Opinion Chinese takeaway

Thinking of the parallel with the United States,two important political factors transformed Delhi’s ties with Washington during the last decade. These were Bush administration’s decisions to deliberately shun any involvement in the Indo-Pak dispute on Jammu and Kashmir,and redefine the international non-proliferation rules to revive civilian nuclear energy cooperation with India.

Might there be a similar template that could unlock the vast potential for political cooperation between India and China? That would be the question that External Affairs Minister S. M. Krishna will be exploring in Beijing this week amidst the celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations.

Unlike the United States,which is a distant superpower,rising China is right next door. When you share borders,that too disputed ones,with such a large country,bilateral problems multiply. Having a great power as a neighbour also makes it absolutely necessary to sustain engagement at all time and pursue cooperation wherever possible.

One expectation of India’s China diplomacy during the last decade was that an early resolution of the boundary dispute would liberate the bilateral relationship to pursue ambitious political goals. Many rounds of negotiations later,that hope has been tempered for now.

India also bets that growing commercial ties would lead to economic interdependence with China and that in turn will impart a new momentum to the political relationship. That too appears a long-term prospect.

In the short term,there are many disputes on the economic front — from Beijing’s massive trade surpluses to Indian restrictions on Chinese investments,and from the value of Chinese currency to Delhi’s restrictive visa policy — that need to be addressed. That brings us back to a possible list of subjects for political cooperation.

Asian solidarity

One possibility is to return to those old slogans on Asian solidarity. Delhi and Beijing have often thrown anti-imperialist rhetoric at the cracks in the bilateral relationship.

Anti-Western ideology has rarely been a strong enough glue to bind India and China together. Both India and China know the value of good relations with the United States and consequences of picking up a fight with the United States.

One way out for Delhi and Beijing is to put greater emphasis on building a new Asian order. Sino-Indian cooperation in constructing pan-Asian institutions has,however,been elusive.

The reasons are not easy to discern. The focus of current regionalism in the great continent is East Asia,where China’s geopolitical primacy is unquestionable and India’s role remains secondary at best.

Talking Pakistan

Another approach to trust-building between Beijing and Delhi is to focus on the main disputes in the shared periphery in the subcontinent. What subject could be more important than Pakistan,which has been at the very heart of Indian political grievances against China?

If China has consistently used Pakistan to keep India off balance and went to the extent of providing it with nuclear weapons technology,why would Beijing want to change that policy now? Does not a rising India make Pakistan all the more important for Chinese strategy for the subcontinent?

Perhaps. Perhaps not. The task of Indian diplomacy is to find out. A number of factors could potentially change the Chinese calculus on Pakistan. The only instrument that Pakistan now has in its effort to trip up India is terrorism and religious extremism. Beijing should have no problem with this but for the fact that some of these forces don’t necessarily remain India-centred; some of them turn their wrath on others,including China. The recent turbulence in Xinjiang,China’s far-western Muslim majority province,is certainly getting Beijing to pay more attention to the sources of international terrorism in Pakistan.

At a time when China’s relations with the United States are uncertain,Beijing is surely concerned about the Pakistan army’s deepening political,economic and military dependence on Washington. Whether they express them to Indians or not,the Chinese surely have concerns about the Pakistan army’s capacity to defend territorial sovereignty against either the Islamic militants or the American military.

The rapidly deteriorating situation in Pakistan and its long-term consequences for regional stability demand a serious conversation between Delhi and Beijing. Whether China is ready to talk Pakistan or not,Delhi loses nothing by proposing greater cooperation with

Beijing in stabilising the shared periphery between the two nations. This is probably what Krishna was pointing to in his speech in Beijing on Tuesday when he said Sino-Indian engagement with Pakistan need not be a zero sum game.

raja.mohan@expressindia.com