BAD NEIGHBOURS
There are more than enough reasons for China and India to go to war
QUICK question to test your global know-how: Which source of friction between China and India is the most likely trigger or tripwire for war between these two most populous countries in the world?
A territorial dispute involving Aksai Chin or Arunachal Pradesh.
China’s supply of nuclear and conventional weapons to India’s archenemy Pakistan.
India’s harbouring of the Dalai Lama and other issues related to China’s authoritarian grip on Tibet.
China’s diversion of key sources of India’s water supply. Any or all of the above. This is a very difficult question to answer, but the ultimate answer may well turn out to be #5 – any or all of the above.
Let’s take them in a step-by-step fashion – first looking at the territorial disputes involving Aksai Chin and Arunachal Pradesh. These two pieces of strategic real estate served as the original battlefields in the bloody 1962 Sino-Indian War.
Aksai Chin, a Chinese-controlled territory that is contested by India is about the size of Switzerland. It sits on the easternmost portion of the autonomous Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir.
Essential link
For China, this virtually uninhabited high desert provides an essential north-south transportation and logistics link between its two most western territories – Xinjiang province and Tibet. This essential link – officially known as Chinese National Highway 219 – runs for more than 1 609km from Yecheng in Xinjiang to Lhatse in Tibet and passes right through Aksai Chin.
In fact, it was the construction of this critical road segment in the mid-1950s that first inflamed Indian passions and set the stage for the 1962 war.
With India’s capital New Delhi about as close to the Aksai Chin border as Washington DC is to Boston, China’s rapid military build-up over the last several decades in both Tibet and Xinjiang has become a cause of great concern for India.
China’s growing threat to the Indian sub-continent also manifests itself via a modern, military-grade road network in Tibet that features many axial roads.
China’s growing threat to the Indian sub-continent also manifests itself via a modern, military-grade road network in Tibet that features numerous axial roads, stretches for more than 56 327km and funnels right into Aksai Chin’s land invasion route.
Territorial dispute
What all this adds up to is a very credible threat to the Indian heartland, the strategic centrepiece of which is China’s control of Aksai Chin. There also is a second territorial dispute with quite similar strategic dimensions – the Indian-held state of Arunachal Pradesh (which China calls “Southern Tibet”).
About the size of Austria, this “land of the dawn-lit mountains” and most northeastern part of India borders both Bhutan in the west and Myanmar in the east, as well as Tibet to the north.
In fact, more than 50 years after the end of the 1962 Sino-Indian War, Chinese troops continue to make periodic and highly provocative incursions into Arunachal Pradesh.
From New Delhi’s strategic perspective, if China were to successfully take this eastern gateway into India, it would offer a second line of military advance through the Brahmaputra Valley from China’s heavily populated, and equally heavily militarised, Yunnan province.
Ultimately, the real prize in any Chinese taking of Arunachal Pradesh may well turn out to be its water rights. To see why, we need to look more closely at the budding water wars between China and India.
China and India account for almost 40 percent of the world’s population, but have access to only about 10 percent of global water supplies.
China’s water scarcity is further compounded by a high degree of pollution – many of its lakes and rivers are dead zones and as much as 40 percent of the water in China’s rivers is unfit for human consumption. For India, the situation is hardly any better. In a land heavily dependent on agriculture, it is projected by the World Bank to be “water stressed” as early as 2025 and “water scarce” by 2050. China, via its control of Tibet, also has control over much of India’s water supplies.
In fact, the Tibetan Plateau is the “world’s largest freshwater repository after the polar icecaps” and a key watershed for fully 10 of the largest rivers in Asia, including the Mekong running through Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia on its way to Vietnam, and the Salween that winds it way through Burma.
‘Water tower of the world’
And just how may China’s control of this Tibetan “water tower of the world” actually trigger war? Just consider the real-world ramifications of Beijing’s audacious proposal to divert as much as 60 percent of the waters of India’s Brahmaputra River into China’s increasingly parched Yellow River.
Beyond these territorial and water disputes creating plenty of friction between India and China, there are also other perennial triggers, perhaps none of them bigger than the Pakistan issue. India quite correctly blames China both for its substantial arms sales to Pakistan and for providing its archenemy with the expertise and technology to become a nuclear power.
And just why is China so cozy with Pakistan? Because it views the Islamic state both as a gateway to south Asia, as well as a buffer state against India itself.
It is important to realise that this special China-Pakistan bond is not a recent development. In fact, it dates back to the 1962 Sino-Indian War. In addition, Pakistan has built a massive port at Gwadar that is likely to become an increasingly important port of call for China’s growing navy.
The “will there be war?” problem is that, as China begins to project its naval power into the Indian Ocean and uses Pakistan as a basing area, the scope for a second Sino-Indian War will mount.
As for whether India and China would actually ever really go to war over Tibet or water or anything else, some experts argue that this is impossible. The argument they base their assessment on is that both states are very capable and well-equipped nuclear powers.
This is an excerpt from Peter Navarro’s book “Crouching Tiger: What China’s Militarism Means for the World (Prometheus Books)”, which was released on November 3.