India, China standoff: Acne or acme of skill ?

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To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill

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New Delhi
4 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.