China-India rivalry — is it reversible?
China found its independence two years after India and Pakistan
PHOTO: REUTERS
China found its independence two years after India and Pakistan. At that time the 3,225-kilometre long Himalayan border that separated India and China, with Nepal and Bhutan in between, was unmarked, with the two parties arbitrarily agreeing upon the McMahon Line. Later the two states set their own markers along the McMahon Line, resulting in two major areas of contention, the Aksai Chin and Arunachal Pradesh.
Another ill that India committed was the backing of the Tibetan uprising and subsequently giving the Dalai Lama amnesty in India. This killed the Nehruvian stance of accommodating a neighbouring big power — a stance that Russia and Britain had kept in the colonial times when they had agreed upon China’s sovereignty (or at least its suzerainty over Tibet) and upon not interfering in China’s matters in Tibet. On the contrary, India followed the line of action wherein McMahon had bypassed the Chinese and drawn his borderline bilaterally by negotiating directly with Tibet. Eventually, when the Communist Party had taken control of matters in China, Premier Zhou Enlai asserted that the boundary was un-demarcated and had never been defined by a treaty between any Chinese or Indian government.
In fact, what led to the Sino-Indian War of 1962 was China’s deep resentment that under the façade of diplomatic goodwill, Nehru was following the exact duplicity set by imperial Britain, who had wanted to make Tibet a buffer state between China and British India. As JW Garver noted, Nehru’s objective “was seen as the creation of a “great Indian empire” in South Asia by “filling the vacuum” left by the British exit from that region. Garver notes that according to the PLA history, Nehru regarded control of Tibet as essential for “mastery over South Asia” and “the most economical method for guaranteeing India’s security”. This was the reason why in the 1959 uprising, India supported the Tibetan rebels by granting them a safe haven in Indian territory and even armed and trained them.
In the 1959 PRC operation whereby China took control of Tibet, thousands of Tibetans fled into India, most of them being anti-China rebels. This was followed by a spat of angry criticism between the two states. Mao asserted that “Indian expansionists… want ardently to grab Tibet” and Nehru told the Indian Parliament that “a tragedy has been and is being enacted in Tibet” — all this leading to the 1962 war.
Meanwhile, at the global front, Russia and China had parted their ideological union in the mid-50s, as the USSR tilted towards “peaceful coexistence” with the West. With Russia and China split, the US felt that China’s emergence as a big power could soon make the world tripolar in place of the exiting bipolar one. For this reason, and because China had ousted the pro-West Republic of China (ROC) from mainland China, the US did not want to see a strengthened China — and China feared a US backing of a Taiwanese attack on the mainland at a time when China would be engaged with India. Yet this fear proved to be a lighter one compared to that of the USSR’s growing infringements in the Cold War — a fear that had ultimately balanced the US in favour of China and Pakistan in the coming years.
India is on the other side of the balance moved closer to Russia in all this time. With Russia as its prime military supplier, India assumed that it would back India in a possible India-China clash. The Russians had even provided India with some military helicopters and planes that were being used in the military buildup in the eastern sector of the northern frontier — yet to India’s disappointment Russia was not prepared to openly support India in a clash with communist China.
Eventually, the war took place. China needed to assert its complete dominance north of the Himalayan peaks, teach Nehru a lesson on his expansionism, and give a message to the USSR on the futility of befriending India at China’s expense. In spite of the winter months, the mountainous terrain and China’s widespread famine at home, China came out victorious in the war, and India was faced with a humiliation that led it to proceed with anti-China sentiments in the coming times.
Since then, despite diplomatic efforts, skirmishes have been off and on, especially on the Ladakh-Aksai China border; on Sikkim that was eventually taken away from Nepal and annexed to India; on Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh; and in Doklam at the eastern end of Bhutan.
But that is not all. Perhaps these little issues could have been resolved through something like the Joint Working Group set up by Narasimha Rao when he signed an agreement on Border Peace and Tranquility with China in 1993. But because of India’s growing avarice in the region, that has been multiplied since the US has built strategic ties with India — India, and China are now confronting each other as rivals in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) and in the South East Asian markets — all progressions that only sever the old wounds instead of healing them.
India’s dream of becoming a regional power has drawn its unquestioning love for the US to a hyperbola. The 2016 India-US Logistics Exchange Agreement, with which the US declared India a Major Defense Partner, has emboldened India to oppose Chinese interests in the region, one of them being CPEC, China’s joint venture with Pakistan, a flagship project of the Belt and Road Initiative. India’s aspiration to acquire nuclear submarines and to expand its navy so that it can control the IOR is seen by China as a major threat in the coming times to its universal trade that passes from the Indian Ocean.
India’s being a staunch member of the QUAD makes it a supporter of US interests in Taiwan, Japan and in the wider South China Sea. India’s acquiring of a naval deployment on the Malacca Strait, in Indonesia, that allows it surveillance of everything that passes and its increasing listening posts in the IOR are also seen by China as an endeavour for regional hegemony.
