[world-vedic] China against India

[Guest guest]

Jiang Zemin ridicules India

New Delhi, January 30 (Brahma Chellaney)

(HINDUSTAN TIMES)

Chinese President Jiang Zemin has made some highly derogatory

references to India in a recent meeting with the head of state of one

of the world's major powers. Even by Chinese standards, the scorn Jiang

poured on India and the warning he delivered were extraordinary. For

India, Jiang's truculent comments are a reminder that without a

clearheaded, long-term China policy, it risks further trouble.

 

Over the years, India has bent backwards to court China, only to be

taken in by its own rhetoric. This was true of Nehru's Hindi-Chini bhai

bhai policy that led to the 1962 invasion, Vajpayee's pioneering but

botched 1979 trip during which the Chinese attacked Vietnam, and Rajiv

Gandhi's 1988-initiated rapprochement process that gave Beijing cover

for a decade of accelerated containment of India. India still doesn't

have a clear China policy. While Fernandes stated that China is "a

bigger potential threat" than Pakistan, Jaswant Singh gave Beijing a

clean chit by declaring from Chinese soil that it is "not a security

threat to India".

 

Jiang's hitherto unrevealed comments make clear that despite New

Delhi's efforts to mollify China, Beijing treats India as a country to

be threatened, belittled and kept in check. During the meeting with the

foreign dignitary, Jiang on his own brought up Tibet and the 1962 war

with India. He claimed that India "attacked" China but the aggression

was repulsed. According to the meeting's transcripts, Jiang said: "If

India were to attack China again, we'll crush it this time."

 

He went on to tell the head of state that he decided last year to test

out India's defence preparedness by sending Chinese military patrols

across the line of actual control (LAC). This happened both in Ladakh

while the Kargil war was raging and later along the Arunachal Pradesh

frontier.

 

Jiang said he summoned governors of the two provinces adjoining India

to Beijing and discussed India's military alertness and response

capability. "Each time we tested them by sending patrols across, the

Indian soldiers reacted by putting their hands up," Jiang said

mockingly. It is correct that Chinese military patrols sporadically

challenged the Indian Army in Ladakh while Pakistan was waging war in

Ladakh's Kargil-Dras sectors. Later, the Chinese built up tensions at

the other end of the Himalayan border with India through aggressive

military manoeuvres in the Tawang sector last autumn.

 

By stepping up the intensity and frequency of its military forays

across the disputed LAC in Ladakh during May-July 1999, Beijing

conveyed that the Indian Army could not have its back to the Chinese as

it defended Kargil and Highway 1A. However, Jiang's tone was so

disparaging that even the foreign dignitary and his aides did not

believe that Indian troops had meekly put their hands up. The fact is

that the Chinese soldiers retreated whenever challenged by the Indian

side, and in the Tawang area backed out only after a showdown. In the

Ladakh region -- parts of which China occupies -- the Chinese military

has maintained intensified border patrolling since last summer.

 

 

 

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