The Three Ts of India-China Relations

Brahma Chellaney

Asian Age, January 15, 2008

No Indian prime minister has ever returned from China without the visit being hailed by his spinmeisters as path-breaking. Yet despite all the touted “breakthroughs” over the decades, China has steadily become a bigger strategic challenge for India, opening new fronts by tenaciously pursuing congagement, or engagement with containment. Sardar Patel’s words still ring true: “Even though we regard ourselves as friends of China, the Chinese do not regard us as friends.” The wooden slogans China today mouths on its relations with India are as empty as the ones at home behind which its communist rulers shelter, such as President Hu Jintao’s catchphrase, “harmonious society.”

Just as Beijing is haunted by three Ts domestically — Tiananmen, Taiwan and Tibet — its relationship with New Delhi is defined by three Ts — territorial disputes, Tibet and trade, with the first two issues stuck and the third booming to China’s heavy advantage. Mirroring its exploitative commerce with Africa, Beijing primarily buys iron ore and other raw materials from India and sells industrial goods while reaping a ballooning trade surplus. Yet some in India innocently see this embarrassing and unsustainable pattern of trade as proof of progress in bilateral ties.

If growing trade signified political warmth, Japan and China, with at least eight times higher trade, would be the best of friends. Trade between any two states in today’s market-driven world is not constrained by political differences, unless political barriers have been erected. Flourishing economic ties indeed do not guarantee moderation and restraint in the absence of progress on bridging political differences, as shown by the increasing Chinese military incursions across the border into India and China’s muscular diplomacy toward Japan and Vietnam.

While India and China have built a stake in maintaining the peaceful diplomatic environment on which their continued economic modernization and security depend, they have made little progress in resolving their political differences and building strategic congruence. That is why the proclaimed “India-China strategic and cooperative partnership for peace and prosperity” remains devoid of content. The two sides can only showcase their fast-growing trade and high-level visits, such as President Hu’s November 2006 India tour and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s Beijing trip this week.

Yet a careful examination of what is being showcased reveals disconcerting trends.

Let us start with the summit-level meetings. The promises incorporated in the joint declaration signed with much fanfare at the end of each prime ministerial or presidential visit are quickly forgotten. Take the following pledge in the joint declaration that was signed when Hu visited New Delhi: “Along with the talks between the Special Representatives, the Joint Working Group (JWG) on the India-China boundary question shall expedite their work, including on the clarification and confirmation of the line of actual control (LAC) and the implementation of confidence-building measures. It was agreed to complete the process of exchanging maps indicating their respective perceptions of the entire alignment of the LAC on the basis of already agreed parameters as soon as possible.” Nearly 14 months have gone by without any success to revive the dormant JWG, let alone to begin exchanging maps of the eastern sector (Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh) and the western sector (Jammu and Kashmir).

The harsh reality is that Beijing is loath to clarify the frontline because such an action would relieve military pressure on India. So, despite 27 years of continuous border negotiations, India and China remain the only neighbours in the world not separated even by a mutually defined line of control. Indeed, it took two full decades of negotiations before Beijing exchanged maps with India of just one sector — the least-disputed middle segment (Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh). But having done that in 2001, it quickly broke its word to exchange maps of the other two sectors.

A first step to a settlement of any dispute is clarity on a line of control or at least appreciation of the “no go” areas so that provocative or unfriendly actions can be eschewed. Exchanging maps showing each other’s military positions, without prejudice to rival territorial claims, is a preliminary step to first define, then delineate and finally demarcate a frontline. Beijing’s disinclination to trade maps underlines its aversion to clinch an overall border settlement or even to remove the ambiguities plaguing the long, rugged LAC.

In fact, the real reason the two countries are locked in what is already the longest and most-barren negotiating process between any two countries in modern world history is that China — not content with the one-fifth of the original state of J&K it occupies — seeks to further redraw its frontiers with India, coveting above all Tawang, a strategic doorway to the Assam Valley. Seeking to territorially extend the gains from its annexation of Tibet, Beijing unabashedly follows the principle that what it occupies is Chinese territory beyond question and what it claims should be on the negotiating table for barter.

Is it thus any surprise that new strains have appeared in Sino-Indian ties even as the old disputes remain unresolved? The hoopla accompanying Singh’s visit can hardly obscure recent developments that call attention to the underlying tensions between Asia’s two continental-sized powers that are rising at the same time in history.

The developments include about 300 Chinese military incursions across the LAC in the past 24 months alone — or more than three a week; the Chinese military action two months ago in provocatively demolishing some unmanned Indian forward posts near three disputed bunkers at the Bhutan-Sikkim-Sikkim trijunction; and the Chinese foreign minister’s message to his Indian counterpart last May that Beijing no longer felt bound by a 2005 agreement on “guiding principles” that any border-related settlement should not disturb settled populations.

