Foreign Correspondence

[Amaunet]

Sino-India ties marred by the 'P' word
By Sudha Ramachandran

Apr 9, 2005

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.




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