Last Wednesday Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and China’s President Hu Jintao held a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the Bric summit at Sanya in southern China. This was much needed. Mutual ties have become extremely cluttered of late. China’s opaqueness to India’s security concerns, shoddy border management by both sides, and suspicions of each other in the economic sphere although China is now India’s largest trading partner, have tended to worsen relations at the people level and render them somewhat cool at the official. Such a state of affairs between two large neighbours — who are influential in their own way on the regional and the world stage — increases the burden of instability in international political affairs. While a competitive spirit is to be expected, given the circumstances, both India and China would do well to underline that the scope for cooperation, if exploited to its full potential, can help millions of poor people in both countries cross the threshold into a modicum of well-being. (For all its recent economic successes, China remains one of the world’s poor countries where inequality is deep-going.)
India is at some disadvantage in dealing with China on account of the fact that Beijing and Islamabad are “all-weather” friends, and that’s the way it has been for four decades. Such is the spectacular depth of these relations that China is ready to help Pakistan engage in international nuclear commerce and end its nuclear isolation and pariah status, although the latter is not an NPT signatory and has the dubious distinction of having run a clandestine nuclear Walmart for the benefit of dodgy regimes. (Would the US have signed the civil nuclear agreement with India if this country had been selling nuclear technology and equipment on the sly?) In the event, it is no surprise that from time to time Beijing has gone out of its way to give Islamabad comfort by explicitly discomfiting India, especially in the security sector. A clear demonstration of this came about three years ago when Beijing became stroppy on Kashmir. It began issuing stapled visas to J&K residents, not the usual stamped ones, to demarcate them from other Indians — a move that would have pleased the Pakistanis inordinately, not to mention the Kashmiri secessionists. It also threatened to do the same for the chief of the Indian Army’s Northern Command, under which J&K falls, who was to visit China for a scheduled defence exchange. Touched to the quick, India cancelled the visit and suspended military exchanges which it had commenced in the Eighties as a mark of goodwill to step up cooperation after the rupture caused by the 1962 border clashes that China had initiated.
The Singh-Hu confabulations at Sanya offer a hint that steps are to be taken on both sides to get back to normality. This is good to hear, although we shall know for sure only in the light of practice on the ground. However, this is fundamental: While China pursues top class bilateral relations with Pakistan — with which the texture of our own ties has been a matter of perpetual speculation and doubt — it must make up its mind not to disturb the equanimity with India; there is indeed an element of a zero-sum game here. If Beijing is sensitive to this, we can go places. The leaders of the two countries have instructed their respective governments to tighten border coordination and management. This was badly required in the light of periodic reports of Chinese transgressions into our territory. But senior officials must first find out why the management has been less than satisfactory when we have had in place proper mechanisms to oversee that the boundary zone remains tranquil. Strategic economic ties won’t fly if security and border-related concerns are not placed on an even keel.