This hard line appears tied to two factors. First, rising economic and military power is encouraging Beijing to pursue a more muscular foreign policy. And second, China has acquired a capability to rapidly deploy forces against India by significantly expanding its infrastructure in Tibet, with roads built right up to the LAC and the new railway to Lhasa being extended southwards.

Now let us turn to the galloping trade, which officially jumped 10-fold from $2.5 billion in 2000-01 to $25 billion in 2006-07, catapulting China in six years from the ninth largest to the second largest trading partner of India. According to provisional figures released by China, the two-way trade actually surpassed $38 billion in calendar 2007.

All that seems very impressive until one looks at the trade pattern, which disturbingly shows India as a raw-material appendage to China’s rising industrial might. At the end of fiscal 2006-07, more than 50 per cent of Indian exports to China comprised just one item — iron ore. When other primary commodities were added, that figure totalled 85 per cent of the exports. In return, India has been importing more and more Chinese processed goods, to the extent that it has become import-dependent on China for steel tubes and pipes.

The fact is that Beijing is conserving its own non-renewable resources by encouraging its industry to meet production needs through imports. China, for example, has substantial reserves of iron ore, yet it has emerged the world’s largest iron importer, accounting for a third of all global imports. A quarter of China’s iron-ore imports come alone from India, to which it then sells finished tubes and pipes.

India’s estimated iron-ore reserves of 18 billion metric tons will last between 30 and 50 years, if the country were to boost its per capita iron-ore consumption from the present 30 kilograms to the developed world’s 300- to 400-kilogram level. China, on the other hand, has estimated iron-ore reserves of 472 billion metric tons, although the average iron content in its deposits is only 32.1 per cent. It was industrialist Ratan Tata who publicly contended that if China, with larger deposits, could treat iron ore as a strategic resource, India ought to do the same.

Add to the inequitable trade pattern the galloping imbalance, with China enjoying a trade surplus of $10.7 billion in calendar 2007, due in part to its cryptic barriers that have left even world-class Indian software and pharmaceutical companies out in the cold. China’s trade surpluses are with the United States, Europe and India. With the rest of the world, it actually has a trade deficit.

Even if China-India trade overtakes US-India trade — a likely scenario — political issues will continue to divide Beijing and New Delhi.

Had China pursued political progress with India even at half the speed at which it has pushed its exports, the relationship today would have looked less unpredictable. Instead, as if to underscore its mercantilist approach, it has sought to enlarge its one-sided advantages by pressing India to enter into a free-trade agreement with it. It is like asking New Delhi to reward it for its political intransigence and muscle-flexing.

China’s growing assertiveness comes at a time when a high-stakes geopolitical competition is sweeping Asia, centred on building new alliances, ensuring power equilibrium, and securing a larger share of energy and mineral resources. That Asia is big enough to accommodate the ambitions of both China and India is a bromide you will hear only from Indian leaders; for Beijing, Asia has to be China-oriented.

The challenge arising from Beijing’s determination to emerge as Asia’s unchallenged power cannot be addressed if India simplistically believes it has just two options: Pursue a feckless policy toward China or brace up for confrontation. That is a false choice that can only stifle the several options India has between those two extremes. While keeping cooperation as the public leitmotif of its relations with Beijing, New Delhi has to start reclaiming lost leverage in order to fashion a more result-oriented, realpolitik policy.

(c) Asian Age, 2008

The PM’s China
visit comes when Beijing has hardened its stance
on territorial disputes

Dragooned
by the dragon

By BRAHMA CHELLANEY

The Hindustan Times, January 7, 2008

At
a time when Beijing is pursuing a more muscular policy — from provocatively
seeking to assert its jurisdiction over islets claimed by Vietnam to whipping up spats
with Germany, Canada and the US over the Dalai Lama — Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh is embarking on a New
Year visit to China as part of an agreement reached during
President Hu Jintao’s November 2006
trip “to hold regular summit-level meetings”.
But
while Hu clubbed his India trip with a visit to “all-weather ally” Pakistan —
just as his Premier Wen Jiabao did in
2005 — Singh will pay his respect by
going only to China, instead
of travelling also to, say, Japan or
Vietnam.

            Singh’s
visit is to follow more than a year of assertive Chinese
moves that have run counter to efforts to build a stable Sino-Indian
relationship based on equilibrium and forward thinking. Two things
have happened. One, China has hardened its stance on
territorial disputes with India
— a reality the very small, largely symbolic joint
anti-terrorist army exercise in Yunnan cannot obscure.
And two, as the Dalai Lama pointed
out in a recent address in Rome, Beijing is taking an increasingly harsh position on Tibet, pretending there is no Tibetan issue to resolve.

            The
Tibet issue is at the core of the India-China
divide, and without Beijing beginning a
process of reconciliation and healing
in Tibet and coming to terms with history, there is little prospect
of Sino-Indian differences being
bridged. Beijing
itself highlights the centrality of the Tibet issue by laying claim to Indian territories on the basis of
alleged Tibetan ecclesial or tutelary links
to them, not any professed Han connection.  

