India must adopt a new strategy to tackle China
By Neena Gopal, Special to Gulf News
Only Delhi could have failed to see this coming, pushing for greater engagement with the United States, while blind to deciphering China's aggressive pursuit of India for what it is benign containment. Ahead of the first visit by Chinese President Hu Jintao to India this week that may have changed.
With China quibbling over new dates for an eighth round of border negotiations between the two Special Representatives, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Dai Bingguo and Indian National Security Advisor, M.K. Narayanan during Hu's four-day visit starting November 20, the "Political Parameters and Guiding Principles for the Settlement of the China-India Boundary Question" is in limbo.
Add that to a steady ratcheting up of rhetoric by the Chinese Ambassador to India, who has publicly laid claim not just to Tawang, but to the entire state of Arunachal Pradesh, and India's much touted China policy is in a shambles.
By going public days before Hu's visit, even the quiet building up of public opinion towards a possible Tawang Aksai Chin swap as the next step after India agreed to give up its claims over Tibet in return for recognition of sovereignty over Sikkim, will become politically untenable.
Real intent
It didn't begin or end with Tawang, which, with its famed Tibetan monastery, could actually reflect China's real intent to diminish the hold of the Dalai Lama over the Tibetans who continue to revere the monk.
India's antennae should have shot up when Chinese Ambassador Sun Yuxi attacked his host country for keeping Chinese firms with links to the People's Liberation Army out of contracts to build ports. India's concern China Harbour Engineering Company is developing Pakistan's Gwadar port and naval base.
Delhi had been lulled into a false sense of security by the "peace and tranquillity" of the Sino-Indian engagement. Even going so far as to smugly preach to Pakistan that Delhi-Islamabad adopt the Indo-Chinese model of tackling issues more easily resolved, building a healthy trade relationship rather than go at intractable issues first.
Indian naivete did not see the diplomat's comments were a signal that China was unhappy over growing US-India rapprochement and Delhi's neo-colonialist break out of its sub-continental straightjacket to compete with the Asian giant for oil and raw materials in resource-rich Africa, Central Asia and South America.
It did not pick up the signals when a Chinese consul general in Mumbai talked down to then defence minister, and now foreign minister, Pranab Mukherjee. The undiplomatic harangue culminated when China baldly raised the Dalai Lama issue six days before Hu's visit.
A high ranking official Chinese delegation said the supporters of Tibetan spiritual leader had been using Indian soil for anti-China activities, and pointed to the activities of the Tibetan government-in-exile in Dharamsala in Himachal Pradesh.
Official line
Clearly, this is Beijing's attempt at setting a more contentious agenda during the Hu visit. The question is, will Prime Minister Manmohan Singh be able to fashion a new strategy to tackle his suddenly more belligerent neighbour.
First, can India nail the official line that negotiations over the 3,500 kms are progressing? How can two countries who have been negotiating over a Line of Actual Control since 1981 not have exchanged maps on anything except the only thing they agree on the "middle sector"?
The west and the east remain deadlocked. Chinese maps made one change over Sikkim, no longer showing the former kingdom that India annexed as disputed but as part of India after Delhi agreed to open up the Nathu La pass on the old Silk Road leading into Tibet.
But there is no change on Arunachal or the 20 per cent of Jammu and Kashmir it lays claim to. Similarly, Singh must reconsider whether it's politic to keep Tibet and Siachen off the table.
Indian officials have privately said their refusal to rise to Pakistan Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmoud Kasuri's bait that "Siachen dispute could be solved within days" was for a very good reason.
Give up the 72 km long glacier and India gives up control of a "strategic wedge of territory" that links Pakistan to China and threatens Indian control of the Ladakh and Kargil regions in J&K if the two armies ever link up.
In surrendering its leverage over Tibet, where it kept a military as well as administrative presence till the '62 Panchsheel agreement, India may have erred.
Delhi has shown some pragmatism by limiting Beijing's encirclement of India by engaging with neighbouring Myanmar where it had set up a listening post in the Coco islands; and in Nepal where it used its own Communists to confer legitimacy to the Maoist movement. But these and China's plans to dam the Brahmaputra are only a few of India's concerns.
Hu heads to Pakistan after India, where he could ink an agreement to build three 300 MW nuclear reactors, mirroring the civilian nuclear agreement that India clinched with the US. At the height of the 1965 war with Pakistan, China threatened to go to war unless India dismantled fortifications in the contentious north-east.
