In assessing the just-ended three-day visit of Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao to this country, it is well to recall Chairman Mao rather than to be enthused by the $100 billion target of two-way trade the joint statement signed between the two countries posits. The great Chinese leader — who combined Middle Kingdom sensibilities with his own brand of Communist thought — suggested that it was politics that was central to an enterprise, that it was “in command”. By this touchstone, even Mr Wen might wonder whether his three-day dash to New Delhi wasn’t an exercise in futility. He had unexpectedly proposed the trip to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh when they had met in Hanoi recently on the sidelines of the East Asia summit. India was upset with a number of Beijing’s actions relating to Kashmir — the stapled visas, and investments in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir among them — that are designed to question Kashmir’s status as an integral part of India. While the Indian Prime Minister could hardly turn down his Chinese counterpart’s overture, it is clear that prior to his three-day India sojourn Mr Wen made no attempt to address even the most elementary issues on the political side that matter to New Delhi. The stapled visa issue is a case in point. If he had cleared the “administrative” hurdles in Beijing before he arrived here, his trip could have left an imprint. As things stand, the very rationale of the Chinese Prime Minister’s India trip has been called into question, for he noted here that officials of the two sides should now look into the visa regime which has upset India.
It is clear that the Chinese PM’s frothy sentiment that India and China were “partners”, not “rivals”, did not bowl his Indian hosts over. For the first time, the Indian side declined to insert into the joint communiqué the standard proposition that New Delhi subscribed to the “one-China” policy, that is, regarding Tibet and Taiwan as an intrinsic part of China. If the development of bilateral ties is a process, then that process has clearly registered a downswing. If the “one-India” idea does not appeal to Beijing, why should the one-China mantra continue to be accepted here? While eschewing this standard prescription, India could not have overlooked the timing of the Chinese completing a long tunnel linking a remote Tibetan county abutting Arunachal Pradesh with the main Chinese transport grid whose inauguration was made to coincide with Mr Wen’s India visit.
Aside from the contentious visa issue, the Chinese leader showed little concern for Pakistan using terrorism as an instrument of its anti-India stance. This ties up with Beijing being solicitous of Islamabad’s views on Kashmir even as it continues to persist with the semantics that terrorism was a “bilateral” matter between India and Pakistan, as much as Kashmir is. Unlike in the past, New Delhi might just choose to keep this in view when extremist difficulties beset China in Muslim Xinjiang again, as in 2008.
Two leading considerations clearly inform Beijing’s current policy toward India. The West is not doing too well financially since the recent economic meltdown. This makes India an important destination for China’s export drive and explains China’s renewed efforts for an expanded trade relationship. New Delhi needs to take a critical look at this. Two, Beijing is no doubt also factoring in the growing warmth in India’s ties with Japan and South Korea when it outwardly seeks to woo India with clichés, forgetting that diplomacy and politics must be rooted in substance, not pedagogy or high-sounding humbug. In the Indian capital, the Chinese PM also underlined that the resolution of the border problem will take “very long”. This appears to tie up with Beijing’s overall deep look at India. India-China ties are on a cusp. New Delhi would do well to exert both thought and care in mapping out the future of this relationship.