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Editorial
China's Sword of Damocles
Ever since the 1962 border war, bilateral ties between China and India have hung like the Sword of Damocles over New Delhi's head. An immediate freeze in relations followed the war, but the subsequent thaw under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping and Rajiv Gandhi was welcomed in both countries and in the rest of Asia. India and China between them account for more than a third of the world's population. They are also fast developing economic and military powers that now have the capability to affect the welfare of countries far beyond their immediate borders. So any hint of trouble or tension between them, as is currently the case, is inevitably of concern to the rest of the world and to Asia in particular.
This is not the time or place to mull over what went wrong in 1962, but there is a growing consensus in India and abroad that severe misjudgements by India's political and military leadership played a part in the war that was won hands down by China. It was the Chinese who then announced a ceasefire before withdrawing to what they defined as the Line of Control along the 3,500 kilometre border stretching from India's Kashmir in the north to Arunachal Pradesh (formerly known as the North East Frontier Agency or NEFA) in the northeast.
Both before and after the 1962 conflict China's then prime minister, Zhou Enlai, reportedly hinted at a border compromise that would confirm China's possession of parts of northeast Kashmir, the area known as Aksai Chin, in exchange for recognising Indian sovereignty over Arunachal Pradesh. But Zhou's offer was never tested or taken up not least because no politician in New Delhi felt they had the strength to overcome the response of what would be an outraged Indian public opinion. The resulting and continuing stalemate with China clinging on to Aksai Chin and India refusing to discuss Arunachal has been punctuated by occasional border flare-ups, including most famously an incident where China threatened war in response to what it claimed was India's heinous crime of kidnapping a herd of Chinese sheep!
Rational thinking has since prevailed on both sides of the border, but recent developments of the past six months do not augur well for the future. From China's point of view, New Delhi's decision to reinforce its military presence in the northeast with extra troops and additional investment in roads and infrastructure amounts to a grave provocation. Hence the reference to 'India's unwise military moves' in one newspaper and the 'India is a paper tiger' reference in another. Some analysts insist that these sort of comments should be seen in perspective because they do not reflect official thinking. Indeed China's Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang was quoted as saying last June, 'China and India have never demarcated their border. We are willing to pursue a fair and reasonable solution through negotiations with India.'
But actions speak louder than words and 'fair and reasonable' seem to have been missing in recent Chinese moves towards India. Beijing's decision to staple rather than paste visas on to certain Indian passports issued to those Indian citizens hailing from Kashmir is one such move. Rather than playing along with the status quo in Kashmir, which it has been content to do until now, Beijing is signalling that it questions India's claim to the whole state and not just to the border areas. Second, China's intrusion across the mutually agreed border in Sikkim, where Chinese troops left behind a slogan that read, 'We can take this place in two hours if we want', is nothing short of provocative. Finally, China's bid to block Asian Development Bank loans for Arunachal, on the grounds that this was Chinese rather than Indian territory, and protests at Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's electioneering trip to Arunachal, is another indication of a harder policy line from Beijing.
In New Delhi there is a striking lack of consensus about what the Chinese are aiming for. One group of experts is convinced that Beijing is acting at the behest of its allies in Islamabad by effectively opening up a second front to divert Indian forces away from the Pakistan border. This tactic, so the argument goes, relieves the pressure on Pakistan to keep sizeable forces deployed along the Punjab and Kashmir borders and allows the authorities in Islamabad to focus their energies on humbling the Taliban. But this is a specious argument. The Pakistanis have all the security assurances they need from the Americans and to get the Chinese on board as well does not make any sense. Far more plausible is the argument that says Beijing is very conscious of its new status as the world's newest superpower and is flexing its muscles accordingly. Those countries that dare take issue with Beijing need to tread very carefully. The China of Mao and Genghis Khan is on the march and will not tolerate the actions of what it perceives as pygmy powers led by lesser human beings. Renewed feelings of greatness are stirring in Beijing, and India and the rest of Asia had better watch out.
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