Beware the dragon's designs

[Guest guest]

http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_275297,00300006.htmHINDUSTAN TIMES, JUNE

8, 2003BEWARE THE DRAGON'S DESIGNSBrahma ChellaneyJune 7 A weakness of almost

every Indian prime minister has been to portray any major foreign visit as path

setting. No Indian leader usually wishes to return home to domestic problems

without having signed a 'momentous' agreement or having achieved some other

'success' overseas. With a planeload of officials and media representatives in

tow, it is easy for the PM to embellish the outcome of his tour.Some major

powers seek to consciously play to this Indian weak spot. They know that when

an Indian PM comes calling, it is time to win concessions in the garb of

opening a new chapter in bilateral ties. No power has done this better than

China.The previous two Indian PMs who went to China after India restored full

diplomatic ties with that country returned home claiming to have signed a

'historic' agreement. But if there was anything historic about the agreements

signed by Rajiv Gandhi in 1988 and P.V. Narasimha Rao in 1993, it was the

extent of Indian diplomatic naïveté.Senior-level border negotiations had been

going on since 1981, but to contrive a breakthrough during Rajiv Gandhi's

visit, the mechanism of talks was reclassified as a Joint Working Group,

although there was nothing new or joint about it. The officially instilled

elation in India about the 'success' of Rajiv Gandhi's trip came handy to

Beijing to begin covertly transferring the first missile systems to Pakistan.

The Chinese construction of the plutonium-producing Khushab reactor in Pakistan

also began in the aftermath of Rajiv Gandhi's 'success'.More success professedly

came India's way when Narasimha Rao signed an agreement with Beijing to maintain

"peace and tranquillity" along the Line of Actual Control, a line that the

Chinese had refused to define, let alone delineate, as a way to maintain

military pressure on India and pin down large numbers of Indian troops along

the Himalayas. A follow-up accord three years later farcically prohibited

certain military activities at specific distances from a line that remains

largely undefined and illusory.The 1988 and 1993 accords supremely suited

Beijing's strategy of seeking to change Indian perceptions about China without

conceding any ground to New Delhi and yet continuing to quietly contain India.

The result was that with the Indians lulled by the 'peace' overtures, the

Chinese opened a new flank against India by setting up eavesdropping and naval

facilities along the Burmese coastline. Today the Chinese are building a naval

base at Gwadar, Pakistan, and working to swamp Indian interests in the

Maldives. The Chinese navy is positioning itself along sea-lanes vital to

Indian security and economy.For the old apparatchiks who constitute the new

leadership in Beijing, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's impending visit to

China is an opportunity to further Chinese interests. They believe that Vajpayee

wants to show success at least on the China front because of the little headway

he has made with his initiatives with Pakistan since Lahore and the slow

progress on building an Indo-U.S. strategic partnership, which was to be the

centrepiece of his foreign policy. So the Chinese have intensified their

now-familiar 'peace' spiel. That this lingo represents only clichéd ad lines to

sell something less innocuous is apparent from what they have conveyed to Indian

officials for ensuring a major 'breakthrough' during Vajpayee's visit - India

abandoning some of the cardinal principles on which its bipartisan policy

towards China is built. Having watched Vajpayee's policy pendulum swing from

one end to the other on Pakistan, Beijing believes it could use his yearning

for a successful visit to alter the fundamentals of India's China policy. It is

dead wrong in its calculations.If anything, the Chinese are providing valuable

training to Indians on how to talk peace but aggressively pursue national

interests. Clearly, the Chinese want peace with containment, a win-win posture

that permits them to maintain direct strategic pressure and mount stepped-up

surrogate threats.A question that has not been answered, however, is why

Vajpayee is going to China now. His decision to visit at a time when foreigners

are shunning China because of the SARS epidemic may be read by his hosts as

confirmation that he is desperate to score some foreign-policy success. More

broadly, the visit is part of a pattern of diplomatic zealousness that has seen

India making all the first moves and first visits since Mao's death.As if India

had to pay obeisance to the self-perceived Middle Kingdom, the first visits at

the president, prime minister and foreign minister level were by Indians. In

fact, Vajpayee has the dubious record of ignoring warnings of Chinese designs

and making the first foreign minister-level visit in 1979, and then cutting

short his tour after China attacked Vietnam for the same admitted reason it

invaded India in 1962 - "to teach a lesson".Vajpayee may be seeking to live

down that record. But while China took almost a decade to reciprocate Narasimha

Rao's visit, Vajpayee is going to China close on the heels of then-Premier Zhu

Rongji's 2002 India visit. In time-related reciprocal order, not Vajpayee but

new President Hu Jintao should be paying a visit.A consequence of the

zealousness is that instead of an Indian prime ministerial visit being a

response to distinct signals of a positive shift in Chinese policy towards

India, the bargaining has focused on what could be showcased during Vajpayee's

tour.So far China's Leninist rulers have shown little sign of revising their

basic approach towards India.Despite 22 years of continuous border

negotiations-the longest between any two states in modern history - India is

the only country with which China has not settled its land frontiers or even

fully defined a line of control. After being shamed into exchanging maps with

India showing each other's military positions in the largely undisputed middle

sector, the Chinese have reneged on their promise to swap similar maps of the

western sector, deadlocking the negotiations again. China has now deliberately

injected confusion by suggesting that instead of defining the LAC, the two sides

agree during Vajpayee's visit to seek an overall border settlement through a

package deal. This is clearly a clever ploy: If the Chinese are not willing to

even define the LAC, why would they be willing to resolve the border problem

through a package settlement?Contrary to repeated Chinese pledges to honour

international norms, the flow of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) technology

to Pakistan continues, even if at a lower level. Some Chinese missile items

have been routed through North Korea to Pakistan.There is increased Chinese

military activity in Tibet and Myanmar directed at India. China is also

expanding its strategic interests in Nepal and funding anti-India activity

there. Due to mounting Chinese pressure, Nepal ignored UN and Western protests

and for the first time ever deported 18 new refugees from Tibet on May 31,

setting a precedent that could cut off the main route for Tibetans trying to

reach India.The continuing Chinese cartographic hostility towards India is

reflected in official maps that show Sikkim as independent, Arunachal Pradesh

as part of China, and Jammu and Kashmir as disputed (but not the J&K parts

occupied by China and Pakistan). Now the Chinese are saying they might be

willing to accept the reality on Sikkim but only if the Indians grant them a

major concession - the opening up of the Sikkim-Tibet land trade route, which

China had used in 1962 to supply its troops invading India. Why should India

bargain over China's acceptance of a reality recognised by all other nations?In

the nearly 54 years since the communists seized power in Beijing, no nation has

undermined India's interests more than China. The Chinese Communist Party and

its institutions, particularly the PLA, remain implacably antagonistic towards

India. Without the collapse of the anachronistic Chinese political system, it

is unlikely that China would become a benign neighbour of India. That collapse

in a country buffeted by rapid changes could happen sooner than many

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