Be Asian, think global

In their pursuit of economic and technological power, Chinese leaders have often stooped to conquer. In 1950 Mao Zedong signed an unequal treaty dictated by Stalin and surrendered the Xinjiang uranium mines to get massive Soviet industrial and military assistance. Subsequently they had no qualms about allying themselves with the US, against whom they had fought a bitter war in Korea, costing hundreds of thousands of Chinese lives, including that of Mao’s son, a MiG pilot. They gave monitoring bases to the US and conducted themselves, in the words of Admiral Norton, the British chief of defence staff, as the eastern NATO. They launched an attack on Vietnam immediately after Deng’s visit to the US and went along with the US supporting Pol Pot’s representation in the UN general assembly and in supporting the Afghan mujahideen.

They opened up their markets to the US and permitted large-scale FDI and fiercely pursued a strategy of export-led growth with the US as the focus. They have accepted the US-founded Nuclear Suppliers Group’s rules. They have no objection to accepting Australian conditions for supplying uranium ore for their reactors. They agreed to permit Australians to participate in preparing their separation plan between civil and military reactors. They even accepted an additional Australian safeguards regime over the reactors using Australian uranium over and above IAEA safeguards. New Delhi would not have accepted the sort of conditions Beijing did in the US legislation extending China the most favoured nation status. The Chinese focus on their core objective of building national power — economic, technological and military — and ignore all peripheral sentimental issues.

China is acutely conscious of the balance of power system in the present-day international relations. They first concentrated on cultivating the US, Japan, European Union and then Russia after the end of the cold war. They have been focusing on Pakistan since the sixties, with Pakistan a go-between with the United States and base for Afghan mujahideen operations. They armed Pakistan with nuclear weapons and missiles to countervail India, considered an ally of the Soviet Union. Thereafter they used Pakistan for nuclear and missile proliferation to North Korea, Iran and Libya. They are developing Gwadar port on the Baluchistan coast and talking of improving the communication infrastructure from Xinjiang to the Arabian sea to gain access to the Islamic world. They are prepared to ignore US relations with Taiwan, including the arming of Taiwan, and concentrate on expanding China-US trade relations. In spite of recent tension with Japan, they have expanded trade with Japan to exceed China’s trade with the US. China has improved its relations with Russia with an eye to energy security. It is actively engaged in making Russia its primary energy supplier.

China used to regard India as a regional player and hyphenate India and Pakistan. This attitude changed in 2005 when Prime Minister Wen Jiabao visited India in the wake of the US announcing its goal to help India become a major world power. The Chinese premier started referring to India’s global role. Once the India-US relationship started getting enhanced, in true balance of power tradition China intensified its effort to cultivate India. It is not a coincidence that China-India trade expanded and interaction grew stronger even as US-India cooperation intensified.

China is aware that in the 21st century knowledge and economic and technological capabilities are the currencies of power. Consequently it is not engaged in an arms race with the US though it is modernising its armed forces at a significant pace. China’s aim is to outproduce the US in terms of scientists, engineers, doctors and managers. In order to do that, it does not hesitate to seek the help of American institutions to establish their branches in China to teach science, technology and the English language.

Beijing is aware that the US is cultivating India not to contain China militarily but to sustain America’s own pre-eminence in terms of innovativeness and productivity in partnership with India. Therefore China is attempting to improve its relations with India. Chinese interest in India is therefore a function of American interest in India. Both are bound to grow, provided the Indian leadership understands how to play the balance of power game skillfully.

For China the border issue is a trump card. The more the anxiety in India on settling the border, the greater would be the value of the trump card to China. The present line of actual control has been maintained for nearly 40 years. India should draw a lesson from China and play the border issue coolly with the confidence that 1962 or even 1967 will not recur. China has started accepting India as one of the global balancers of power in view of India’s rise in economic and technological power and India’s relations with the US, Russia, EU and Japan.

There is great potential to expand Sino-Indian ties if India avoids romantic notions about Asian solidarity like Panchsheel, and concentrate, as China does, on playing the balance of power game purposefully.

The writer is a senior defence analyst