India’s sin is not in dreaming to be a regional power, but in hurting its neighbours and obliterating the human rights of its own people and the peace of the region as it pursues what it wants. And in this leap, perhaps India fails to see that China’s success has been in “growth leading to power”, whereas India is working on the formula of “power leading to growth” — a formula that seems more ambitious and less fruitful — and a formula for which India is foolishly forcing its relation with an immediate power to an irreversible path of mistrust and doom.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 24th, 2019.
Another ill that India committed was the backing of the Tibetan uprising and subsequently giving the Dalai Lama amnesty in India. This killed the Nehruvian stance of accommodating a neighbouring big power — a stance that Russia and Britain had kept in the colonial times when they had agreed upon China’s sovereignty (or at least its suzerainty over Tibet) and upon not interfering in China’s matters in Tibet. On the contrary, India followed the line of action wherein McMahon had bypassed the Chinese and drawn his borderline bilaterally by negotiating directly with Tibet. Eventually, when the Communist Party had taken control of matters in China, Premier Zhou Enlai asserted that the boundary was un-demarcated and had never been defined by a treaty between any Chinese or Indian government.
In fact, what led to the Sino-Indian War of 1962 was China’s deep resentment that under the façade of diplomatic goodwill, Nehru was following the exact duplicity set by imperial Britain, who had wanted to make Tibet a buffer state between China and British India. As JW Garver noted, Nehru’s objective “was seen as the creation of a “great Indian empire” in South Asia by “filling the vacuum” left by the British exit from that region. Garver notes that according to the PLA history, Nehru regarded control of Tibet as essential for “mastery over South Asia” and “the most economical method for guaranteeing India’s security”. This was the reason why in the 1959 uprising, India supported the Tibetan rebels by granting them a safe haven in Indian territory and even armed and trained them.
In the 1959 PRC operation whereby China took control of Tibet, thousands of Tibetans fled into India, most of them being anti-China rebels. This was followed by a spat of angry criticism between the two states. Mao asserted that “Indian expansionists… want ardently to grab Tibet” and Nehru told the Indian Parliament that “a tragedy has been and is being enacted in Tibet” — all this leading to the 1962 war.
Meanwhile, at the global front, Russia and China had parted their ideological union in the mid-50s, as the USSR tilted towards “peaceful coexistence” with the West. With Russia and China split, the US felt that China’s emergence as a big power could soon make the world tripolar in place of the exiting bipolar one. For this reason, and because China had ousted the pro-West Republic of China (ROC) from mainland China, the US did not want to see a strengthened China — and China feared a US backing of a Taiwanese attack on the mainland at a time when China would be engaged with India. Yet this fear proved to be a lighter one compared to that of the USSR’s growing infringements in the Cold War — a fear that had ultimately balanced the US in favour of China and Pakistan in the coming years.
India is on the other side of the balance moved closer to Russia in all this time. With Russia as its prime military supplier, India assumed that it would back India in a possible India-China clash. The Russians had even provided India with some military helicopters and planes that were being used in the military buildup in the eastern sector of the northern frontier — yet to India’s disappointment Russia was not prepared to openly support India in a clash with communist China.
Eventually, the war took place. China needed to assert its complete dominance north of the Himalayan peaks, teach Nehru a lesson on his expansionism, and give a message to the USSR on the futility of befriending India at China’s expense. In spite of the winter months, the mountainous terrain and China’s widespread famine at home, China came out victorious in the war, and India was faced with a humiliation that led it to proceed with anti-China sentiments in the coming times.
Since then, despite diplomatic efforts, skirmishes have been off and on, especially on the Ladakh-Aksai China border; on Sikkim that was eventually taken away from Nepal and annexed to India; on Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh; and in Doklam at the eastern end of Bhutan.
But that is not all. Perhaps these little issues could have been resolved through something like the Joint Working Group set up by Narasimha Rao when he signed an agreement on Border Peace and Tranquility with China in 1993. But because of India’s growing avarice in the region, that has been multiplied since the US has built strategic ties with India — India, and China are now confronting each other as rivals in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) and in the South East Asian markets — all progressions that only sever the old wounds instead of healing them.
India’s dream of becoming a regional power has drawn its unquestioning love for the US to a hyperbola. The 2016 India-US Logistics Exchange Agreement, with which the US declared India a Major Defense Partner, has emboldened India to oppose Chinese interests in the region, one of them being CPEC, China’s joint venture with Pakistan, a flagship project of the Belt and Road Initiative. India’s aspiration to acquire nuclear submarines and to expand its navy so that it can control the IOR is seen by China as a major threat in the coming times to its universal trade that passes from the Indian Ocean.
India’s being a staunch member of the QUAD makes it a supporter of US interests in Taiwan, Japan and in the wider South China Sea. India’s acquiring of a naval deployment on the Malacca Strait, in Indonesia, that allows it surveillance of everything that passes and its increasing listening posts in the IOR are also seen by China as an endeavour for regional hegemony.
India’s sin is not in dreaming to be a regional power, but in hurting its neighbours and obliterating the human rights of its own people and the peace of the region as it pursues what it wants. And in this leap, perhaps India fails to see that China’s success has been in “growth leading to power”, whereas India is working on the formula of “power leading to growth” — a formula that seems more ambitious and less fruitful — and a formula for which India is foolishly forcing its relation with an immediate power to an irreversible path of mistrust and doom.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 24th, 2019.