Global IssuesChina Haunts Indian PM's Tour
When Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh returns home from his current tour of Japan, Malaysia and Vietnam he will likely reflect on how closely the spectre of a an assertive China had dogged his travels.
On the first leg of the tour that began with a three-day (Oct. 24 -26) state visit to Japan Singh found himself counseling his host Naoto Kan that patience and understanding were the way forward in dealing with China.
'Prime Minister Kan was keen to understand how India engages China. Our Prime Minister said it requires developing trust, close engagement and a lot of patience,' India's foreign secretary Nirupama Rao, who accompanied Singh, told reporters in Tokyo.
Both India and Japan have, in recent months, felt the heat of a China suddenly aggressive about old territorial claims.
''There is a commonality of interests,'' commented Sujit Dutta, one of India's foremost China experts and currently attached to the Nelson Mandela Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution at New Delhi's Jamia Millia Islamia university.
Dutta, however, pointed out to IPS that there were also differences. ''India is less engaged with China economically than with Japan. On the other hand India's territorial disputes with China are far more serious.''
A long-standing dispute between China and Japan over ownership of the Senkaku (called Diaoyu by China) chain of islands erupted into a serious diplomatic row between the East Asian neighbours after a Chinese trawler rammed into two Japanese coastguard vessels patrolling the islands on Sep. 8.
China suspended high-level diplomatic ties with Japan in protest against the arrest and detention of the skipper of the Chinese trawler for two weeks.
India suspended defence exchanges with China from early August to show displeasure over Beijing's refusal to grant a visa to B.S. Jaswal, a general in the Indian army, on the grounds that he commanded troops in a ''sensitive location in Jammu and Kashmir.''
China has, since 2008, indirectly questioned India's sovereignty over Jammu and Kashmir by issuing ''stapled visas'' (rather than regular stamped ones) to intending visitors from the state.
India, which has a long-standing dispute with Pakistan over Jammu and Kashmir, has been wary of close ties between Beijing and Islamabad.
''By insisting on issuing stapled visas China is clearly interfering in what India regards as a bilateral issue with Pakistan,'' said Dutta. ''China's bias can be seen in the fact that it does not issue stapled visas to visitors from the Pakistan administered part of Kashmir.''
Two days before Singh was due to meet Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao in Hanoi -- on Oct. 29 on the sidelines of the 16-nation Fifth East Asia Summit -- Beijing pointedly refused to change its stapled visa policy.
'Though China had friendly relations with India, its policy towards the stapled visas for residents of the state (Jammu and Kashmir) remained unchanged,'' the Press Trust of India news agency, reporting from Beijing said on Wednesday, quoting an official spokesman.
China, to India's deep consternation, has also taken to issuing stapled visas to residents of India's north-eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, which it calls ''Little Tibet''. It also claims the Himalayan territory -- extending over 83,743 sq. km and rich in natural resources.
Dutta said China's approach towards its relations with India appeared to analysts here as ''illogical'' and ''contradictory''. India's wary response, he said, was guided by a desire to avoid rupturing diplomatic ties built painstakingly after they were frozen by the brief but bloody 1962 border war. A paper 'China's Territorial Claim on Arunachal Pradesh: Crafting an Indian Response', presented for discussion at the prestigious, state-funded Institute for Defence Studies and Analysis (IDSA) on Oct. 25 described China's approach as ''two-tracked''.
The author of the paper, Namrata Goswami, explained to discussants that while China has on the one hand been enhancing economic and diplomatic engagement with India it has, on the other, been persistent about its territorial claims over Arunachal Pradesh.
Goswami argued that China was following a 'balance of power' strategy by trying to counter the newly forged India-U.S. strategic partnership by upping the ante in Arunachal Pradesh and ensuring that India remains reined in by territorial disputes.
''Strengthening India-U.S. relations are being interpreted by China as primarily influenced by one overarching motive: containment of China,'' she said. ''To Chinese observers, the U.S. is seen to be propping up India as a hedge against China.''
However, Dutta, a discussant at the IDSA presentation, said India's partnership with the United States was not so developed as to pose a threat to China. ''The partnership proceeds naturally from India's trade liberalisation and globalisation...it has nothing to do with China.''
Dutta said a clearer geopolitical picture will emerge in November after U.S. President Barack Obama's state visit to India and his attendance at the G20 summit in Tokyo.
© Inter Press Service (2010) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service