            But with the Dalai Lama having publicly repudiated such claims, a discomfited Beijing has
sought to persuade his representatives in
the ongoing dialogue process that the
Tibetan government-in-exile support China’s
position that Arunachal Pradesh is part of traditional Tibet. The fact is that with China’s
own claim to Tibet
being historically dubious, its
claims to Indian territories are doubly suspect, underlining its attempts at incremental annexation.

            The
tough, uncompromising Chinese approach contrasts sharply with the forbearing positions of the Indian government and the Dalai
Lama. New Delhi,
for instance, has bent over backwards
to play down aggressive Chinese
military moves along the still ill-defined
line of control. The Dalai Lama, for
his part, is beginning to face muted criticism from restive Tibetans
for having secured nothing from Beijing two decades after changing the struggle for liberation from Chinese imperial conquest to a struggle for autonomy
within the framework of the People’s
Republic. As the Dalai Lama himself admitted in
Rome, “Our
right hand has always reached out to the Chinese
government. That hand has remained
empty…” 

            Examples
of China’s increasing hardline
stance on India range from its ambassador’s Beijing-supported
bellicose public statement on Arunachal on the eve of Hu’s visit, to its foreign minister’s May
2007 message to his Indian counterpart that China
no longer felt bound by the 2005 agreement that any border-related settlement
should not disturb settled populations. Add to that the October admission by
the Indo-Tibetan Border Police chief that there had been 141 Chinese military incursions
in the preceding
12 months alone — or about three incursions a week on average.

            Beijing’s
strategy is to interminably drag out its separate negotiating processes with India and the Dalai Lama’s envoys in order to wheedle out more and more concessions. In
line with that, China’s
negotiators have been in full
foot-dragging mode, seeking to keep the discussions merely at the level of
enunciating principles,
positions and frameworks — something
they have done splendidly in
negotiations with India
since 1981 and with the Dalai Lama’s
envoys since 2002. 

            As
several Chinese scholars have acknowledged,
Beijing
is not as keen as New Delhi
to resolve the territorial disputes. Having
got what it wanted either by military aggression or furtive encroachment, Beijing values
its claims on additional Indian territories as vital leverage to keep India under
pressure. Similarly, not content with the Dalai Lama’s abandonment of the
demand for independence, Beijing
continues to publicly vilify him and
portray his envoys’ visits for negotiations as personal trips. It has further tightened
its vise on Tibet
by ordering that all lama reincarnations
get its approval, renewing political repression, and encouraging the ‘Go West’ Han-migration
campaign.

            Gratuitously,
New Delhi has
downplayed instances of belligerent activity by the People’s Liberation Army, denying at times even the undeniable — like the PLA’s destruction
of a few unmanned Indian forward posts at the Sikkim-Bhutan-Tibet trijunction
in November. Army Chief General Deepak Kapoor has called PLA cross-border forays
into Bhutan
“a matter between” Bhutan
and China,
as if India
is not responsible for Bhutanese defence. 

            It
is not accidental that China’s hardline approach has followed its infrastructure
advances on the Tibetan plateau, including the opening of a new railway,
airfields and highways. The railway, by arming Beijing
with a rapid military-deployment capability, is transforming the
trans-Himalayan military equations.

            Beijing has also been emboldened by a couple
of major Indian missteps. During Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee’s June 2003 visit,
it wrung the concession it always wanted from India
— a clear and unambiguous recognition of Tibet
as part of China. Vajpayee not
only inexcusably linked troubled Tibet with a non-issue, Sikkim, but also his
kowtowing on Tibet stripped India of leverage on the larger territorial
disputes with China. Little
surprise, therefore, that Beijing now presents Arunachal as
an outstanding issue that demands
‘give and take’, cleverly putting
the onus on India
to achieve progress. It aims to dragoon New
Delhi into ceding at least Tawang, populated
not by Tibetans, but by Monpas, a distinct
tribe.

            This
line of attack has been further bolstered
by the 2005 ‘guiding principles’, one of which calls for “meaningful
and mutually acceptable adjustments” to respective positions. India was craven enough to
agree to this principle, although it
is negotiating with an aggressor
state that aims to keep it off balance and prevent a settlement by seeking to extend its territorial gains.

Having conceded the Tibet
card, what “meaningful and mutually
acceptable adjustments” can India
demand from China? Such
adjustments, as Beijing
insists, have to be primarily on India’s part.
The new Chinese assertiveness on
Arunachal since 2006 thus is not
unplanned but the cumulative result of Indian missteps.

India can expect no respite from
Chinese pressure, given Beijing’s growing propensity to flex its muscles, as
underscored by its anti-satellite weapon test last January, its recent
large-scale war game in the South and East China Seas, its public showcasing of
new military hardware like the Jin-class, nuclear-capable submarine, its
strategic moves around India, and its last-minute cancellation of a
long-planned Hong Kong visit by the US carrier, Kitty Hawk. If anything, China is likely to further up the ante against India.

