Our dear neighbour !

Mind your Line, pal: Indian and Chinese soldiers at the Sino-Indian border

CHINESE INTRUSIONS

China is no more our enemy-next-door. ?With it, we are in a game of Yin-Yang

By Kallol Bhattacherjee

So near, yet so far. That is how India-China ties appear to be. This month, a delegation headed by former minister of state for external affairs Rao Inderjit Singh was to land in Beijing to observe fast paced developments there and anti-recession measures. But as reports of People’s Liberation Army soldiers crossing into the Indian territory in Ladakh came in, Singh cancelled the visit. “The soldiers entered Indian territory, painted rocks in red and asked our shepherds to vacate the place,” said P. Stobdan, a critic of Chinese activities.

Despite growing concern, the strategic community in New Delhi is looking at the issue through a distilling film. During the Cabinet Committee on Security meeting on September 8, it was decided to send Chief of Army Staff Gen. Deepak Kapoor to Leh. This was two weeks after the reported incursions in the Chumar sector, east of Leh. According to Ajeet Kumar Sahu, district magistrate of Leh, Chinese helicopters violated Indian airspace last June. Yet, External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna said before the CCS meeting: “The China border has been the most peaceful among all the boundaries we have had.”

According to Major Gen. (retd.) Ashok K. Mehta, the entire issue of incursion has been blown out of proportion. “Both the sides have their own interpretation of the Line of Actual Control (LoAC); as a result, straying into each other’s territory is not a rarity,” Mehta said. Also, there might be lobbies inside China that are not happy with the economic diplomacy with India and wants to project military strength from time to time.

“The PLA enjoys far greater autonomy than the Indian Army, and some of its actions can be attributed to rogue actions by some ultranationalist commander,” he said. Even the Indian side has transgressed Chinese-defined LoAC a number of times in the past. “But these instances were handled with a simple hand waving,” he said.

The strategic community and South Block, however, are busy making sense of the mind of the PLA. Is China trying to send a message to India that it will not accept current international boundaries? Reading the dragon’s mind is not easy; it appears its actions are always Yin-Yang, a combo of the good and the bad!

This was evident even in early 1990s. Visiting China with President R. Venkataraman, former foreign secretary J.N. Dixit saw similarity of views between China and India, and even praised in his book, My South Block Years, China’s supply of nuclear fuel for Tarapore nuclear reactor. However, China showed its braided nature by testing a nuclear bomb even when Venkataraman was in Shanghai!

China might be playing mixed bag diplomacy with India, but it cannot afford to be a nasty player, as its ties with India have reached the bhai-bhai stage in bilateral trade and global diplomacy. China is now active in the Brazil-Russia-India-China conglomerate. Synergy in trade, too, is huge. Two-wheeler maker Bajaj Auto has begun production of its bikes in China for exports to Nigeria; vehicle maker Mahindra has already got two tractor companies operating there.

According to former governor of Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh Bhishma Narain Singh, China has shown its willingness to negotiate. Singh recalled being presented a crystal globe as a souvenir during his visit to China. “I was delighted to find that the Chinese had not tampered with the Indian map (on the globe),” he said. This was in 2004, before the border talks started between National Security Adviser, M.K. Narayanan, and China’s state councilor, Dai Bingguo.

“China is a cautious player when it comes to India,” Bhishma Narain Singh said. Thus, for China, if the border incursion was the Yin factor, trade is the Yang. But the South Block policy-makers view the scenario differently. Both India and China are in the course of epoch-making changes. So, they will have to sort out problems silently.
The border issue might be purely bilateral, but what bothers the South Block is China’s larger geopolitical plans. Already Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar and, lately, Sri Lanka have fallen into the dragon’s orbit. China has also agreed to assist Pakistan in building its first satellite. And its India-policy is made keeping in view its great rival, and India’s new friend, the US.

S.M. Krishna, by maintaining his calm, has proved that India, too, would play the Yin-Yang game. In an Editor’s Guild of India meeting in Delhi, he said: “We have great cooperation with China in trade. But we also have areas of serious concern on boundary issues.” By keeping a visible aggressive military profile in the borders with China, India is signalling the policy of ‘stick’, and by keeping the $51 billion worth bilateral trade in between, it is playing the ‘carrot’ policy. Even in trade, India is keeping up with its ‘illustrious’ neighbour. After the controversy over low quality Chinese products, India banned import of Chinese milk and toys, rattling some nerves in China.

“India needs to stage a complex choreography to keep the Chinese under check while getting the best out of them,” Stobdan said. Let us tell the Chinese to eat carrots with us, but let’s keep the stick ready.

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