Asia Times: India and China: Not quite brothers yet


	January 18, 2001	atimes.com

India/Pakistan

India and China: Not quite brothers yet
By Sultan Shahin

NEW DELHI - A 10-day visit to India by senior Chinese leader Li Peng, culminating in his meeting with Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee on January 15, has strengthened the "China-is-no-threat" lobby in the country. The two have decided to continue to refashion old ties, a process that started with former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi's trip to China in 1988 and was given a big push by President Jiang Zemin's visit in 1996.

In an important step toward resolving the vexed boundary problem that arose out of a war the two countries fought in 1962, India and China have now agreed to complete the process of clarification of their border, the Line of Actual Control (LAC), "as soon as possible". Both the leaders expressed satisfaction at the progress made in this process, including the recent exchange of maps of the middle sector, stretching from Himachal Pradesh to Uttaranchal. The two also agreed that there should be greater exchange of high-level visits between the two countries.

Li, the second-most powerful leader in China after President Jiang Zemin, has made valiant efforts to assure India that China "has never taken India as a threat, nor do we intend to pose a threat". In the context of India's declaration of China as its principal threat in order to justify its Pokhran nuclear tests only two years ago, and China's hysterical reaction, this is being considered an important confidence-building step in Indian diplomatic circles.

Indeed, for the first time China indicated that it is prepared to join India in fighting terrorism. Li was unambiguous in asserting that it was the consistent position of Beijing "to oppose and condemn international terrorism of all descriptions, and oppose fulfilling political or other agendas through international terrorist means and violent terrorist activities by any country, institution, organization or individual". This is being read in India as a newfound resolve by China to fight Islamic terrorism, which has its epicenter in Pakistan, a long-term Chinese ally and India's bugbear. Li's statement is as welcome in New Delhi as was Jiang's advice to Pakistani leaders in 1996 that they put the Kashmir issue on the back burner and normalize relations with India in other areas.

India could not but appreciate the fact that Li did not ruffle its feathers on the contentious issues of India having given refuge to the Dalai Lama and the Karmapa Lama. Li's arrival coincided with thefirst anniversary of the flight of the young Ugyen Thinley Dorji - the Karmapa Lama - to India from Tibet. Significantly, New Delhi has so far refused to give any refugee-status papers to the Karmapa despite requests by the Dalai Lama himself, because it is still undecided about the identity of the boy.

In view of the concept of multipolarity in world affairs to which India and China are committed, they reiterated that both states "have the obligation and capability to work more actively to play their due part in the international arena". More significantly, Li also took up the issues that are of the greatest concern to India - the contentious bilateral issues such as the border/territorial disputes and the nature of the Sino-Pakistan relationship. He made an attempt to assuage India's bruised sensitivities by suggesting that China would approach the border issue in the spirit of peaceful co-existence a la panchshila (five principles of co-existence enunciated by India in the 1950s), and that Chinese intentions regarding Pakistan were not necessarily anti-Indian.

The positive tone for the dialogue was set by Li, who spoke in several fora about the many ideas that India and China, as two of the largest developing countries, with a significant percentage of world population, share. Vajpayee reciprocated to the olive branch in a statement on Sunday after his arrival home from Vietnam and Indonesia. He said: "As two great civilizations and neighbors, India and China are engaged in the process of resolving, and putting behind us, past differences and forging a new and dynamic relationship for the 21st century for the benefit of our two countries and the world.''

Recognizing the centrality of economic bonding in an era of free markets and globalization, the two countries also dwelt upon their modest bilateral trade relationship. Vajpayee asked China, which will soon be joining the World Trade Organization, to work together with India in the world body in the interest of the developing countries.

Li's visit, however, also underlined the fact that all is not yet well in the bilateral relationship. Apart from the usual Tibetan protesters and China-baiters in the media that all Chinese leaders face, the biggest chink in the armor was new Indian army chief S Padmanabhan's comments in an interview to government-run Doordarshan television that China was creating "some problems'' near the LAC by building up infrastructure, including roads. However, the Foreign Ministry's spokesman sought to downplay the remarks. He said both sides were satisfied with the 1993 and 1996 agreements on maintaining peace along the border and on confidence-building measures. Under these agreements, a mechanism is already in place to address any problem related on the LAC. The spokesman said: "In general, the border area is tranquil.''

The visit also brought to the fore the intense paranoia that China inspires among the Hindu nationalists who are ruling India today. Ram Jethmalani, a top constitutional expert and law minister in Vajpayee's cabinet until recently, wrote a series of articles recently recalling the resolution passed unanimously by both houses of parliament after "the ignominy we went through" in 1962. "Some fools like me still draw inspiration from the lofty diction of the pledge," he lamented and went on to quote the resolution in some detail: "This House notes with deep regret that in spite of the uniform gestures of goodwill and friendship by India towards the People's Government of China ... China has betrayed this goodwill and friendship and the principles of Panchsheel which had been agreed to between the two countries and has committed aggression and initiated a massive invasion of India by her armed forces ... With hope and faith, this House affirms the firm resolve of the Indian people to drive out the aggressor from the sacred soil of India, however long and hard the struggle may be."

