It's not India vs China anymore [India will not help US to contain China]

[Beetle]

It's not India vs China anymore [India will not help US to contain China]
Sify (India) ^| 16 January 2008

Posted on 01/16/2008 3:50:29 PM EST by charles m

Beijing/New Delhi: The India vs China syndrome is passe? From now, the global idiom for joint collaborative action will be India-China, says India's Commerce and Industry Minister Kamal Nath, alluding to the growing friendship between the Asian giants.
On return from a visit to China accompanying Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, Nath said the engagement with Beijing was an important milestone bilaterally as the two rising economic powers set an ambitious trade target of $60 billion by 2010 - three times the goal set just five years ago.
"The engagement was important in the global context as well," Nath told IANS.
Much of the global discourse, on trade or climate change, has centred around the fact that the two countries were experiencing steady economic growth - China at 10 per cent and India at 9 - and accounted for a third of the global population.
But the two neighbours were also seen by the world as adversarial powers with competing claims to the world's riches, scarce resources and also global pre-eminence - a perception which Dr Manmohan Singh's visit sought to change.
There had also been speculation in the Western world about India lending itself to co-option as a buffer in a US-sponsored strategic plan to "contain" China's growing military and economic ambitions.
But the Indian prime minister, himself a great admirer of China's success story, insisted he would have no part in any alliance with the US, Australia and Japan aimed at "containing China".
"I have made it clear to the Chinese leadership that India is not part of any so-called 'contain China' effort," Dr Singh was quoted as saying in Beijing.
He was opting out of notions that New Delhi might, alongside Australia, the US and Japan, become a part of a new "quadrilateral" strategic pact conceived by Tokyo's former prime minister Shinzo Abe before his resignation.
But the "quadrilateral" concept has had little traction since then, and Dr Singh's rejection Sunday suggested it might be stillborn.
"Solid sustained growth of India and China was only in the nature of being an international public good," the prime minister said, especially at a time when uncertainty gripped the world economy amid fears of recession in US and Japan.
The prime minister said growth would not only help India and China but the global economy as a whole.
Nath, a strong and influential voice for the developed world in the global trade talks, said the global economic agenda in the future could well be set by India and China - a far cry from the days when the world would say: "When America sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold".
He said while the world viewed China and India as rivals in many respects, the two countries were pushing for energy and infrastructure projects in Africa and Latin America, and could drive the growth of these two regions in the future.
There is no doubt Dr Singh, who visited Beijing for the first time and saw showpiece infrastructure projects of the Olympic Games, has come back an ardent admirer of China for the way it was managing its developmental problems.
"China has become the world's manufacturing workshop. It's a phenomenal story and that is what development should be about," the prime minister told the accompanying media team. "China's achievements are quite remarkable. There is a lot we can learn."
Nath, on his part, is convinced this was the "most successful" of official visits that Manmohan Singh had made to date since the reform-minded economist-turned-politician became the nation's prime minister in May 2004.
"The Chinese regarded him highly, with Premier Wen Jiabao even telling him that he was the most popular of global figures among the Chinese netizens as a recent survey showed," the trade minister said.
This was reflected in Chinese leaders breaking protocol to show their personal regard and admiration for him - like when Wen came out of the state guesthouse in the freezing cold of Beijing to see off Dr Manmohan Singh. Ahead of a meeting with Dr Singh in November 2006, Chinese President Hu Jintao had remarked: "When India and China and shake hands, the whole world will sit up and watch." The Indian leadership now firmly believes the time for such an impact has arrived.

[Brian Baldwin]

That'll last just until China doesn't hold it's end of the bargain. Like they did with us.

[Beetle]

I hope you are right. We used to be able to trust that India would side with us (even with thier commie trends) because they had issues with China.