New Delhi thus cannot stay caught in a
double-bind. To blur the line between diplomacy and appeasement, and to
emphasize show over substance, is only to play into Beijing’s gameplan. It is past time India injected
greater policy realism by shedding deluding platitudes and placing premium on
substance and leveraged diplomacy.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?id=ff9aae5c-8c75-4c83-9090-83ea113eea22&MatchID1=4617&TeamID1=3&TeamID2=4&MatchType1=1&SeriesID1=1163&PrimaryID=4617&Headline=Dragooned+by+the+dragon

Military is the problem

Steaming Pakistan needs a democratic safety valve

Brahma Chellaney

Times of India, January 3, 2008

After having fretted over a rising pro-democracy tide, Pakistan’s ruling military can expect to be the main gainer from Benazir Bhutto’s killing at the very public park where the 1951 assassination of the country’s first prime minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, paved the way for the military to step into politics. Just as Pakistan become increasingly Islamized following the 1979 execution of Bhutto’s father by the general who deposed him, the daughter’s assassination will help reinforce Islamist radicalization under continued military rule. In fact, she met her violent end three kilometres from where her father was hanged.

With Pakistan’s politics teetering on a knife’s edge, the main loser will be Musharraf, who did too little to protect Bhutto or to rein in the jihadists, some with continuing cosy ties to his establishment. Given that authorities identified the two December 2003 assassination attempts on him as an inside job by charging four junior army officers and six air force men, suspicion is bound to linger that regime-linked elements bumped off Bhutto, the most likely agent of political change in a country tired of its ruler. Just days before her murder, Bhutto said in a Washington Post interview that she was concerned that “some of the people around him [Musharraf] have sympathy for the militants” and “shocked to see how embedded” the state support for extremists is.

Musharraf’s credibility was in tatters even before the murder, but now his days in power appear more numbered than ever. In its 60-year history, Pakistan has already had four military takeovers and four Constitutions. With the assassination dimming the possibility of a democratic transition in a country where governments have always been booted out but never been voted out, a new military face could easily take over power on the pretext of saving an imploding state. Such a takeover will become certain if violent protests persist, the two main political parties shun Musharraf, and the US (a key party in Pakistani politics) moves away from the dictator it has propped up for long.

The likely perpetuation of military rule is not good news for international or regional security or for Pakistan’s own future, given how the country has sunk deeper in fundamentalism, extremism and militarism since the last coup. While the military will continue to defend its holding the reins of power as a necessary evil in the service of a greater good, its political role will only keep Pakistan on the boil. For more than eight years, Musharraf has justified his dictatorship as vital to bring stability to Pakistan even as his rule has taken it to the brink. Today, a nuclear-armed, terror-exporting Pakistan has become a problem not just regionally but globally.

Make no mistake: It is the military that created and nurtured the forces of jihad and helped Islamist groups gain political space at the expense of mainstream parties. Musharraf’s record is glaring: He welcomed with open arms the three extremists India freed to end the hijacking of Flight IC-814, helping one to form the terrorist Jaish-e-Mohammed and harbouring another until he kidnapped and murdered reporter Daniel Pearl. Musharraf has filled Pakistani jails more with democracy activists than with jihadists.

Without the military’s iron grip on power being broken and the rogue ISI being tamed, Pakistan will continue to menace regional and international security. What steaming Pakistan needs is a safety valve in the form of democratic empowerment of its restive masses. But what military rule has created is a pressure-cooker society congenial to the growth of extremism.

Getting the military to return to the barracks, admittedly, has become more difficult. The spoils of power have fattened the military, which now controls fields as varied as agriculture and education and runs businesses ranging from banks to bakeries. Add to that the new draconian powers that have been retained despite Musharraf’s lifting of the six-week emergency rule — declared to engineer his “re-election” as president. Yet another factor is US aid, which is so munificent that the Pakistan military — the world’s fifth largest — now relies on Washington for a quarter of its entire budget.

US policy, sadly, remains wedded to the Pakistan military. That needs to end, along with Bush’s misbegotten effort to help put a civilian mask on Musharraf, before a disastrous Pakistan policy starts to match the Iraq folly. Bhutto’s murder is a horrific reminder that unravelling Pakistan’s jihad culture won’t be easy but is essential. The battle against international terrorism cannot be won without demilitarizing Pakistan’s blood-soaked polity and de-radicalizing its society, or else Pakistan — Jinnah’s “moth-eaten travesty” — could itself unravel.

Musharraf once boasted that he is like a cat with nine lives. But given that he has already survived nine assassination attempts, he may be living on borrowed time. Before yet another general makes a power-grab, the international community under US leadership needs to step in to get the present ruler to cede power to an all-party government that inspires public trust and can hold free and fair elections. Musharraf is terminally unpopular and highly vulnerable at this juncture, and to let go of this opportunity would be to allow Pakistan to slip into a vortex of endless violence and terrorism. Having exiled others in the past, Musharraf should now be made to go into exile himself.