Jethmalani commented: "It is a shame that no successor prime minister has ever dared publicly to recall the broken promise and make it good ... Must we persist in giving up our sense of national dignity to this extent that we do not have the courage to call the aggressor an aggressor and convey to him firmly that friendship is not possible without aggression being vacated and the fruits of aggression being disgorged? The original humiliation has been compounded by cowardly actions presented to a gullible populace as acts of supreme statesmanship."

Jethmalani represents widespread sentiment in India and certainly in the hardline Hindu organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, to which even Vajpayee belongs. He is furious at the turn of events and writes: "Our government is obviously suppressing the truth from the Indian nation. I think we are repeating the negligence, if not the wanton deception of the pre-1962 period. Our great leaders then kept lying to the nation that everything was well with Indo-China relations."

An influential section of Chinese intellectuals, Jethmalani noted, remain terribly hostile to India. Hu Weming, in an article titled "India used the Nuclear Counter to Bargain", speaks of the rise of nationalism and the threat to China. Hu writes that the BJP government has drawn on Indian nationalism to gain support for its nuclear tests and that the government may draw on it again to boost its effort to attain regional hegemony. He sarcastically concludes, "Great power ambitions form a strong contrast with the decline of real international status, and this is an important reason for the continual rise of nationalism in India in recent years ... The BJP, which rode this whirlwind of nationalism to take power, has seized the opportunity brought by the nuclear tests to play the 'people's will' card to the outside world, and the 'interests of national security' card for domestic consumption, and has used international pressure to further fan nationalist emotions."

Another Chinese military scholar maintains that in 1962 the Indian side did not see the facts rightly and now the BJP government wants to foist a boundary settlement on China on its own terms. He complains that India brazenly did what the British imperialists dared not do. "They forcibly took 90,000 square miles of Chinese territory and in 1959, after a Tibetan uprising, Nehru claimed another 33,000 square miles in the west." Yan Xuetong, of the prestigious China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, writing last year, declared: "What merits attention is that India's vigorous spread of the China Threat Theory may [signal] a new regional danger. For a long time India has repeatedly pushed forward its expansionist policy, threatening its neighboring countries in various ways. In 1962, it even started a large-scale border war against China; it also provided bases in Indian territory for the Dalai clique and encouraged them to engage in activities to split China. People should wait and see whether the current Indian government will create new trouble that may lead to a regional danger, to prove to the world that a 'China Threat' really exists."

One Indian commentator who commands great respect in the right-wing ruling alliance, Brahma Chellaney, is inconsolable: "At the hub of the power disequilibrium in Asia is an increasingly powerful and assertive China that successfully keeps India boxed in on the subcontinent and compels New Delhi to pay obeisance to it." In an article last year in the widely circulated newspaper The Hindustan Times, entitled "No syrupy sentiment, please", he complained: "The Vajpayee government has swung from one extreme to the other. It began on a note of bravado, with [Defense Minister] George Fernandes distinguishing himself by becoming the first cabinet member since the 1962 humiliation to speak up on China and Mr Vajpayee himself stating the obvious ... The unprecedented torrent of invective that Beijing unleashed turned the tough-talking Indian leaders into lambs."

Chellaney continues: "China chides India for raising its defense spending, but when Beijing increases its already large military outlays, India stays mum. Beijing regularly sermonizes New Delhi on Tibet, but [India] never asks China to stem the flow of Tibetan refugees to India or to hold negotiations with the Dalai Lama. China time and again advises India to resolve all disputes with Pakistan peacefully, but New Delhi does not provide similar advice even when China's Leninist rulers threaten to use force against democratic Taiwan ... Not only does China chastise New Delhi, it consciously employs such scoldings to discipline India. Beijing knows from experience that putting pressure on a weak-willed India works. Even the Vajpayee government has been tamed. When self-proclaimed nationalists begin to propitiate Beijing, the success of the Chinese strategy becomes self-evident."

There are saner and more balanced voices in the Indian media. Perhaps the most perceptive is Shekhar Gupta, the editor of a major newspaper, The Indian Express, who writes: "Our border dispute with China diminishes us, militarily and politically. It compels us to maintain large force levels and then spread them along two fronts. It also distracts us from planning for the real future threat, the economic one. If we are able to somehow put the military competition and the border dispute behind us, we may find the mindspace and resources to prepare for the future fight for the markets. Yes, China could be our threat number one, but it is more likely to threaten us with more plastic toys aimed at our markets than Dong Feng missiles zeroing in on Raisina Hill. The way to counter that will be our own software, and value-added services, not half a dozen Agnis with Shanghai and Chengdu inscribed on them."

(Special to Asia Times Online)