[Brian Baldwin]

A very long post. But very important to this current situation.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1955059/posts

INDIA’S IMPERATIVES FOR AN ACTIVE HEDGING STRATEGY AGAINST CHINA
By Dr. Subhash Kapila
Introductory Observations
China and India are indisputably two powerful Asian nations and with both aspiring to attain global power status. This in itself carries the seeds of future competitive rivalries if not adversarial and conflictual potential. The latter element gets reinforced when it is taken into view the fact that China and India share an over 4000 km long border which China disputes.
China’s border dispute with India is not just about the realignment of the border here and there. Its magnitude and extent is colossal. In the North in India’s Ladakh region, China is in illegal occupation of India territory of the size of Switzerland. In India’s North-East periphery, China is rigidly claiming the whole of India’s Arunachal Pradesh – a territory which in terms of size approximates the size of Austria.
Hence any discussion of China’s border dispute is not about mere border realignments along the Himalayan frontiers. China’s border disputes with India pertain to illegal occupation of Indian Territory of the size of Switzerland and a persistent claim to Indian Territory of the size of Austria.
The strategically naive Indian political leadership aided by an equally strategically naïve Indian media imbued with romanticizing about China has not realistically projected to the Indian public the colossal magnitude of the Sino-Indian border dispute.
Implicit in the magnitude of the Sino-Indian border dispute is an equally colossal magnitude of the insurmountability of the resolution of the Sino-Indian border dispute. This is evident that even before a dialogue can take place, China has so far not taken the preliminary steps to exchange border alignment maps with India. This is a strategic reality about China which the Indian political leadership must educate the Indian public if they wish to avoid nemesis catching up with them as it caught up with Nehru in 1962.
The barometeric reading of any China-India partnership, political or strategic, cannot be read from the increase in high level political exchanges or the exponential increase in trade relations. An accurate reading has to be provided by China by meaningful and substantive movement on the vital border issue.
After every high level political visit to India or China by their political leaders the repetitive jargon by both sides is that the process will be accelerated. This is plain hogwash and the political spin-masters lead the public to believe that a resolution of the border dispute is around the corner. Another thought that is marketed to the Indian public is that China does not make any dramatic breakthroughs but does things incrementally.
In this author’s last paper “China: The Imperatives of the Strategic Breakthrough with India” SAAG Paper No. 2541 dated 08 January, 2008, it was stressed that “India cannot wait endlessly for incremental changes in its foreign policy towards India”. And that holds good more forcefully after the lusterless and inconsequential visit to China of the Indian Prime Minister last week. China’s political leadership did not concede anything to India.
A six page “Vision Statement for the 21st Century” signed by the Chinese and Indian Prime Minister was just an exercise in rhetorical juggery to further obfuscate the issues that divide China and India.
Sadly, India’s foreign policy stances towards China have been more tactical rather than strategic in content. In such a stance more is read on the turn of a phrase by the Chinese leaders rather than an analysis of China’s strategic intentions.
While India must continue striving for a stable, cooperative and friendly relationship with China it needs to take a long term and strategic view of both China’s intentions and capabilities and laterally China’s moves in India’s contiguous regions.
A sound China policy, strategic in content, must essentially incorporate and give primacy to its national security interests and not to tactical and incremental gains thrown as crumbs by China to India’s political leadership
This paper attempts to examine the main theme of this paper under the following heads:
China-India Contentious Issues: Boundary Problem Not the Only Issue
India’s Imperatives for an Active Hedging Strategy Against China
India’s Hedging Strategy: Essential Components
India Must Play the Tibet Card
United States – India Strategic Partnership Must be Reinforced
India Should Cultivate Substantial Strategic Partnerships on China’s Peripheries
India’s Differentials with China in Strategic Assets Should be Narrowed
China-India Contentious Issues: Boundary Problem Not the Only Issue
China-India boundary dispute is presently the main issue but it is not the only issue that will make relations between China and India contentious in the future.
China and India in their trajectory towards global power status can be expected to jostle with each other for political and strategic influence both in India’s contiguous regions and regions further afield. One already sees this in evidence with China persisting in the China-Pakistan strategic nexus and India’s quite successful “Look East” policies and the attempts to wean away Myanmar from China’s orbit. As China and India intensify such moves an element of not only contention but an element of covert conflict cannot be discounted.