• The writer is a professor at the Centre for Policy Research.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Opinion/LEADER_ARTICLE_Military_Is_The_Problem/articleshow/2670132.cms

China puts muscle to policy

By BRAHMA CHELLANEY

Japan Times 

NEW DELHI — Rising economic and military power is emboldening Beijing to pursue a more muscular foreign policy. Having earlier preached the gospel of its "peaceful rise," China is now beginning to take the gloves off, confident of the muscle it has acquired.

From provocatively seeking to assert its jurisdiction over islets claimed by Vietnam in the South China Sea to whipping up diplomatic spats with Germany, Canada and the United States over their hospitality to the Dalai Lama, Beijing has shown an increasing propensity to flex its muscles.

Other such recent instances include China’s demolition of a few unmanned Indian forward posts at the Tibet-Bhutan-Sikkim tri-junction, its large-scale war game in the South and East China Seas, its public showcasing of new military hardware like the Jin-class, nuclear-capable submarine, its strategic moves around India, and its last-minute cancellation of a long-planned Hong Kong visit by the U.S. carrier, Kitty Hawk. Beijing also refused to let two American minesweepers enter Hong Kong harbor for shelter during a Pacific storm.

Ever since it surprised the world by successfully carrying out an anti-satellite weapon test last January, China’s communist leadership has been less coy about projecting national power. The apparent aim is to fashion a Beijing-oriented Asia. It seems unconcerned that its assertive stance has triggered anti-China demonstrations in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City and spurred unease in other neighboring states.

It is against this background that the heads of government of Asia’s other two major powers — Japan and India — are paying official visits to China. While Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda’s tour begins Thursday, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is scheduled to make a New Year visit two weeks later, as part of an agreement reached during Chinese President Hu Jintao’s November 2006 New Delhi visit "to hold regular summit-level meetings."

Little progress, however, can be expected during these visits toward resolving the territorial or maritime disputes that divide Japan and China, and India and China. Yet, if the China-India-Japan strategic triangle is to become stable, a settlement of those disputes is necessary. A first step to a settlement of any dispute is clarity on a line of control or appreciation of the "no go" areas so that provocative or unfriendly actions can be eschewed.

The best way for China and Japan to explore for hydrocarbons in the East China Sea is through joint development of fields, given the intricate, difficult-to-resolve claims and legal ambiguities. But China’s gunboat diplomacy across the median line in the East China Sea and unilateral drilling moves have impeded such progress.

The world’s two most populous nations, China and India, have been scowling at each other across a 4,057-km disputed Indo-Tibetan frontier. Protracted negotiations over the past 26 years have failed to remove even the ambiguities plaguing this long line of control. Beijing, seeking to keep India under strategic pressure, has been loath to clearly define the front line.

Singh’s visit is to follow more than a year of assertive Chinese moves that have run counter to declared efforts to build a stable Sino-Indian relationship based on equilibrium and forward thinking.

Two things have happened. One, China has hardened its stance on territorial disputes with India. And two, as the Dalai Lama pointed out in a recent address in Rome, Beijing is taking an increasing harsh position on Tibet, pretending there is no Tibetan issue to resolve.

The Tibet issue is at the core of the India-China divide, and without Beijing beginning a process of reconciliation and healing in Tibet and coming to terms with history, there is little prospect of Sino-Indian differences being bridged.

Beijing itself highlights the centrality of the Tibet issue by laying claim to Indian territories on the basis of alleged Tibetan ecclesial or tutelary links to them, not any professed Han connection.

With the Dalai Lama having publicly repudiated such claims, a discomfitted Beijing has sought to persuade the Tibetan government-in-exile to support China’s position that India’s northeastern Arunachal Pradesh state is part of traditional Tibet. The fact is that with China’s own claim to Tibet being historically dubious, its claims to Indian territories are doubly suspect, underlining its attempts at incremental annexation.

The uncompromising Chinese approach contrasts sharply with the forbearing positions of the Indian government and the Dalai Lama. New Delhi, for instance, has bent over backward to play down recent aggressive Chinese military moves along the ill-defined line of control.

The Dalai Lama, for his part, is beginning to face muted criticism from restive Tibetans for having secured nothing from Beijing two decades after changing the struggle for liberation from Chinese imperial conquest to a struggle for autonomy within the framework of the People’s Republic. As the Dalai Lama himself admitted in Rome, "Our right hand has always reached out to the Chinese government. That hand has remained empty."

Examples of China’s increasing hardline stance on India range from the Chinese ambassador’s Beijing-supported bellicose public statement on Arunachal Pradesh on the eve of Hu’s visit, to the Chinese foreign minister’s May 2007 message to his Indian counterpart that China no longer felt bound by a 2005 agreement that any border-related settlement should not disturb settled populations. Add to that the October admission by the chief of India’s Indo-Tibetan Border Police that there had been 141 Chinese military incursions in the preceding 12-month period alone.

