Editorial
On the Borderline Still
India and China share a common border, rather a contentious
border, but they lack a common vision. They have no good reason to build a
community of destiny, notwithstanding euphoria over two ancient civilisations. To put it bluntly the India-China relationship is having troubles in recent weeks despite periodic diplomatic smiles and handshakes. That India and China have decided the year 2014 to be the year for friendly exchanges between the two nations by way of cultivating mutual cultural heritage and age-old bonds seems to be the only positive outcome of Chinese Premier Li Keqiang’s recent visit to India. Mr Li visited India 27 years ago as part of a youth delegation in 1986 and he went a bit philosophical while addressing an elite club of Indian business people and distinguished citizens at a special function organised jointly by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and the Indian Council for World Affairs, as he would extoll his idea of ‘handshake across the Himalayas’.
Before Li, all Chinese leaders since the days of Chou en Lai, talked eloquently and passionately about historical friendship and two ancient civilisations of Asia and finally failed to overcome the himalayan barriers both sides created by continually agreeing to disagree over the boundary dispute, a legacy left by history that came to the fore with multi-dimensional complexities after the short border conflict in 1962.
For one thing India had no border problems so long as Tibet was Tibet and, not an integral part of China. Li’s assertion that India and China matter in today’s global affairs was purely rhetorical nicety aimed at pleasing the audience. Despite systematic campaign by China that world is today more multi-polar than ever before, the real world politik is totally otherwise. It’s still very much uni-polar. And China’s efforts to team up with Russia, Brazil, South Africa and India to from BRICS, have failed to produce a counter-weight to American and western hegemony, both politically and economically. In truth China’s economy is increasingly becoming America-oriented and export dependent and not for nothing at no point of time China utilised its veto power in the UN Security Council to thwart America’s aggressive designs in the Middle East, in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Li’s oblique reference to India’s desperation to seek America’s cooperation and favour while ignoring its natural partner closeby—China—was at tangent.
The growing Sino-American partnership in strategic areas, in sharing markets, is a hard reality, that impacts in a major way on the globalised economic order. Li’s remark that when India and China speak in one voice, the world will listen, sounds fine but their ‘unified’ voice, proved powerless, before the major powers’ intransigence at the climate talks. FICCI was interested in Chinese market and Mr Li didn’t disappoint them despite agonising trade imbalance between what they call two leading economies of Asia. He promised more access to Indian goods to narrow trade deficit while acknowledging India’s edge in IT, soft-ware and bio-medicines, and showed eagerness to start talks for FTA—free trade agreement. But bare trade facts for 2012-13 are simply disturbing for Delhiwallas as India imported goods worth $54.3 bn from China against exports amounting to just $13.52 bn, leaving a whooping deficit of $40.78 bn, almost 20 percent of India’s total trade deficit of $ 190.9 bn. If anything China doesn’t need much to import from India other than iron ore. As for software they have many options and their brethren in Taiwan are in an advantageous position to deliver. Given the domestic opposition on more than one count, India no longer looks keen to export iron ore to China. As for bio-medicines, it is too uncertain yet to be fathomed by FICCI. As for free trade, India has hardly any chance to bargain from a position of strength.
True, both sides downplayed the recent border irritations in the Himalayas but Mr Li mentioned several times the issue of border dispute in his speech and press briefing. In the yester years they vowed to maintain peace and tranquillity in the disputed territory but their mechanism to deal with border affairs proved fragile and brittle on more than one occasion. The boundary row apart, water sharing of the river Brahmaputra, now posses another twist in India-China relations. China’s assurance that they would monitor seasonal water flow and other hydrological data doesn’t change the ground reality that dams are really coming up on the river Brahmaputra much to the detriment of interests of lower riparin states—India and Bangladesh. Ironically, this is one area where India and Bangladesh could have registered their note of dissent jointly against China’s unilateral decision to build dams. No, they didn’t.
Though Mr Li pledged China’s support on India’s position at the UN, he didn’t really mean to say Beijing would endorse India’s attempts to get a permanent seat, with veto power, in the UN Security Council.
Despite positive stance shown by Mr Li in boosting bilateral trade ties, it is unlikely for China to compromise on its core interests. In other words they may wait, even for decades, as the late Deng Xiao ping in the 1980s once advised his partymen to leave decisions that are too tough to make now for the next generations or the one after that. What at best they can do now is to chalk out a pragmatic framework to balance everyone’s interests, without having to sort out everything, particularly the most sensitive boundary question, at once.
Since its establishment in 1949, the People’s Republic of China has managed to resolve all but one of the land disputes over the ensuing six decades—only those with India are outstanding. And its maritime disputes with Japan are more complex to deal with. The issue over the Diaoyu islands in the South China sea, which has been simmering over the last two years, became so sensitive that bilateral trade between the two major economies—the world’s second and third largest economies to be precise—fell as both sides remained adamant in claiming and counter-claiming the disputed islands. But the islands themselves are uninhabited and remote as it is the case in Ladakh’s Aksai Chin where even a blade of grass doesn’t grow. If China is showing some restraint in case of India-China border, it is because they have already legalised their historical claims in international arena. It remains to be seen whether Li’s goodwill mission will be fruitful in the long run because they are still very much on the borderline.
Frontier
Vol. 45, No. 47, June 2-8, 2013
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