China and India are both currently engaged in building up their energy security reserves and potential. China and India are scouring all over the globe to garner every conceivable oil and natural gas reserves. China did not respond positively to India’s calls for complementarities of effort in this direction as joint efforts.
The contention element in the pursuance of energy security carries many dimensions ranging from economics, political and more importantly strategic. It is not only the garnering of energy supplies at source by China but also the safe and secure moving of such supplies to China by sea and land pipelines. When it comes to the strategic aspect, China is faced with the prospect of India sitting securely and squarely astride the sea-lanes that such Chinese oil supplies must traverse. It is not a welcome prospect for China.
Moving towards global power status, China and India both are faced with the daunting task of the management of their relationships with the existing global power centers. A lot of strategic and political jostling by China and India can be expected as they attempt to change or manage existing global strategic alignments. China’s and India’s national security interests are likely to collide as they pursue their respective national aims.
In view of such contentious issues likely to pervade in China-India relations in the future, China would be less and less inclined to resolve its boundary dispute with India.
The Chinese reluctance has been analyzed in detail in this author’s paper “China: The Strategic Reluctance on Boundary Settlement with India. SAAG Paper No. 2023 dated 13.11.2006. The strategic importance of Tawang to China, which is China’s present demand on India as Chinese territory, also stands highlighted in this paper.
What would be the end result of all the contentious issues discussed above? The short answer is that the trust deficit between China and India is likely to increase. China would continue outwardly to display its readiness to build cooperative relations and a partnership with India, but in parallel, China can be expected to limit India strategically and impede India’s growth towards global power status.
India’s Imperatives for an Active Hedging Strategy against China
The term “hedging” seems to have crept into strategic and political terminology with specific reference to the United States policy responses in relations with China. Instead of an outright balance of power or containment policies, “hedging strategy” involves a dual combination of both “engagement” and an indirect balancing policy by building up relationships with third countries which could be used as future leverages against the country intended when one’s own relationship with that country deteriorates.
Hedging strategies are called into play when a country cannot decipher the intentions, motives or policy attitudes of another country. By using a mixture of engagement and indirect balancing, a nation is virtually taking out an “insurance policy” strategically against future risks.
China in the past few years and more lately post-1998 and post-9/11 has been following hedging strategies against India. India’s counter responses have been absent or muted at best.
The state of China-India relations today is that India feels helpless and unsure of China’s intentions and peaceful designs when contemporary Chinese policies in South Asia are taken into account and the growing Chinese hardening of stances on the boundary issue with particular reference to Arunachal Pradesh and Tawang.
India therefore needs to put into effect a well-crafted “hedging strategy” against China to send a strong message to China that China-India relations in the future will be a two-way street, strategically.
India’s Hedging Strategy: Essential Components
Hedging strategies to be successful should be aimed at bringing about with their implementation a change in the other countries thinking and attitudes and a drawback from policies that impinge on the strategic sensitivities of the other party.
Keeping this intent in mind, it is felt that the following should comprise the essential components of any active Indian hedging strategy against China:
India Must Not Hesitate to Play the Tibet Card United States – India Strategic Partnership Needs to be Reinforced India Should Cultivate Substantive Strategic Partnerships on China’s Periphery India’s Differentials With China in Strategic Assets Needs to be Narrowed India Must Not Hesitate to Play the Tibet Card
Tibet was a spiritual and peaceful kingdom until the Chinese military occupation in 1950. What followed thereafter has been genocide of the Tibetan nation and a deliberate and well-orchestrated effort by China to change the demographics of Tibet by wholesale influx of Han Chinese.
Nehru’s strategic blunders led to the gifting away of Tibet to China by India without a demur. In one stroke India had obliterated a “buffer state” vital for India’s national security.
But does this strategic blunder have to be perpetuated ad-nauseum. In India if the “Tibet Card” is mentioned any time in discourse it sends a shiver down the spine of the Indian policy establishment. The 1962 syndrome still seems to plague the psyche of the Indian policy establishment.
There should be no Indian acquiescence as exhibited even during the recent visit of the Indian Prime Minister to China of Tibet’s status as part of China. If nothing else at least silence and ambiguity should be maintained by India on this issue.