Beijing’s strategy is to interminably drag out its separate negotiating processes with India and the Dalai Lama’s envoys in order to wheedle out more and more concessions.

In line with that, China’s negotiators have been in full foot-dragging mode, seeking to keep the discussions merely at the level of enunciating principles, positions and frameworks — something they have done splendidly in negotiations with India since 1981 and with the Dalai Lama’s envoys since 2002.

As several Chinese scholars have acknowledged, Beijing is not as keen as New Delhi to resolve the territorial disputes. Having got what it wanted either by military aggression or furtive encroachment, Beijing values its claims on additional Indian territories as vital leverage.

Similarly, not content with the Dalai Lama’s abandonment of the demand for independence, Beijing continues to publicly vilify him and portray his envoys’ visits for negotiations as personal trips. It has further tightened its vise on Tibet by ordering that all lama reincarnations must get its approval, renewing political repression, and encouraging the "Go West" Han-migration campaign.

It is not accidental that China’s hardline approach has followed its infrastructure advances on the Tibetan plateau, including the opening of a new railway, airfields and highways. The railway, by arming Beijing with a rapid military-deployment capability against India, is transforming the trans-Himalayan military equations.

How the China-Japan, China-India and Japan-India equations evolve in the coming years will have a critical bearing on Asian security. But through its growing assertiveness, China is already showing that its rise is dividing, not uniting, Asia.

Brahma Chellaney, a professor of strategic studies at the privately funded Center for Policy Research in New Delhi, is a regular contributor to The Japan Times.

The Japan Times: Wednesday, Dec. 26, 2007

(C) All rights reserved

Delhi’s Tibetan glitch
India’s subdued stance on Beijing’s unjustified territorial claims has basically harmed Tibet. And to add insult to injury, then Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee virtually gave up on Tibet pretending that China was willing to accept Sikkim as part of India.

Vol 6 Issue 5
September – October 2007

Brahma Chellaney

he Sino-Indian spat over Arunachal Pradesh triggered by Beijing ‘s new hardline stance on territorial disputes has brought home the truth that at the core of the India-China divide remains Tibet and that unless that issue is resolved, the chasm between the two demographic titans will not be bridged. After all, Beijing’s claim to Arunachal Pradesh or more specifically to a slice of it, Tawang, flows from Tibet ‘s putative historical or ecclesiastical ties with Arunachal.
Tibet thus lies at the heart of the disputes. To focus on Arunachal or even Tawang is not only to miss the wood for the trees, but also to play in to the hands of China, which has sought to practise incremental territorial annexation. Having gobbled up Tibet, the historical buffer between the Indian and Chinese civilisations, Beijing now lays claim to Indian territories on the basis of not any purported Han connection to them but supposed Tibetan Buddhist ecclesiastical influence. A good analogy to China’s expansionist territorial demands was Saddam Hussein’s claim, following his 1990 invasion of Kuwait, to areas in Saudi Arabia on the basis of alleged Kuwaiti links to them.
Another reminder that Tibet remains the central issue was the September 2006 shooting by Chinese border guards of unarmed Tibetans fleeing to India via Nepal through the 5,800-metre-high Nangpa-la Pass. There have been instances in the past of Tibetans being shot at by the paramilitary People’s Armed Police or the People’s Liberation Army at border crossings, but this was the first such incident captured on film and shown across the world on television. The 41 survivors of that event who escaped gunfire and capture by Chinese troops on ice-covered Himalayan terrain recounted in Dharamsala how the guards opened fire without warning on some 77 Tibetans, a majority of them teenage boys and girls seeking to pursue Tibetan Buddhist studies in schools run by the Dalai Lama.
Beijing, having wrung the concessions it wanted out of India on Tibet, now is calculatedly signalling that Arunachal is its next priority. By publicly presenting Arunachal as an outstanding issue that demands "give and take," it is cleverly putting the onus on India for achieving progress in the border negotiations. Lest the message be missed, New Delhi is being openly exhorted to make concessions on Arunachal, especially on strategic Tawang – a critical corridor between Lhasa and the Assam Valley of immense military import.
The choice before India now is stark: either to retreat to a defensive, unviable negotiating position where it has to fob off Chinese territorial demands centred on Arunachal or to take the Chinese bull by the horns and question the very legitimacy of Beijing’s right to make territorial jurisdiction claims ecclesiastically on behalf of Tibetan Buddhism when China has still to make peace with the Tibetans.
Either way it does not augur well for the border talks, already the longest between any two nations in modern world history. After a quarter-century of continuing negotiations, the border diplomacy has yielded no concrete progress on an overall settlement nor removed even the ambiguities plaguing the 4,057-kilometre frontline. Beijing has been so loath to clearly define the frontline with India that it broke its 2001 promise to exchange maps of the eastern and western sectors by the end of 2002.
Gently shining the diplomatic spotlight on the Tibet question will help India turn the tables on Beijing, whose aggressive territorial demands have drawn strength from New Delhi’s self-injurious and gratuitous acceptance of Tibet as part of China.
At a time when China is threatening to divert the waters of river Brahmaputra, the subtle and measured revival of Tibet as an unresolved issue will arm India with leverage and international say on any Chinese effort to dam the Brahmaputra and reroute its waters. With water likely to emerge as a major security-related issue in southern Asia in the years ahead, India can hardly ignore the fact that the Indus, Sutlej and Brahmaputra originate in occupied Tibet.
Tibet is the means by which India could coop up the bull in its own China shop. Beijing ‘s new hardline focus on Arunachal/Tawang is apparent not only from its refusal to grant visa to any official from Arunachal Pradesh, but also from its aggressive patrolling of the still-fuzzy Himalayan frontier. Through its forcefulness on Arunachal, China is signalling that the ongoing negotiations with India cannot centre merely on border demarcation, even if both sides still call them "border talks".

