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Journalism of Courage
The meeting between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Chinese premier Wen Jiabao on Tuesday in Vientiane should be an occasion to celebrate a rare upswing in bilateral relations as well as engineer a breakthrough in the boundary talks.
Both New Delhi and Beijing are determined to make Wen’s visit to New Delhi in the first quarter of next year a landmark in bilateral relations. To achieve that objective, the two sides will have to give a political push to the current talks on the boundary dispute.
Sino-Indian relations have never been as good as they are today. Singh and Wen, who are meeting for the first time, know that the best is yet to come. Bilateral trade has galloped this year to a record US $ 12 billion but the potential is much larger.
More important, there is a growing level of political comfort between the leaderships and a new will in both capitals to solve long-standing political disputes.
That Singh and Wen are meeting in Laos is equally significant. For decades now Indo-China, of which Laos is an important part, has been seen as an arena of political rivalry between New Delhi and Beijing.
As they expand their reach in Indo-China and South East Asia, New Delhi and Beijing have avoided loading it with a sense of a mutual strategic rivalry and treat it as healthy economic competition for regional integration.
The new Chinese leaders—President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen—are well disposed towards India. They are committed to improving ties with all the neighbours in Asia and reassuring them that they have nothing to fear from a rising China.
It was Hu and Wen who produced a new framework for Sino-Indian relations during the then Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s visit to China in June 2003. The visit led to a resolution of the long-standing Sikkim dispute, the elevation of the boundary negotiations to a political level and the initiation of a dialogue on comprehensive economic cooperation.
The two sides had agreed then that the boundary dispute would now be dealt on the basis of ‘‘give and take.’’ Considerable progress appears to have been made in the four rounds of talks since then.
The change of government in New Delhi has made no difference in the Indian determination to transform ties with Beijing. The two rounds of boundary talks under the Congress-led government have sent the much needed signals of continuity in New Delhi.
Nevertheless, the talks on the boundary dispute appear to have entered a difficult phase where the ‘‘give and take’’ on both sides has to be sorted out. Both sides have agreed on the principle of ‘‘mutual adjustments’’ on the boundary.
But the size and character of these adjustments are proving to be hard nuts to crack. It has been widely understood that an east-west swap would be the broad basis for a boundary settlement between the two countries.
Under such a potential swap, India will give up claims to the Aksai Chin plateau in the western sector and China would give up its demands for Arunachal Pradesh in the eastern sector.
Beyond the inter-sectoral adjustment, China is now said to be seeking substantive territorial adjustments in the eastern sector as well. Beijing’s desire to gain control of the Tawang Tract in Arunachal Pradesh has been widely advertised.
India, however, will find it difficult to hand over this piece of real estate—which holds one of ancient Buddhist monasteries and is also the place where the Indian Army fought some of the bloodiest battles in the 1962 war with China.
Singh and Wen will now have to find some innovative political ways to harmonise the contending perceptions on Tawang.
It is not that the two leaders will engage in a negotiation on the nitty gritty of the boundary dispute in Vientiane.
But they need to give a broad political direction to their negotiators on how to address some of the tricky issues in the boundary negotiation.
