrorism in Afghanistan has seen a reaffirmation of the Sino-Pakistani relationship in recent months, typified by President Musharraf's two trips to China in the past few weeks. But one could argue that Beijing is more interested in keeping Islamabad under its influence against the encroaching US presence rather than encouraging Pakistan to embark on reckless adventures. The last thing China wants is a military confrontation between the two South Asian foes.

Zhu's visit provides a rare opportunity for the leaders of the two countries to tackle them at the highest political level. Four critical issues need to be carefully considered if real progress is to be made.

First, the two sides should seriously and candidly discuss their bottom lines on the boundary issue. For years, the idea of a swap has been floated without serious takers. Both sides must realize that the current LAC, with some minor adjustments, offers the best chance for a final settlement of their territorial issues. For all the sentiments and national pride, the fact of the matter is that significant changes to accommodate each other's demands - China's on the eastern sector, what is now Arunachal Pradesh, or India's on the Aksai Chin in the western sector - could not possibly be met without resort to the use of force. And military confrontation between two nuclear-weapons states over desolate lands is hardly worth it.

Second, China should address India's concerns over the Pakistani issue. Beijing must convince New Delhi that proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems is not in China's own interest, even with regard to a long-standing ally such as Pakistan. It should also convey to India that China's continued close relationship with Pakistan could help Beijing persuade Islamabad to stop supporting terrorist activities and to seek a political settlement of the Kashmir issue through bilateral dialogue and negotiation. China should and can do more to dispel Indian concerns, but New Delhi should also resist putting too much emphasis on the Sino-Pak relationship and denying itself the opportunity to improve relations with China.

Third, the two sides must express their strategic intentions in clear terms to avoid any misperception and miscalculations. This relates to their nuclear postures and missile developments. China and India have both a declared no-first-use (NFU) policy but New Delhi's request for a bilateral NFU commitment has been shunned by Beijing. China possesses a sufficient number of missiles to target all major Indian cities. India's current development of the Agni missiles is a way to address that strategic imbalance. At the same time, China's possible responses to US deployment of ballistic missile defenses (including an expanded Chinese nuclear-missile force) could in turn trigger a further Indian buildup in its nuclear and missile forces. In such a context, strategic dialogue and the introduction of arms-control mechanisms - a bilateral NFU could be one such measure - could serve to head off an unnecessary spiral of arms competition to an arms race. In the same vein, India should be forthright with its rationale for endorsing US missile defense plans and its growing ties with the United States. New Delhi, for its part, needs to dispel misgivings in Beijing that India is playing the "democracy" and "market" cards to gain US support for a greater Indian role in global and regional affairs and that India is a potential junior partner in a US global strategy to contain China.

Finally, the leaders of the two countries should have the foresight to look beyond the security prism. There are many areas where China and India could cooperate globally and bilaterally. Both support the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence as the basis for building a post-Cold War multipolar international order. Both oppose hegemonism, power politics and interference in domestic affairs. Both insist that the ultimate goal of nuclear disarmament is the complete destruction of nuclear weapons. Both have also held that each country's political, economic, and social developments should be based on a country's history and own choices, rather than imposed from without. As the two largest developing countries, China and India also seek a more equitable, just and fair international economic order so the South can better benefit from globalization. And finally, the two countries have great potential to expand their bilateral trade, which, currently at $3 billion annually, is woefully inadequate. China can learn a lot from India's information technology (IT) industry while India can benefit from China's overflow of consumer goods.

Opportunities and challenges abound for Sino-Indian relations in the coming decades. Zhu's visit could chart a new course for the coming decade. A normalized and stable bilateral relationship makes significant contribution to regional and global peace and security.

Jing-dong Yuan, PhD, is a senior research associate at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Monterey Institute of International Studies, Monterey, California. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies or the Monterey Institute of International Studies.

(Copyright 2002 Jing-dong Yuan)