M.D. Nalapat
Manipal, India — Indian Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh returned Wednesday from a four-day visit to Beijing that even
his spinmeisters could not categorize as a success. Having made the India-U.S.
nuclear deal the foundation of his legacy, Singh had expected Chinese Premier
Wen Jiabao to follow through on the promise of "nuclear cooperation"
that he had made during a 2005 visit to New Delhi.
While there was a reiteration of that
pledge in the Vision Statement released during the visit, this was qualified by
subsequent explicit references to any such partnership being within the
boundaries set out in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. As the justification
for the deal was that it opened the way for international civil nuclear
cooperation with India outside the restrictions imposed by the NPT on powers
other than the five recognized nuclear weapons states, this caveat reduced the
Chinese offer to a meaningless pleasantry.
Neither in the International Atomic Energy
Agency nor in the Nuclear Suppliers Group did the Chinese leadership give any
indication during the Jan. 13-15 talks of softening their earlier position that
India would have to sign on to the NPT as a non-nuclear weapons power -- in
other words, to denuclearize -- before securing international cooperation.
Then came another blow. The new Labor
government in Australia reversed the decision by former Prime Minister John
Howard to sell uranium to India once the India-U.S. deal becomes operational.
Canberra said that India's signing the NPT would be a precondition for such
transfers. This is a non-starter in the Indian context of the need for a
nuclear and missile deterrent against possible attack.
Manmohan Singh had also hoped to persuade
his hosts in Beijing to nudge the long-stalled border talks forward by
accepting India's condition that areas with "settled populations"
would be excluded from any exchange of territory. Although Wen Jiabao had
accepted this condition in 2005, a year later Beijing returned to the earlier
hard line that even populated zones were open to negotiation.
In particular, China pressed for the
cession of Tawang, a small town in the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh that
is revered as a pilgrimage site by Tibetans. Indeed, Beijing repeatedly
articulated the claim that the entire state was Chinese, refusing in the
process to issue a visa to any Indian national from there on the grounds that
as a national of the People's Republic of China, such an individual did not
need a visa.
As for the other gesture sought by the
Indian delegation, Chinese support for an Indian seat on the U.N. Security
Council as a permanent member, there was again scant comfort.
Altogether, apart from sugary phrases that
could be construed in any manner, there was no concession from the Chinese side
at all, even though during the visit India gave access to the Chinese cargo
carrier Great Wall Airlines to Mumbai and Chennai, and allowed the state-run
China Central Television to freely beam into India.
China's dilemma is real. The only
geopolitical rival it has in Asia is its huge southern neighbor. Both have a
population in excess of 1 billion, and economies that are growing rapidly. Both
appeal to the same constituencies in the underdeveloped world, and compete for
influence there, as they do in major markets such as the United States and the
European Union. They also compete for key sources of technology and raw
materials.
Giving India a boost would not work in
China's interest. This is one reason Beijing has invested considerable effort
in Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, to reduce the Indian footprint in
these countries.
However, the ongoing jihadisation of
Pakistan and Bangladesh is reducing their value in any containment strategy
toward India, while civil strife in Sri Lanka and Nepal is having a similar
effect there. Apart from these countries, Beijing has also quietly leaned on
Myanmar to deny oil and gas concessions to India, and is unhappy at the work
under way to set up a land link between India and ASEAN through the
Indo-Myanmar border. Yet none of this is slowing down India's economic
expansion, and consequently its attractiveness as a regional partner.
Apart from India emerging as an economic
powerhouse, the other nightmare for Beijing is its U.S. links. Since the 1970s
and until the demise of the USSR in 1992, Beijing leveraged its rivalry with
Moscow into numerous U.S. economic and technology concessions, help that was
core to its emergence as the world's second most significant economy in
Purchasing Power Parity terms.
Now that China has replaced the USSR as the
object of negative U.S. attention, the worry in Beijing is an India-U.S.
partnership that would generate the same benefits for New Delhi as the earlier
one did for China. The Chinese leadership therefore needs to play a delicate
game, giving India just enough concessions to prevent it from transiting to the
U.S.-led alliance, but not enough to significantly boost its capabilities.
In their efforts to hold back India's links
with the United States, the Chinese leadership has enthusiastic partners in
India in the form of the two communist parties now supporting the Manmohan
Singh government with their 62 members of Parliament. The Communist Party of
India and the Communist Party (Marxist) are open about following an agenda that
dovetails with Chinese interests, although they appear to be losing support in
their regional strongholds.
China would like to sign a regional trade
agreement with India that would give its products free entry into the Indian
market, especially in the infrastructure sector. This is being resisted by
Indian business, already sharply affected by what it claims to be dumping by
the Chinese side. This, as well as continuing Chinese support for the nuclear
and missile programs of Pakistan, is acting as a speed breaker on the Indian
government's propensity to offer concessions without securing anything in
return.
Altogether, apart from some excellent
cuisine and much honeyed language, Manmohan Singh has returned empty-handed
from Beijing. Clearly, the hardnosed decision makers there see his as a lame
duck administration, and would like to await the outcome of the next general
elections in India before deciding on just how much the tap has to be opened to
keep India separated from the United States.
-(Professor M.D. Nalapat is
vice-chair of the Manipal Advanced Research Group, UNESCO Peace Chair, and
professor of geopolitics at Manipal University. ©Copyright M.D. Nalapat.)
No comments:
Post a Comment