Whenever Chinese leaders visit India, peaceful protests by Tibetan organizations are brutally put down and suppressed by the Indian State machinery. Is India a tributary state of China where China’s sensitivities have to be borne in mind as uppermost?
While the historical damage on the Tibet issue cannot be undone, India should now commence playing the “Tibet Card” as part of its hedging strategy against China. “Real politik” demands it and nations aspiring for global power status do not shirk from such choices, however hard.
One could go further by demanding that in any future resolution of the boundary issue with China, Tibetan representatives can be insisted for inclusion.
Importantly, India should come out actively against China’s attempts to fudge the issue of the present Dalai Lama’s successor. A sustained campaign on this issue would be very much in order.
United States-India Strategic Partnership Must be Reinforced
The United States is the unipolar global power with unparalleled political, economic and strategic strengths. United States global predominance is expected to last for the better portion of the 21st Century.
In terms of strategic perceptions, both the United States and India have strong convergences on China. Both are uncertain of China’s peaceful intentions and are wary of its policy moves. Both United States and India feel that China needs to be engaged but feel that prudence demands that hedging strategies too need to be put into practice because of the uncertainties that cloud China’s intentions due to a lack of transparency.
Strategically, the United States flanks China on the East and India flanks China in the South and the only nation which could checkmate China’s penetration into the Indian Ocean. Taking together both present a formidable strategic proposition to China.
A strong US-India Strategic Partnership, without any containment measures but with active hedging strategies could serve the national security interests of both the United States and India.
This strategic partnership need to be reinforced and not be held hostage to the eventual outcome of the Indo-US Nuclear Deal.
India Should Cultivate Substantive Strategic Partnerships on China’s Peripheries
A string of substantive strategic partnerships which can be forged by India with nations on China’s peripheries could provide future leverages to India, not as Indian-led alliance members but as political and military counter-weights which China could ill ignore.
Top priority needs to be accorded by India to forge strategic partnerships with Vietnam, Myanmar and Afghanistan. India needs to assist these countries to build up their military capabilities and potential by military hardware supplies on the pattern of China’s “friendship prices”, including Prithvi and Brahmos missiles. Central Asian Republics on China’s Western peripheries need also to be wooed by India.
In East Asia, countries like Japan and Australia can be candidates for enhanced military –to-military contacts.
In South East Asia, Singapore is the prime candidate with whom India already enjoys a significant defense relationship. Indonesia too needs to be drawn into a more substantive defense relationship.
India’s “military diplomacy” should outweigh economic diplomacy in the regions discussed. The intended message is not the military containment of China, but getting together with like-minded countries with similar strategic perceptions.
India’s Differentials with China in Strategic Assets Should be Narrowed
Some analysts believe that hedging strategies are the options of weaker nations in a strategic face-off. It necessarily does not have to be so, otherwise the United States and China would not have resorted to such strategies. But one could believe that nations resorting to such strategies with substantial strategic assets at their deposal multiply the end effect of hedging strategies.
India’s hedging strategy against China would call for a narrowing down of India’s differentials with China in terms of strategic assets inventories. India is far behind in this respect as a result of successive Indian Government succumbing to external pressures of not increasing India’s arsenals.
The building of India’s strategic arsenals is not only dictated by the requirements of a hedging strategy alone but also as an important adjunct of India’s aspiration to emerge as a global power.
Concluding Observations
India has a historical aversion to enter military alliances or multilateral security mechanisms which provide a sense of security against strategic uncertainties. If that is not an option available to India’s policy establishment, then the next workable option is to resort to a hedging strategic against countries like China which has not shown any positive signs to lessen the strategic uncertainties that it poses to India.
India needs to recognize the strategic reality that as it transcends the trajectory towards global power stations, it cannot hope for “platonic” strategic or political relationships. ‘Realpolitik’ would be and should be the major determinant of India’s policy formulation. And, where national security interests are stake India should not shirk from any strategies that further her security interests. A hedging strategic against China actively pursued has now become an imperative and should be recognized such by India’s political leaders. (The author is an International Relations and Strategic Affairs analyst. He is the Consultant, Strategic Affairs with South Asia Analysis Group. Email:drsubhashkapila@yahoo.com)

