China is perhaps coming around to the realisation that the best way to maintain stability in the Asian region is to work in cooperation with an emerging India. Sabre-rattling is futile in the changed situation, writes RANAJOY SEN
The India-China relationship is marked more by rivalry than by cooperation. After constituting to sprawling modern state systems from the middle of the preceded century, India and China have striven to achieve their cherished desires of gaining global-power status. Though the Indian position has been, and is more, toward an emphasis of mutual respect and symbiosis than domination and conflict, the Chinese strategy has been largely the reverse of that of India’s. China has been wary of India eclipsing it in the international arena; it has striven to subdue it through engagement and containment, and tried influencing India’s neighbours, to India’s disadvantage. The visit of Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi to India was probably Beijing’s attempt to make an estimate of prevailing Indian verves.
India has been more acceptable to the outside world than authoritarian China as regards the paradigm of political structure it has chosen. A liberal parliamentary democracy is more conducive to human freedom and prosperity than an authoritarian system ruled by a cabal.
India’s democracy, although marred by raucousness, political indecision, economic sluggishness, and political skulduggery more often than not, offers sufficient outlets to vent genuine dissatisfaction and would enable effective governance and robust economic growth through well coordinated political will and administrative skill. The resplendent victory of Mr Narendra Modi in the last general election has credibly increased such hopes.
After India’s independence in 1947, the then Indian Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, enjoyed high prestige in the outside world. In contrast, Communist China, formed in 1949 and led by Chairman Mao Zedong, was viewed with apprehension, distrust, and hostility by the international community, at large. Chinese resentment and hostility towards India was probably existent from those days. But, both countries, largely from Nehru’s initiative and visions of a pan-Asian solidarity through India-China friendship and cooperation, signed a treaty of mutual peace and cooperation, titled the ‘Panchsheel’. China utilised Nehru’s sentiments to establish its credibility in Asia and enhance its international acceptability. It bided time before proceeding to India. Friendly exchanges soon gave way to a dispute surrounding the un-concluded India-China border.
A combination of Chinese aggressiveness, disavowal of former assurances to India regarding the border line, and Indian insistence of refusal to budge from its stated positions, diplomatic ineptness, military unpreparedness, and an under-estimation of the Chinese resoluteness to degrade India, led to the border conflict of 1962, that resulted in humiliation for India.
Post-1962, India shed all illusions as regards China. Beijing escalated its adherence to Pakistan, enlisted it as an ally to India’s discomfiture, and jointly with Pakistan attempted to inject as many spokes as possible within the wheels of Indian interests and progress. Nevertheless, superficial diplomatic relations were resumed in 1976. In 1980, the then Indian Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, held meetings with China’s erstwhile Foreign Minister, Huang Hua, in Salisbury, and with former Chinese Prime Minister Hua Guofeng, in Belgrade. The India-China dialogue was re-launched. Rounds of ‘senior level’ talks commenced from 1981, and gave way to parleys through a ‘Joint Working Group’ circa 1988.
India-China’s confabulations, notwithstanding palpable expectations from the Indian side for a breakthrough, have always concluded with little confirmed results to Indian expediency and have resulted with amorphous articulations hoping for better relations between the two countries and an expressed acknowledgement of the existence of dilemmas and dissatisfactions between both the countries. The accords of 1993, arrived at when Prime Minister Narasimha Rao went to Beijing, and of 1996, when Chinese President Jiang Zemin came to New Delhi, essentially reiterated what had been stated in earlier agreements, with slight changes in harmony with the time and contexts. The terms of the ‘Guiding Principles’ concluded by Prime Ministers Manmohan Singh and Wen Jiabao in 2005, clearly stated that the border issue would be resolved along easily identifiable, well defined, and mutually advantageous parameters. But, ladakh’s Depsang valley incursion by Chinese forces last year put to rest all hopes that China would respect Indian sensitivities.
That Chinese attempts to contain India would probably be less endured by India now than earlier has prompted two prominent Chinese intellectuals to articulate the necessity of a symbiotic arrangement between the two countries. long Xingchun, a visiting Chinese scholar at Johns Hopkins University, has spoken of the need for good relations with India for the safety and stability of China’s western regions while Chinese cooperation is required for India to create an expedient situation for its development. Director of South Asian Studies at Tongji University Wang Dehua acknowledged that as two emerging powers, cooperation between the two is perhaps the “only option”.
Mr Modi’s first official visit outside India to Bhutan to enhance credible goodwill and mutual support for each other, and the visible beginnings of compatibility between India’s Ministry of Environment and Forests and Ministry of Defence to effectively increase infrastructure and logistics support for the Indian Armed Forces near the country’s borders with China, without causing potential damage to the surrounding forests and the eco-system, are accurate measures initiated by India’s new Government.