Beijing, having wrung the concessions it wanted out of India on Tibet, now is calculatedly signalling that Arunachal is its next priority. By publicly presenting Arunachal as an outstanding issue that demands "give and take," it is cleverly putting the onus on India for achieving progress in the border negotiations

Imperceptive or tactless actions can hardly advance any country’s interests. But China, being a closed system, does not seem to understand that. That is the reason why communist China has a tradition of acting in ways unfavourable to its own long-term interests. One recent example of that is the way it helped rekindle Japanese nationalism by scripting anti-Japan mob protests in April 2005. Tokyo is now more determined than ever not to allow Beijing to call the shots in East Asia.
What is new is not China ‘s claim to Tawang or to the whole of Arunachal Pradesh but its brassy assertiveness in laying out in public its territorial demands. What makes such forcefulness doubly astonishing is that its net effect will only be to reinforce India ‘s resolve not to cede further ground to China. Indian officials take an oath of office pledging to "uphold the sovereignty and integrity of India," and it is unthinkable any Indian government would gift Tawang to China. As Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee has already put it, "Every inch of Arunachal is part of India."
That Tawang is a Monba, not Tibetan, area is a conclusion that British surveyors Bailey and Moreshead painstakingly reached, leading Henry McMahon to draw his famous redline on the Survey of India map-sheets to Tawang’s north. Earlier at Shimla in October 1913, the British Indian government and Tibet, represented by McMahon and Lonchen Shatra respectively, reached agreement on defining the frontier at that meeting, to which the Chinese delegate at the Shimla Conference was not invited because all parties at that time, including China, recognised Tibet ‘s sovereign authority to negotiate its boundary with India. Even Ivan Chen’s map presented at the Shimla Conference clearly showed Tawang as part of India.
An ecclesiastical relationship cannot by itself signify political control of one territory over another. However, in the two regions – Amdo (the birthplace of the present Dalai Lama) and Kham – where Tibet exercised undisputed ecclesiastical jurisdiction and political control, the occupying power has forcibly incorporated those areas in the Han provinces of Qinghai, Sichuan, Gansu and Yunnan. Before claiming Tawang to be part of Tibet, China should be told plainly to first restore Amdo and Kham to Tibet.
Yet, a disturbing pattern of Chinese statements is emerging without cause. A diplomat-cum-senior researcher at a Chinese foreign ministry-run think-tank suggested that India kick out the Dalai Lama if it wished to build ‘real and sustainable’ relations with Beijing. In an interview with an Indian newspaper, Zheng Ruixiang said: "The Tibet problem is a major obstacle in the normalisation of relations between India and China. India made a mistake in the 1950s by welcoming the Dalai Lama when he fled Tibet. It is now time for correcting the past mistake and building a real and sustainable relationship with China."
The pattern suggests that under President Hu Jintao, who made his name in the Chinese Communist Party by ruthlessly quelling the 1989 anti-China protests in Lhasa as the martial-law administrator, Beijing may be striving to adopt a more forthright stance vis-à-vis India, including on the border disputes and the presence of the Dalai Lama and his government – in – exile in Dharamsala. Having consolidated his hold on power in the past year to emerge as China’s unchallenged ruler, Hu has begun suppressing dissent at home, strengthening the military and shaping a more nationalistic foreign policy. Hu may believe his regime can exert more strategic pressure on India, now that the railway to Tibet has been built and Pakistan ‘s Chinese-funded Gwadar port-cum-naval base is likely to be opened during his stop in Islamabad next week.