[vector7]

PM Modi in China: 24 key agreements signed between India-China

By ECONOMICTIMES.COM | 15 May, 2015, 06.34PM IST
25 comments |Post a Comment



NEW DELHI: Attempting to boost ties with China, India on Friday signed twenty-four key agreements with the country, during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's three-day visit.

From skill development and railways to smart cities and education exchange programme, the agreements are meant to enhance India's ties with China. We take a look at the details of the agreements that India and China have signed:

1. Protocols between India and China on the establishment of consulates-general at Chengdu and Chennai and the extension of the consular district of the consulate general of India in Guanzhou to include Jiangxi province.

2. MoU between the ministry of skill development and entrepreneurship of India and the ministry of human resources and social security of China on cooperation in the field of vocational education and skill development.

3. Action plan on cooperation in setting up of the Mahatma Gandhi National Institute for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship in Ahmedabad/Gandhinagar in Gujarat.

4. MoU between India and China on consultative mechanism for cooperation in trade negotiations.

5.MoU on cooperation between the ministry of external affairs of India and international department of the central committee of the Communist Party of China.

6.Action plan between the National Railway Administration of China and the ministry of railways of India on enhancing cooperation in the railway sector. (2015-16).

7. MoU on education exchange programme.

8. MoU between the ministry of mines of India and the ministry of land and resources of China on the cooperation in the mining and minerals sector.

9. Space Cooperation Outline (2015-2020).

10. Protocol on health and safety regulations on importing Indian rapeseed meal between the export inspection council, ministry of commerce and industry of India and the general administration of quality supervision, inspection and quarantine.

11. MoU between Doordarshan and China Central Television on cooperation in the field of broadcasting.

12. Agreement between the ministry of tourism of India and the national tourism administration of China on cooperation in the field of tourism.

13. MoU on establishing India-China think-tanks forum.

14. MoU between India's Niti Aayog and the Development Research Centre, State Council of China.

15. MoU between India's ministry of earth sciences and the China Earthquake Administration concerning cooperation in the field of earthquake science and earthquake engineering.

16. MoU between India's ministry of earth sciences and the State Oceanic Administration of China on cooperation in the field of ocean science, ocean technology, climate change, polar science and cryosphere.

17. MoU on scientific cooperation between Geological Survey of India, ministry of mines of India and the China Geological Survey, ministry of land and resources of China in geoscience.

18. MoU between the ministry of external affairs of India and ministry of foreign affairs of China on establishment of states/provincial leaders' forum.

19. Agreement on the establishment of sister-state/province relations between state government of Karnataka and provincial government of Sichuan of China.

20. Agreement on establishment of sister-city relations between Chennai and Chongqing of China.

21. Agreement on establishment of sister-city relations between Hyderabad and Qingdao of China.

22. Agreement on establishment of sister-city relations between Aurangabad and Dunhuang of China.

23. MoU between the Indian Council for Cultural Relations and Fudan University on the establishment of a centre for Gandhian and Indian studies.

24. MoU between Indian Council for Cultural Relations and Yunnan Minzu University on the establishment of a yoga college.