EDITORIAL
China gets treated to an Indian charm offensive with a Bollywood team landing there, Prime Minister Narendra Damodardass Modi set to undertake a three-day visit this week, and more cultural interactions being set in motion. A good augury, which should also minimize concern in some quarters both here and outside that India is distancing from China and getting too dangerously close to the US. While too much need not be read into the US statement welcoming India’s closer engagement with China, in the context of the Modi visit, that response should be seen as being in the fitness of things.
Relations between India and China remain strained for several decades after the 1962 War. The war abruptly ended the Indo-Cheeni bhai bhai slogan sponsored by first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru. China is seen as the aggressor, though the refuge that India accorded to Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama appeared to have acted as a provocation to China. India lost a large part of land — mostly barren though – to China. However, occasional border skirmishes apart, the recent decades have been peaceful while the armed provocation of the past has hung heavily in the air and cast a shadow over bilateral relations.
Recent years saw some thaw, when both sides decided that they would keep the border row on the back burner and the seized land issue in cold storage, look at the positives, and work actively on the trade and cultural relations front. It helped both sides get closer, though the balance of trade position between India and China – a trade deficit of $29billion — worked to the advantage of the Middle Kingdom. Indian exports are largely limited to iron ore, while China captured much of the Indian consumer durables market, which virtually undercut the Indian manufacturing industry.
China, that had put its territory expansion ambitions in cold storage for a few decades and concentrated largely on economic development, is of late showing signs of an assertion of its military might. Coming as this does on the back of its present economic might, it was only to be expected of a nation on the upswing. The South China Sea is witness to several such designs in recent years — China laying claims on a set of Islands that Japan claims are its own, small nations like Vietnam and the Philippines being put on notice, and Indian interests too being at stake there.
Chinese obsession to encircle India with military or naval bases has been a matter of serious concern to us as well. China is making sure that it should have a finger in every pie around India. Maldives too has of late been in China’s diplomatic overreach agenda. China is backing Pakistan in multiple ways, including by way of military and armaments support, and its soldiers have a presence in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir as well.
Chinese president Xi Jinping’s India visit in September was partly a diplomatic disaster for both sides. That was precisely the time when Chinese soldiers landed up in Indian territory in Ladakh and erected tents. That proved to be a major embarrassment for India and Prime Minister Modi, who was extra-courteous playing host to the Chinese leader in Gujarat and Delhi. Xi’s offer of $20billion investment in India is yet to materialise while a bigger investment offer made by Japan almost around that time has started showing up. Also, notably, Xi matched that offer with a much larger offer –$45billion– to Pakistan in a similar visit recently, showing India mattered less in China’s scheme of things. Worse, China is tightening its screws on India in respect of Arunachal Pradesh, further reinforcing its claim over the land, while not showing any readiness to part an inch of the seized territories it occupies.
While we expect the best out of Narendra Damodardass Modi’s China visit, he is very unlikely to pull off any diplomatic coup. For one, China is not given to theatrics, but to pragmatism and promoting its very own interests. The way it undertook a humanitarian mission in Nepal in the aftermath of the April earthquake is a classic example. Its teams quietly did the job and left the place, while Indian media made a song and drama out of the work we did there, and departed with egg on India’s face.
Issues between India and China are one too many. The un-demarcated nature of long stretches of the northern boundary is a matter that needs immediate attention and phased settlement. It is also important that China leaves space for India to exist and operate in normal ways. Encircling should not be the way forward, nor are actions such as courting every nation in India’s vicinity with ulterior motives, nor raising the stakes in South China Sea. Trade relations need be put on an even keel as well. The stapled visa issue needs settlement. China’s favourable stands can be reassurance to India that the two can co-exist and prosper in what is generally hailed as “Asia’s Century.” We, simply, are just at its start.