China backed off, but as the only country to give India a bloody nose, the blundering Indian elephant must tread very carefully around this dragon.
http://www.gulf-news.com/opinion/columns/world/10083614.html
By Neena Gopal, Special to Gulf News
Only Delhi could have failed to see this coming, pushing for greater engagement with the United States, while blind to deciphering China's aggressive pursuit of India for what it is benign containment. Ahead of the first visit by Chinese President Hu Jintao to India this week that may have changed.
With China quibbling over new dates for an eighth round of border negotiations between the two Special Representatives, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Dai Bingguo and Indian National Security Advisor, M.K. Narayanan during Hu's four-day visit starting November 20, the "Political Parameters and Guiding Principles for the Settlement of the China-India Boundary Question" is in limbo.
Add that to a steady ratcheting up of rhetoric by the Chinese Ambassador to India, who has publicly laid claim not just to Tawang, but to the entire state of Arunachal Pradesh, and India's much touted China policy is in a shambles.
By going public days before Hu's visit, even the quiet building up of public opinion towards a possible Tawang Aksai Chin swap as the next step after India agreed to give up its claims over Tibet in return for recognition of sovereignty over Sikkim, will become politically untenable.
Real intent
It didn't begin or end with Tawang, which, with its famed Tibetan monastery, could actually reflect China's real intent to diminish the hold of the Dalai Lama over the Tibetans who continue to revere the monk.
India's antennae should have shot up when Chinese Ambassador Sun Yuxi attacked his host country for keeping Chinese firms with links to the People's Liberation Army out of contracts to build ports. India's concern China Harbour Engineering Company is developing Pakistan's Gwadar port and naval base.
Delhi had been lulled into a false sense of security by the "peace and tranquillity" of the Sino-Indian engagement. Even going so far as to smugly preach to Pakistan that Delhi-Islamabad adopt the Indo-Chinese model of tackling issues more easily resolved, building a healthy trade relationship rather than go at intractable issues first.
Indian naivete did not see the diplomat's comments were a signal that China was unhappy over growing US-India rapprochement and Delhi's neo-colonialist break out of its sub-continental straightjacket to compete with the Asian giant for oil and raw materials in resource-rich Africa, Central Asia and South America.
It did not pick up the signals when a Chinese consul general in Mumbai talked down to then defence minister, and now foreign minister, Pranab Mukherjee. The undiplomatic harangue culminated when China baldly raised the Dalai Lama issue six days before Hu's visit.
A high ranking official Chinese delegation said the supporters of Tibetan spiritual leader had been using Indian soil for anti-China activities, and pointed to the activities of the Tibetan government-in-exile in Dharamsala in Himachal Pradesh.
Official line
Clearly, this is Beijing's attempt at setting a more contentious agenda during the Hu visit. The question is, will Prime Minister Manmohan Singh be able to fashion a new strategy to tackle his suddenly more belligerent neighbour.
First, can India nail the official line that negotiations over the 3,500 kms are progressing? How can two countries who have been negotiating over a Line of Actual Control since 1981 not have exchanged maps on anything except the only thing they agree on the "middle sector"?
The west and the east remain deadlocked. Chinese maps made one change over Sikkim, no longer showing the former kingdom that India annexed as disputed but as part of India after Delhi agreed to open up the Nathu La pass on the old Silk Road leading into Tibet.
But there is no change on Arunachal or the 20 per cent of Jammu and Kashmir it lays claim to. Similarly, Singh must reconsider whether it's politic to keep Tibet and Siachen off the table.
Indian officials have privately said their refusal to rise to Pakistan Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmoud Kasuri's bait that "Siachen dispute could be solved within days" was for a very good reason.
Give up the 72 km long glacier and India gives up control of a "strategic wedge of territory" that links Pakistan to China and threatens Indian control of the Ladakh and Kargil regions in J&K if the two armies ever link up.
In surrendering its leverage over Tibet, where it kept a military as well as administrative presence till the '62 Panchsheel agreement, India may have erred.
Delhi has shown some pragmatism by limiting Beijing's encirclement of India by engaging with neighbouring Myanmar where it had set up a listening post in the Coco islands; and in Nepal where it used its own Communists to confer legitimacy to the Maoist movement. But these and China's plans to dam the Brahmaputra are only a few of India's concerns.
Hu heads to Pakistan after India, where he could ink an agreement to build three 300 MW nuclear reactors, mirroring the civilian nuclear agreement that India clinched with the US. At the height of the 1965 war with Pakistan, China threatened to go to war unless India dismantled fortifications in the contentious north-east.
China backed off, but as the only country to give India a bloody nose, the blundering Indian elephant must tread very carefully around this dragon.
http://www.gulf-news.com/opinion/columns/world/10083614.html
