Rivalry complicates trade
Asian giants increase economic ties amid security and diplomatic competitions and disputes
Indian politicians and pundits are puzzling over why China sent a platoon of soldiers over the border just before the premier is due to arrive.
Sending troops into a neighbour’s territory shortly before your prime minister is due to pay a visit is not the sort of behaviour calculated to draw a warm welcome.
So politicians and pundits in India are puzzling over why China sent a platoon of soldiers 20 kilometres across the disputed Himalayan joint border to set up camp at Ladakh in mid- April when Chinese Premier Li Keqiang is due to arrive in New Delhi on May 20.
Last week, after a standoff of over three weeks, the Chinese troops were withdrawn, but for India the questions remain.
Theories about what the Chinese were up to range from the benign to the devious.
At one end of the spectrum is the suggestion that this was just a local incident, without any planning by the central government. The Chinese troops may have strayed into Indian- controlled territory accidentally, and then had to make some demonstration or risk losing face if they withdrew prematurely.
At the other is the thought that Beijing is upset that New Delhi has not responded to the Border Defence Cooperation Agreement it proposed in March. Thus the incursion by the Chinese troops was a way of ensuring the long- running dispute over the SinoIndian border is firmly on the agenda when Premier Li comes calling.
The border incident does not seem to have cast a pall over the visit to Beijing last week by India’s Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid. He met with his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, to sign a protocol aimed at boosting cooperation between the two ministries.
They also congratulated each other that the border incident was resolved without any serious repercussions.
If nothing else, the incident is an illustration of the complexity of the relationship between the two Asian giants who have increasingly important economic ties, but also vigorous security and diplomatic competitions and disputes.
The constant backdrop to relations are the 1962 border war in the Himalayas, China’s support for India’s rival Pakistan, and India’s support for the Dalai Lama and the governmentin- exile of Chinese occupied Tibet.
Even so, bilateral trade has boomed from $ 12 billion in 2004 to $ 75 billion in 2011, with the expectation it will reach about $ 100 billion by 2015.
The frictions, however, have a way of clouding this optimistic picture and cannot be ignored.
Both Beijing and New Delhi watch with evident suspicion the efforts by the other to court influence and allegiance among the smaller nations of the neighbourhood.
China looks askance at New Delhi’s successful efforts in recent years to forge ties with the 10 countries of Southeast Asia, with which India now has a free- trade agreement.
More irritating for Beijing is India’s growing naval links with Vietnam. Hanoi has courted New Delhi, along with Russia and the United States, as its disputes with China over islands, fisheries and submarine oil and gas reserves in the South China Sea have become more heated and threatening.
And Beijing is very much aware of being under surveillance of Indian diplomats in and around Burma, sometimes called Myanmar.
China is building oil and gas pipelines across Burma from the Bay of Bengal to China’s western Yunnan province. The idea is to give China security of supply by avoiding the choke point Malacca Strait between Singapore and Indonesia.
But India’s army and navy are just off the western coast of Burma at bases on the Andaman and Nicobar islands.
New Delhi’s anxieties about China are much more pressing.
They are framed by the reality that India’s military capabilities have fallen far behind China’s as Beijing has invested heavily in modernizing its army, navy, air force and missile arsenal in recent years.
China has also demonstrated a fearsome capacity in cyber warfare by massive hacking into U. S. secret government sites and those of defence industry contractors. Beijing denies these attacks were government operations.
China’s navy now has more than 970 warships, many of them modern vessels with modern missile armaments, and more than 60 submarines.
India, in contrast, has only 170 warships and 13 submarines. And New Delhi is hobbled by a persistently turgid and corrupt military procurement process which means that even if it made the commitment, India is unable to catch up to China any time soon.
For some time, New Delhi has watched with concern what has been called a “string of pearls” policy by China. This appears aimed at containing India’s navy and defending China’s sea lanes of trade with the Middle East and Africa by establishing a string of naval bases in Burma, Pakistan and potentially Sri Lanka, the Seychelles and the Maldives.
New Delhi could respond by expanding its increasingly strong diplomatic relations with Washington. But the Indian government appears to think this would be seen as aggressive by Beijing and therefore counterproductive.
Instead, India has chosen to try to boost its Indian Ocean security by developing naval ties with Japan and Australia.