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To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill
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New Delhi4 May 2013
The latest Chinese incursion into Jammu and Kashmir may in
itself not pose an existential threat to India but when read along with China’s
history of all-weather friendship with Pakistan, cartographic aggression, its
foray into Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir, issuing of stapled visas to Indian
nationals and damming of rivers in Tibet, it reveals a pattern that is not in
the least tentative. Or, that is how New Delhi must proceed in the interest of
a nimble and supple China policy.
So, to describe the latest Chinese incursion as nothing more
than an “acne” that can be cured with an “ointment” would not be accurate; such
a description does not square with the
facts obtaining on the ground and definitely not with the statements emanating
from the political, military and diplomatic quarters. The discourse in the
Indian media is not without criticism either. As a former diplomat MK
Bhadrakumar put it, it is improper on the part of a section of media to isolate
a particular incident (in this case the latest Chinese incursion in J&K)
and insist that is where history begins.
Questions have also been raised about the inability of the
political class to hold a rational discussion of the terms of a boundary
settlement with China. Why is it that India is the only neighbour of China (beside
Bhutan) to not have an agreed border? How can India expect to resolve its
boundary dispute with China if it is not willing to make concessions? Perhaps
it would be instructive to understand how China, which has 14 countries in its
neighbourhood, has resolved border disputes with all but two of them.
When Kazakhstan became an independent state almost a decade
ago, it inherited a border conflict with China that dates back several
centuries. In 1998, China and Kazakhstan reached a broad understanding on the
border dispute. A Kazakh diplomat, who I met a few years ago in New Delhi,
recalled the pitfalls of his country’s negotiations with China. Murat
Mukhtarovich Auezov, who was Kazakhstan's first ambassador to China from 1992
to 1995 (China and Kazakhstan established diplomatic relations on January 3,
1992), told me that some of the Central Asian republics lost out territorially
and politically to China on the negotiating table in spite of enjoying
generally good relations with China.
Auezov was particularly critical of the manner in which
China approached the boundary dispute with Kazakhstan. He said Kazakhstan ended
up with an agreement that served China’s interests; not Central Asia’s. The
Central Asian countries may have benefited from the oil transit money received
from China but they have had to pay a price for it by settling the issue of
water resources, including cross-border rivers, to the advantage of China. He
also felt that the expanding Chinese economic and trade ties have given rise to
political and demographic threats.
Some commentators have wondered whether the latest Chinese
incursion into Jammu and Kashmir could have been motivated in part by India’s
beefing up of its border infrastructure. According to Mr Bhadrakumar, it is
only the Indian government which has a complete picture of what happened on the
Line of Actual Control (LAC); it only knows how the Indian forces’ conduct has
been on our side of the LAC. B Raman, a former additional secretary in the
Cabinet Secretariat, counters it by saying that the Chinese presence in PoK and
Gilgit-Baltistan, for instance, is a violation of India’s sovereignty claims.
Prof Srikanth Kondapalli of Jawaharlal Nehru University, in turn, points out
that China has invested heavily in Gilgit-Baltistan, including investing 32
billion dollars in a hydro electricity projects and widening the Karakoram
highway so that it could also be used for landing aircraft.
Then, could it be that the Chinese might be trying to force
a unilateral solution on India by taking their ground positions in line with
their map? TCA Rangachari, a former diplomat, believes it requires careful
consideration. Jury is still out on these and other questions. For now, all
eyes are on External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid’s visit to Beijing next
week and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang’s visit to New Delhi later this month.
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