Author: M.V. Kamath
Publication: Organiser
Date: February 10, 2008
URL: http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=223&page=27
Introduction: In December 1988 Rajiv Gandhi
visited China and there was much hype about the establishment of a Joint Working
Group to settle the border issue. To this day the border issue has not been
resolved. Indeed, amid reports of intrusion by Chinese forces in Bhutan, the
Indian Army was forced to move more than 60,000 troops to the Sino-Indian
border close to the tri-junction of India, Bhutan and China, in the final
weeks of 2007.
Irrespective of the end results of Prime Minister
Dr Manmohan Singh's visit to Beijing, the intriguing question remains: can
we trust China? Are we being take for another ride? According to a paper prepared
by the American CIA in mid-1963 recently released, the Chinese duped Jawaharlal
Nehru by its guile over the Sino-Indian border row that led to a war in 1962.
Nehru turned out to be naïve leader, easily taken in by Chinese pretensions
of friendship.
In this matter also to be blamed is V.K. Krishna
Menon who was Nehru's foreign policy adviser. In March 1979, then Foreign
Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee visited China against the advise of professionals.
He disregarded the information given him that Beijing was preparing to attack
Vietnam. The professionals turned out to be right. Vajpayee had barely begun
his visit when China did attack Vietnam, with its leader Deng Xiao Ping claiming
that China had only taught a 'lesson' to Vietnam as it had done to India in
1962. That was adding insult to injury. Vajpayee had to make a quick turn-around
and cut short his visit.
In December 1988 Rajiv Gandhi visited China
and there was much hype about the establishment of a Joint Working Group to
settle the border issue. To this day the border issue has not been resolved.
Indeed, amid reports of intrusion by Chinese forces in Bhutan, the Indian
Army was forced to move more than 60, 000 troops to the Sino-Indian border
close to the tri-junction of India, Bhutan and China, in the final weeks of
2007. On November 23, 2007, a week before the visit of Defence Minister A.K.Antony
and Chief of Army Staff Deepak Kapoor to Sikkim, Peoples' Liberation Army's
a soldiers reportedly unloaded boulders to wreck the construction of a metalled
road at a strategic spot in North Sikkim.
Prior to that, Chinese troops had entered
Indian territory to ask Indian Army personnel manning the border post there
to stop construction of the road. China has repeatedly claimed sovereignty
over Arunachal Pradesh to the point that China's Ambassador to India was to
say that the whole of Arunachal Pradesh was Chinese territory. The claim was
also made that Tawang, birthplace of Dalai Lama be returned to China as it
was part of the country. After the 1962 war, China has maintained its claim
on nearly 90,000 sq kms of Indian land. With China, one can never tell what
it is up to. Even while it claimed friendship with India, China had begun
to supply nuclear weapon designs and know-how to Pakistan, simultaneously
supplying nuclear capable M-11 missiles to Islamabad. With amazing consistency,
soon after the former Prime Minister Narasimha Rao's visit to Beijing in September
1993, China started supplying ring magnets for Pakistan's nuclear weapons
programmed and the nuclear capable DF-9 missile. What short of friendship
is this? That is one side of the picture.
The other side is all goodwill and bonhomie.
Thus, on February 13, 2007 the Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing led a
110-member delegation to Nalanda for the inauguration of the renovated Hieun
Tsang Memorial Hall. Speaking on the occasion, he said: 'Let us begin from
this beautiful example" of strengthening age-old cultural ties. Then,
the sixth meeting of the India-China Eminent Persons Group took place in Beijing
in August 30, 2007, with the leader of the Indian delegation, C.V. Ranganathan
declaring that the strong message that came from the talks was that "while
some problems between the two countries may persist, both sides attach great
importance to ties with each other". And Chinese Foreign Minister Yang
Jiechi was quoted as saying: "India's development in every aspect is
in the interests of China and vice versa". Sweet words. At the EPG meeting,
China also sought full Market Economy Status (MES) from India. In that same
vein, India's Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee, addressing the Seoul-based
Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security in the Korean capital on
September 17, 2007 said that India does not "visualise any constraints"
on the development of bilateral relations between India and the US while insisting
that India is confident that its "strategic and cooperative partnership"
with China "will mature and steadily develop".
It is difficult to understand what this cooperation
could be when one realises that China has been building a road in the Tibetan
Autonomous Region, leading right up to the Indian border, while simultaneously
opening up one of the highest airports in the world in the Nyingti Prefecture
which borders Arunachal Pradesh and Burma. Another airport close to the Aksai
Chin region of Ladakh is also expected to be opened shortly. To what purpose
were these airports being built? But then we have the picture of the red carpet
being unrolled as Sonia Gandhi made a high-profile visit to Beijing in October
2007. The Chinese did everything to make Sonia Gandhi visit a memorable one
and a major success but many suspect this was in the hope that India could
thus be weaned away from the US Beijing has been alarmed at the joint naval
exercises in which India joined Australia, the US and Japan. All this must
be taken in the context of other developments like the increase in mutual
trade from a paltry $ 5 billion in 2002 to $ 34.2 billion in 2007, even if
India's trade deficit had widened to $ 9.02 billion when, as recently as 2005,
India had a surplus of $ 843 million.
The year 2007 had been designated as the Year
of Friendship through Tourism and some 67,600 Chinese came to India as visitors,
not a big deal, considering that as many as 35 million Chinese had gone abroad
as tourists. Another sign of cooperation has been the addition of fresh flight
routes between Eastern India and southern China, taking the total number of
weekly direct flights between the two countries to 22. Even more significantly,
and in a major sign of thawing relation between them, a limited number of
Indian and Chinese troops conducted in December 2007 the first ever Joint
Exercise code-named hand in hand 2007 in a hilly terrain in the Yunnan province
of China to learn skills to fight terrorism.
The irony of such an exercise is that many
of the terrorists operating against India are those from Pakistan, a close
ally of China! The troops from both sides apparently learnt a lot amidst cheering
cries of hindi chini bhai bhai. What do all these things mean? It is hard
to say. India has been beguiled in the past. It could happen again. It would
be in India's interests to be on the alert. China could be as formidable an
ally as it has been a formidable competitor. Much would depend on how India
plays its cards. The point is not to take anything at face value. There is
much to say about that old saying: Once bit, twice shy.
