@ shotgunner & grey boy
India faces growing Chinese hostility after 26/11
As China strengthens its navy with acquisition of aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines, India will soon find that unless it boosts its maritime muscle, it will be strategically marginalised and outflanked by an assertive and expansionist China,
While India received overwhelming international sympathy and support during the 26/11 terrorist outrage, the Chinese reaction was one of almost unbridled glee, while backing Pakistani protestations of innocence. The state-run China Institute of Contemporary International Relations claimed that the terrorists who carried out the attack came from India.
Moreover, even as the terrorist strike was on, yet another Chinese “scholar” gleefully noted: “The Mumbai attack exposed the internal weakness of India, a power that is otherwise raising its status both in the region and in the world”.
Not to be outdone, the Foreign Ministry-run China Institute of Strategic Studies warned: “China can firmly support Pakistan in the event of war”, adding: “While Pakistan can benefit from its military co-operation with China while fighting India, the People’s Republic of China may have the option of resorting to a strategic military action in Southern Tibet (Arunachal Pradesh), to thoroughly liberate the people there”.
Rather than condemning the terrorists and their supporters, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Qin Gang urged India and Pakistan to “maintain calm” and investigate the “cause” of the terror attack jointly. The visiting Chairman of Pakistan’s Joint Chiefs of Staff General, Tariq Majid, was received like a state dignitary by Chinese leaders, with promises of support on weapons supplies ranging from fighter aircraft to frigates.
Unsought advice
The Chinese then got into the diplomatic act, purporting to show that they were actually good Samaritans seeking to promote peace and reconciliation between India and Pakistan. The rising star in China’s diplomatic hierarchy, Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei, visited Islamabad and met the Pakistan leadership, including the ubiquitous Gen Ashfaq Pervez Kayani.
Rather than asking Pakistan to curb the Lashkar-e-Taiba, He Yafei stressed the need for Pakistan and India to address “outstanding Issues through dialogue and co-operation”. Shortly thereafter, the ubiquitous “Good Samaritan” He Yafei landed up in Delhi, again with the object of demonstrating to the world that China had urged “restraint” on India and promoted India-Pakistan dialogue.
Mercifully, for once, our pusillanimous Mandarins signalled that we did not need China’s purported “good offices” in dealing with the fallout of 26/11.
Just as China was becoming a net importer of oil in 1993, Zhao Nanqui a senior official of China’s People’s Liberation Army proclaimed: “We can no longer accept the Indian Ocean as an Ocean of the Indians”. Another naval analyst Zhang Ming recently proclaimed that the Islands of India’s Andaman and Nicobar Archipelago could be used as a “metal chain” to block Chinese access to the Straits of Malacca.
China has used such arguments to boost its naval presence in the Indian Ocean. Adopting a “string of pearls strategy” to encircle and contain India in the Indian Ocean, it has acquired base facilities at Gwadar and Pasni in the Makran coast of Pakistan, virtually at the mouth of the Persian Gulf.
Naval presence
It is building a fuelling station in the port of Hambantota in Southern Sri Lanka, a container facility with naval and commercial access in Chittagong and linking its Yunnan province to the Indian Ocean through Myanmar.
It has gone as far as Mauritius and Maldives, for securing a strategic presence, with promises of massive economic assistance.
China has also planned its most ambitious project in the Indian Ocean, proposing a canal access across the Isthmus of Krai in Thailand, linking the Indian Ocean to its Pacific coast.
China has reinforced these measures by sending its first naval expeditionary force spearheaded by two destroyers into the Indian Ocean, purportedly to deal with piracy off the Somalia coast. A Chinese fleet last entered the India Ocean in the 15th century, when an expeditionary force under Admiral Zheng He sailed across the Indian Ocean to Calicut, Muscat, Maldives and Mogadishu. Hu Jintao’s China appears desirous of reviving the Imperial ambitions of the Emperors of the Ming Dynasty!
As China strengthens its navy with acquisition of aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines, India will soon find that unless it combines the boosting of its maritime muscle with imaginative diplomacy in its Indian Ocean neighbourhood and on China’s Pacific shores, it will be strategically marginalised and outflanked by an assertive and expansionist China, which appears bent on exploiting the high costs of Imperial overreach by the Americans in recent years. Given the manner in which China has joined hands with Pakistan to sabotage India’s quest for permanent membership of the UN Security Council and the devious role played by China in the Nuclear Suppliers Group to undermine moves to end global nuclear sanctions against India, we should have no doubt that “strategic containment” of India will remain the cornerstone of Chinese foreign policy in the foreseeable future.
US-China relationship
New Delhi should also have no doubt that China will exploit the American economic downturn and the pro-Chinese views of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to get the Americans to revert to the policies of the Nixon, Carter and Clinton Presidencies and to make common cause with it on issues like nuclear non-proliferation, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and even on Afghanistan and Pakistan, while undermining Indian interests.
Echoing the Pakistani line, the Communist Party mouthpiece, The People’s Daily recently suggested that for the United States to deal with problems in Afghanistan, it should not merely involve itself in the “Afghanistan problem” and the “Pakistan problem” but also in the “India-Pakistan problem”.
Hillary Clinton has characterised the US-China relationship as the “most important bilateral relationship in the world in this century”. Her visit to China was followed almost immediately by the visit to Beijing of a senior Pentagon official, who joyously proclaimed the resumption of defence ties with China.
The Bush Administration had an overarching strategic vision of its relations with India, premised on India’s pivotal role in confronting terrorism, safeguarding the sea lanes of the Indian Ocean and in promoting “strategic stability” in Asia. With elections around the corner and the UPA Government in a “lame duck” mode, Washington is unlikely to take any interest in fashioning a larger vision for India-US relations.
The challenge we face in coming months is on how we can pursue our interests in the aftermath of the 26/11 carnage, without making the Indo-US relationship exclusively fashioned by developments our western borders. The Obama Administration’s decision to curb outsourcing, without any prior consultations, manifests an American propensity to act unilaterally and peremptorily on issues of vital interest to India.
The Prime Minister’s Special Envoy Shyam Saran recently noted “an apparent willingness on the part of the US to accommodate China’s regional and global interests as a price to be paid for China refraining from tipping the US into a full blown economic and financial crisis through its own policy interventions and, hopefully, supporting US economic recovery”.
China appears set to exploit current developments to transform the American dominated unipolar world order by a bipolar world order in which it shares global hegemony with the United States. Saran perceptively noted: “This will imply a more energetic pursuit of our relations with countries like Russia and middle powers like Brazil, South Africa and Mexico. The European Union and, in particular, some of its individual members like France, can be useful political and economic partners”.
It remains to be seen if we can fashion imaginative strategies to deal with these emerging challenges.
(The author is a former High Commissioner to Pakistan. [email protected]
Hindi chini bhai bhai, Indian chines Brother-Brother it was a chines joke. India has learnt with its past experience and current circumstances are telling the same that peace never comes with slogans and isn't cheap to have. Beggers have no choice. we will go for peace with china for sure by creating parallel power. If china mind India's growing power then its intentions are further exposed. What is wrong if India is a parallel power to china and a friend as well?
Article has sub continent origin not western
