The most crucial determination in the 21st century for India is the content of the nation'srelation with China in the context of the US strategic over reach and volatility of the globalised economy.
It is constantly said that in many ways, India and China are natural partners, being neighbours with a long boundary. More importantly, for more than 5,000 years of history, the two nations were culturally and religiously interacting with each other, peacefully and normally, except for a relatively brief period of 20 years (1958-78).
This peace reigned even when India'sHindu influence spread all the way to Vietnam to countries on the periphery of China. In fact, even China came under the heavy influence of Hinduised Mahayana Buddhism so much so that the famous poet and President of Beijing University delivered an address to Harvard University in 1936, published in the Tricentennial Celebration volumes, titled The Indianisation of China detailing disapprovingly how deep Hindu influences had penetrated in Chinese minds.
No two neighbours of any size, in any continent for any period of history thus can claim such a long period of peaceful co-existence and cultural contact. This is an encouraging fact of history, that except for the bitter memory of 1962 conflict, there is no deep seated sentiment mitigating against a future strategic partnership between the world'stwo large continental size, fastest growing, and most populous Asian neighbouring and ancient civilizations. But are the relations chilling again?
India, being a democracy is more expressive about China than China is about India, since the press there is controlled. For example, Indians and Chinese view themselves as citizens of as a rising global power, and that therefore each nation should be treated as a central player in a ?polycentric? multi-polar international community. Yet, while many Indians openly regard China as such, the Chinese in internal Chinese language media have not articulated the same sentiment about India, leaving the impression that China does not take India seriously. Although for China, India could, at a future date, become a strategic partner or formidable adversary, or an economic collaborator or fierce competitor, and yet China'sperception of India has not yet been explicitly articulated.
Will then, in the long term, a strategic India-China relation be forged for mutual benefit be forged , and if forged today, be abandoned by China at a future date? Indians cannot be sure because of Chinese opaqueness in discourse with India. There is large trust deficit between India and China today that stands in the way of such partnership.
Once China attains the economic status it wants, its leaders may want to assert its political and military clout in South Asia against Indian interests by calling in its IOUs. At present China assists Pakistan, Burma, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka with military supplies, but has not openly exercised its clout in these countries, so far, against India. But the option to do so, has been kept open by China. There is also the pending festering Sino-Indian Border Dispute that first requires resolution.
The Question of Sino-Indian
It would be thus appropriate to first consider the centrality of the Border Dispute in the future prospect of a durable Sino-Indian strategic partnership, as this dispute can be a triggering factor for adverse Sino-Indian relations.
Between 1949 and 1957, the media in India mostly had gone by Nehru'sglowing pronouncements on Sino-Indian relations. Because of his perspective, the broad masses of India had regarded the relations between the two countries as extremely cordial. But this was only apparently so, since the seeds of discord had been sown early. How these seeds had germinated since is described in my earlier study of the subject [see Chapter 3 of: India'sChina Perspective (Konark, 2001)].
The core inference from the facts narrated therein is simply this: Neither China, nor indeed India, had been honest to the other about the facts about the border throughout the decade of the 1950s, nor either had a case of any undisputed merit in the Border cartographic claims. That is why Sardar Patel wrote a letter to Nehru after the Communists came to power in Beijing that India should not settle the Tibet question until the border demarcation already in the existing maps had been explicitly agreed to. Nehru in reply to Patel had rambled out a lecture on how foreign policy was different from maintaining law and order.
China did not reveal its territorial claims, even when the two countries had negotiated and signed the 1954 Agreement on Tibet. Though it was an agreement on trade and intercourse, it was concluded in order to settle all outstanding issues and to consolidate the friendly relations between the two countries. One of the Five Principles of Peaceful Co-existence (Panchsheel) was ?mutual respect for each other'sterritorial integrity and sovereignty,? which clearly implied that the borders of each party to the treaty were already known to the other. Had China believed that there was a substantial territorial dispute about the Sino-Indian boundary, then that was the time to have raised the question, before solemnly pledging to respect mutually the ?territorial integrity? of the other. Equally wrong was Nehru for not having explicitly raised and then clinched the border issue especially when we were clearing out of Tibet and recognising it as a province of China.
In October 1954, Prime Minister Nehru while in Beijing mentioned to the Chinese leaders that he had seen some maps published in China which showed a wrong boundary between the two countries, but added that he was not worried about it, because the boundaries of India were quite clear and not a matter of argument! Such ostrich like policy is what led to the disillusionment of 1962.
It was on January 23, 1959, that Mr Chou Enlai first wrote to Mr Nehru admitting that it was ?true that the border question was not raised in 1954 when negotiations were being held between Chinese and Indian sides for the Agreement on Trade and Intercourse between Tibet region of China and India. This was because conditions were not yet ripe for its settlement.? This was an amazing admission. Why did time become ?ripe? in 1959 for the dispute to be raised? That Premier Chou did not make that clear in the letter.
After administering a blistering defeat in 1962, the Chinese forces withdrew 20 kms behind the McMahon Line, which they called ?the 1959 line of actual control? in the Eastern Sector, and also 20 kms behind the line of their latest position in Ladakh, which they further identified with the ?1959 line of actual control? in the Western Sector. This left the Chinese in possession of 23,200 square kms of territory in Ladakh. India asked for restoration to the status quo ex-ante as of September 8, 1962 in all sectors which the Chinese rejected. A stalemate thus resulted in stated positions on the boundary dispute, that in effect remains so even today.
Towards the end of December 1964, Prime Minister Chou Enlai, speaking to the National People'sCongress in Beijing, called the suggestion of restoration of status quo as of September 8, 1962 ?an unreasonable Indian pre-condition? and declared that China would never dismantle its posts from this area. Chou also reminded India that China had not relinquished its claim to an additional 90,000 sq. kilometres of India territory south of the McMahon Line. This territorial demand was in addition to the 23,200 sq. kms of territory in Ladakh already with China by then. Thus, the border issue, if made central to further development of Sino-Indian relations, will effectively freeze any progress toward a Sino-Indian entente.
The first requirement therefore of an effective Indian policy towards China is to build a national consensus on how in a globalised world we define our complex of interests vis-?-vis China, to deal with the situation on the border that has dramatically changed since 1962, and also how best to communicate this consensus candidly to Chinese leaders. It is significant that while China denounces the McMahon line on the Sino-Indian border as ?imperialist? it has accepted the same imperialist line in toto with Burma (Myanmar). This contradiction is explainable by the issue of Tibet.
Second, Tibet will thus continue to play the defining role in Sino-Indian relations. The Indian government has reiterated its policy of regarding Tibet as an autonomous region of China, and that anti-China political activities by Tibetan elements would not be permitted on Indian soil. This statement of policy has been repeated during the exchange of visits by the Prime Ministers of China and India. In 2003, Prime Minister Vajpayee specifically and categorically confirmed this position while on a visit to Beijing. Yet the Chinese view the ?migr? government of the Dalai Lama nominees in Dharamshala, H.P., with deep suspicion. The Tibet issue enables the US to roast the Chinese dragon'sbelly off and on. We have to resolve this contradiction. Another contradiction is the Chinese support to Pakistan in strategic, tactical, military, civilian, nuclear and conventional dimensions. But Pakistan is increasingly looking like a failed state and primed for a Taliban-Al Qaeda take-over. Thereafter anything is possible including nuclear war. This is a contradiction that China must resolve.
The third is in the resolution of competitive interests between China and India both in the economy and spheres of influence. Any two large nations have competitive aspirations and needs, and if these cannot be resolved satisfactorily then it weakens bilateral relations even if it can be cemented in the other dimensions.
And finally, the fourth dimension is in matching of expectations that will exist between the peoples of the two nations. If one nation assumes that friendship means totality of convergence or submergence of all national interests, while the other nation expects it to be on purely give and take principle, then the relation between such two nations is bound to sour sooner or later because the expectations are not matched. That unfortunately is what happened in Sino-Indian bilateral affairs.
The scenario of Strategic partnership between India and China
A fundamental problem in Indian policy-making towards China is that there is no apparent consensus in India even today, on the ?end? objectives of engagement with China. The domestic strategic discourse in IDSA and other think tanks so far has also failed to come up with a clear criterion for evaluating the ?means? to be adopted in this regard. There is also as yet no clear China perspective inside the Indian Government. It is in this context that a review of contemporary Sino-Indian relations is urgently necessary before developing a stable strategic ?Sino-Indian Partnership?, that everyone blandly talks about nowadays.
In particular, a crucial choice will have to be made soon by us: Whether India should form a compact with China (Choice I) or become a part of the US efforts to keep China ?contained? (Choice II). How and why that choice is to be made must of course be subject to in depth of the analysis and wide national debate. I am of the view that either India befriends China in a fundamental and strategic sense, or Indian confronts China. There is no third way.
The upshot of the entire analysis given above can thus be summarised in three parts: [a] A strategic partnership between India and China has to be viewed in dimensions of economic, global influence, and national security. Hence, to opt for such a partnership there has to be a holistic approach.
[b] For historical, cultural and geographical reasons, it is natural for India and China to be partners in global affairs. It is, however, too early for India to clinch a strategic partnership with China because of some unresolved contradictions, the upheaval in the international economy triggered by globalisation and more importantly the imminence of a financial crisis in China and India about which I have written elsewhere [see my Financial Architecture and Comparative Economic Development of China and India (2007) Konark Publishers]. Thus, bilateral discussions for this partnership at all important levels should take place only after all scenarios are visualised and issues are thrashed out to avoid future misunderstanding.
[c] For the time being, the US is important as a market and as a pioneer in innovative technology. Hence, it is not a feasible for either India or China to come to any understanding that is inconsistent with US global interest. This is more true for China than India because the former is more vitally interlinked with the US economy and foreign trade with the West and pro-US East Asia. Thus, mature and nuanced sequencing of our relations with China to a level of a stable and sustained strategic partnership is the urgent imperative of India'snew age or 21st century diplomacy.
(The writer is former Union Cabinet Minister for Commerce, and is currently Janata Party President.)