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Paper no. 2766
12-July-2008
INDIA: PARTNERSHIP UNDER CHINA’S DICTATION
By Bhaskar Roy
India-China trade is trotting along merrily. From a bilateral trade volume of around US$200 – 250 million in the early 1990s, something of little consequence, it is now poised to reach $60 billion in 2010. The trade volume has grown higher than projected, with the two countries trying to break the label of “developing countries’ and arriving at the high table of G-8 nations as partners. China is knocking at the grand stand of the second biggest economic power in the world.
International trade is supposed to be driven by the market, but politics has always been involved to a much greater extent than is normally seen. Trading ships brought colonialization, imperialism and hegemonisim. The gunboats were always there to take over, to further accelerate trade, economic exploitation and territorial control.
Imperialism, today, is a worn out cliché. Hegemonism has been reinvented. It involves territory that a country can directly aggrandize and control, or nations that can be won over to act as per the directions of the executor or nations that can be over-awed by a combination of economic, political, diplomatic and military power and forced to fall in line. Such relations are generally one sided and dictated by an overall large and powerful country over smaller and weaker nations in the surrounding region.
In this context, and in the context of globalization and surging economies, a new term that is being bandied about for sometime now is “soft power”. Soft power is designated as economic power and cultural projections which supposedly win over people across continents without the use of force.
Two countries that are exampled as highly successful soft powers are Japan and Germany. Vibrant economics with state of the art civilian technology, their footprints are household names in most countries. Who has not heard of Sony and Toyota, or Mercedes-Benz and German lager!
But to say that both Japan and Germany developed into economic powers and seduced the world without massive military security, is like telling a child that nuclear technology produces candies. Germany was covered with the nuclear weapons power of NATO. Japan had total protection of US conventional and nuclear power. Both countries were quietly allowed to develop their own defence industries which are more powerful than many others, but not advertised.
China, with its huge economic growth, is trying to project itself as a soft and friendly power.
Hu Jintao, China’s President, Secretary General of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and Chairman of the country’s highest military body, the Central Military Commission (CMC), has created the soft power political ideology with his “harmonious development” and “harmonious relations” theories. This is actually one theory divided into two parts, for both internal and external use. Very briefly, the external impression is “do not disturb or oppose China in what it wants; or else, suffer the consequences”. It sounds somewhat like, “give unto Caeser what is Caeser’s” from Rome to Egypt!
Hu Jintao’s doctrine is not new. It is a further development of Mao Zedong’s new China’s single minded obsessive strategy to dominate Asia in its global ambition. The development took place in the series of the second generation leaders led by Deng Xiaoping and the third generation leaders headed by Jiang Zemin. Hu Jintao is the fourth generation leader of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), with Xi Jinping in the wings to take over the fifth generation leadership in 2011.
China suddenly seems to be in a hurry to consolidate its position in Asia and neighbouring regions. There could be several reasons for that.
One, of course, are the hawks who think the time in just right to stamp China’s faci on as much as the global territory as possible, especially from Africa to Oceania. More importantly, perhaps, is the concern about demographic changes, and supply of energy and raw materials. Both are dwindling for China as 2050 approaches. Hence, consolidation is most important. In the immediate context, economic growth rate and distribution of wealth inside the country has become very important. Growing inequalities are creating pockets of serious discontent. With it highly inefficient use of raw material and energy, there appears to be a desperate need to squash neighbouring competitors, secure the resource pockets outside the country as permanently as possible, and create a powerful Central Kingdom in Beijing with procurement of weak but resource rich supplicant nations to feed the “Son of Heaven”.
With its burgeoning population and shrinking domestic habitable and resourceful land area and water availability, the neighbouring nations must allow China to flourish if they do not want Chinese boat people to inundate them. Such massive Chinese migrations have happened before. South East Asia is a witness, where Chinese immigrants still committed to their motherland have taken over the economy and are poised to take over political leadership. Thai Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej, on the eve of his visit to China on June 30, told Chinese journalists he still practices his ancestral Chinese rituals and identified himself with his old country.
Serious differences exist between China and other south East Asia (SEA) countries like the Philippines, Indonesia, Brunei and Vietnam over the South China Sea sovereignty. This area is not only important for energy resources, but territorial expansion and control of vital sea lanes. China effectively used its military power to force these claimants to a joint development agreement on China’s formula.
China and Japan have recently come to an agreement over joint exploration of gas resources in one section of the East China Sea. China claims the entire East China Sea on the continental shelf arbitration. Japan, though claiming on the median line formula also accepted by the Laws of the Seas Convention, has compromised to an extent for the time being. This is unlikely to last, because bigger claims are involved including that over the Senkaku (Diaoyu) Islands.
Employing the strategy of using veiled threats and impositions, China has far long been extending its claims on the India-China border territories.
Both the Chinese and the Indians, leadership and people included, agree that the two countries today enjoy the best of relationship ever. Let us cut out the Chinese propaganda of two-thousand years of friendly relationship between the two countries as no such relationship in political terms existed in that period. Yet, compared to the bilateral relationship from 1959 to 1977, the two countries have agreed to conduct economic, political and diplomatic relationship in much more modern and civilized manner. India decided to ignore periodic Chinese intransigence and anti-India actions to keep up a façade of bilateral stability and warning. In small portions this policy worked, but largely it gave China to view India as a soft state.
Agreements were signed between India and China in 1993 and 1996 to keep the border tension free. But China has violated these confidence building measures more often than not. India chose to ignore these infractions in the interest of betterment of relations. A wise policy? Not really. Stable bilateral relations are conducted on equality.
Leaving aside the numerous Chinese omissions and commissions which are glaringly intended to amputate India’s external development, the more recent incidents include Chinese border forces destroying a border marker on the Sikkim-Tibet border. This needs to be taken much more seriously than the Indian government has done so far, at least publicly. The Sikkim-Tibet border was a settled issue so far as the Indian understanding was concerned. The Chinese had given no indication that they perceived there was a problem. This is another example of major significance questioning how far India, or for that matter any other country, can trust China.
China has destroyed the strategic cooperation agreement for development between India and China with impunity. India has been tricked time and again on energy security cooperation in Kazakhstan, Myanmar and Africa. China used Pakistan to persuade African countries to sabotage India’s UN efforts.
The message from Beijing is clear: India must play the role of a subservient country to the Central Kingdom in Beijing. The hope in South Block that China will support the US-India nuclear deal in the Nuclear Supplier, Group (NSG) if New Delhi did not raise issues, is, at best, naïve thinking. China will act as per its strategic interests. China did not say categorically at the Japan G-8 summit it will support India at the NSG. It could only mean that it will not be a sole opposition at the NSG.
China can act as it is doing now after developing soft power together with military power. The two powers feed on each other. India has two choices. Either it develops its hard power quickly, or be a partner of China under China’s dictations. There is nothing called only “soft power” because soft power cannot grow without indigenous security guarantees. One of the reasons for India’s “soft power” propaganda was to dissuade it to develop its strategic military strength.
(The author is an eminent China analyst with many years of experience of study on the developments in China. He can be reached at grouchohart@yahoo.com)
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