Tibet is the means by which India could coop up the bull in its own China shop. Beijing ‘s new hardline focus on Arunachal/Tawang is apparent not only from its refusal to grant visa to any official from Arunachal Pradesh, but also from its aggressive patrolling of the still-fuzzy Himalayan frontier

Given autocratic China’s penchant to act counterproductively, India should welcome the Chinese resurrection of the past and highlighting of bilateral disputes in public. What all this brings out is that Beijing is unwilling to settle the border disputes on the basis of the status quo. Not satisfied with the Indian territories it has occupied, either by conquest or by furtive encroachment, China wishes to further redraw the frontiers with India, even as it keeps up the charade of border negotiations.
The new Chinese brashness helps create the necessary leeway for India to re-evaluate its policy and approach and add more subtlety and litheness to its stance unilaterally accommodating China on Tibet and other issues.
India needs to first grasp the damage to its China policy caused by Atal Bihari Vajpayee as prime minister. Both on Tibet and the border talks, he acquiesced to Chinese demands. He signed on to a document formally recognising Tibet to be "part of the People’s Republic of China" and, by agreeing to a new framework of border talks focused on an elusive "package" settlement, he rewarded Beijing for its breach of promise to fully define the frontline through an exchange of maps.
China may have ceased its cartographic aggression on Sikkim through its maps, but the important point, often overlooked, is that it has yet to expressly acknowledge that Sikkim is part of India. While it now makes India accept in every bilateral communiqué the Vajpayee formulation that Tibet is "part of the People’s Republic of China," Beijing till date has declined to affirm in a joint statement with New Delhi or even unilaterally that Sikkim is part of the Republic of India.
Sikkim was never an issue in Sino-Indian relations until Vajpayee made it one. He then ingeniously flaunted the Chinese "concession" on Sikkim as a cover to justify his kowtow on Tibet.
Tibet is India ‘s trump card, yet Vajpayee capriciously surrendered it to gain a dubious concession on Sikkim, over which China has never claimed sovereignty. All that China was doing was to depict Sikkim as an in dependent kingdom in its official maps. But such action made little difference to India. The world had accepted Sikkim’s 1975 merger with India, and it made little sense for New Delhi to surrender its Tibet card just to persuade Beijing to stop ploughing a lonely furrow – that too over a territory over which China had staked no claim. If an Indian concession on Tibet can ever be justified, it can only be in the context of making Beijing give up its claims on Indian territories, formalise the present borders and reach a deal with the Dalai Lama to bring him home from exile.

Tibet is India ‘s trump card, yet Vajpayee capriciously surrendered it to gain a dubious concession on Sikkim, over which China has never claimed sovereignty. All that China was doing was to depict Sikkim as an in dependent kingdom in its official maps

For India, the Dalai Lama is a powerful ally. When China annexed Tibet, India surrendered not only its extra-territorial rights over that buffer, but it also signed a pact in 1954 – the in famous ‘Panchsheel Agreement’ – accepting Chinese sovereignty over Tibet without seeking any quid pro quo, not even the Chinese recognition of the then existing Indo-Tibetan border. That monumental folly stripped India of leverage and encouraged the Chinese to lay claims to Indian territories on the basis of Tibet ‘s alleged historical links with those areas.
The Panchsheel accord recorded India’s agreement both to fully withdraw within six months its ‘military escorts now stationed at Yatung and Gyantse’ in the ‘Tibet Region of China’ as well as ‘to hand over to the Government of China at a reasonable price the postal, telegraph and public telephone services together with their equipment operated by the Government of India in Tibet Region of China.’
If India still has any card against Beijing, it is the Dalai Lama. As long as he remains based in Dharamsala, it is a great strategic asset for India. The Tibetans in Tibet will neither side with China against India nor accept Chinese rule over their homeland. If after the death of the present 71-year-old Dalai Lama, the institution of the Dalai Lama were to get captured by Beijing (like the way it has anointed its own Panchen Lama), India will be poorer by several army divisions against China.
It is not late for India to repair the damage done through blunders by Nehru and the closet-Nehruvian Vajpayee. The only way India can build counter-leverage against Beijing is to quietly reopen the issue of China ‘s annexation of Tibet and its subsequent failure to grant autonomy to the Tibetans, despite an express pledge contained in the 17-point agreement it imposed on Tibet in 1951.
This can be done by India in a way that is neither provocative nor confrontational. Building a mutually beneficial relationship with China does not demand appeasement on India ‘s part. And the alternative to appeasement is not provocation. Between appeasement and aggravation lie a hundred different options.
India can start diplomatically making the point that China ‘s own security and well-being will be enhanced if it reaches out to Tibetans and grants genuine autonomy to Tibet through a deal that brings back the Dalai Lama from his exile in Dharamsala. If the Chinese ambassador to India can publicly demand "mutual compromises" on Arunachal – a statement portrayed by the Indian press as an attempt by him to "play down" his unabashed claim on Arunachal – is it too much to expect the Indian ambassador in Beijing to genially appeal to China’s own self-interest and suggest it pursue "mutual compromises" with the Tibetans on Tibet?

The writer is Professor of strategic studies,
Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi