FTN: China a bigger threat than Pakistan for India

BORDERING ON SUSPICION: The panelists said no one in the country was looking at a war between India and China.

          

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Chinese intrusions on the Indian territory have been increasing but India seems powerless to stop them. Earlier this year, a Chinese helicopter violated Indian airspace in Ladakh. Recently, the word 'China' was painted on rocks near the Ladakh border.

The Government says these intrusions take place because the India-China border is not clearly demarcated in this area. But China does not accept what India believes is the existing border.

The Ministry of External Affairs has also said that these incursions are not an issue and violations of airspace are simply navigational blunders by helicopters because the borders are not well-defined.

And that leads us to the question that was being asked on CNN-IBN's Face The Nation: Is China India's greatest threat in the region?

To try and answer the question on the panel of experts were CPI (M) leader Nilotpal Basu; Defence Analyst and Rear Admiral (Retd) Raja Menon; and former diplomat G Parthasarathy.

At the beginning of the debate 90 per cent of the people who voted in agreed that China was India's greatest threat in the region, and only 10 per cent disagreed.

China: India's greatest threat?

G Parthasarathy kick-started the debate saying, "With regard to the Ministry of External Affairs, I can say that they are making the same mistake which Jawaharlal Nehru made – pretending a problem does not exist when it does. In 2002, we were preparing to exchange maps with China over what is the Line of Control. China backed off because they did not want to define the Line of Control then. Then we went into a new pattern of border talks. After 2005, they have become very aggressive on their claims in Arunachal Pradesh, saying the whole of Arunachal is South Tibet and they are pushing this in international forums as well. Now since the Line of Control is not demarcated, the Ministry of External Affairs is saying it cannot be regarded as intrusions from the Chinese point of view."

He added that the fact of the matter was that the number of incidences and the level of penetration after 2005 have increased and Chinese troops deployment have increased.

He further stated, "There are statements on Chinese websites which say that they will divide India into 30 parts. The latest is that they have been training an army in Manipur."

The reality is that China wants to expand itself geo-politically in South Asia. The question is: Is there a difference in perceptions in the way defence forces see it and in the way diplomats see it especially since the Army Chief has been saying that strong measures have to be taken against these incursions.

Raja Menon said that a problem like this with China is potentially dangerous.

"The Chinese have a saying called 'teaching a lesson'. It is a part of their strategic vocabulary. As far as they are concerned, 1962 was not about grabbing territory but it was about teaching India a lesson. They don't believe that we should talk, because until one finishes talking, one can't use force. They feel that using force is part of negotiations, so we are in a dangerous situation here," he said.

He said that most armed forces around the world were brought up to believe that war was another form of diplomacy but that there was a thin dividing line. For the Chinese, he said, that dividing line did not exist.

"Mao had said that armed forces and negotiations were compatible, on the same plane," Menon stated.

Parthasarathy added here that the way China was supplying nuclear weapons technology to Pakistan, equipping Pakistan's air force with 150 front range aircraft, showed that China obviously has a policy of containment of India.

India playing into America's hands?

Parthasarathy stated, "All I am saying is that let's be realistic and not keeping saying Hindi-Chini Bhai-Bhai, that they are our comrades."

Communist Parties in India have an ideological affinity to China but did they feel now that the national interest of both the countries was on a collision course?

To this Nilotpal Basu said, "I think in no way can the patriotism of Indian communists be questioned. In 1962, we had pointed out that there was a border dispute between the two countries which needed to be resolved through a dialogue process. Unfortunately, though China has come around to seeing our point of view, in the last few months we have been hearing this extreme China bashing by India. I think it is coincidental with the increasing tendency towards multi-polarity in the world today. There are forces in India which want the global uni-polar architecture to continue even though Americans are losing a lot of leverage they had earlier, post the financial meltdown."

"China has resolved border disputes with 27 countries and we hope that saner council will prevail and we should be able to resolve our dispute peacefully through a dialogue process so that the full scope of the multi-polar world can be got. There are so many forums on which India and China can come together - like WTOs and climate change forums - and contribute more positively to the architecture of the contemporary world," he added.

What he was trying to say was that India was playing into America's hands.

Parthasarathy said, "Let me put it this way - it is China which has endeavoured to spoil our relations with the US. Let's not forget they teamed up with Nixon in 1971 in Mao Tse Tung's time. Secondly, I agree with Nilotpal Basu that we have to engage with the neighbour - especially a powerful one which is also a permanent member of the UN Security Council. But we cannot ignore Chinese behaviour when they lay claim to an entire state in India, when their military strength leads close to our deployments at the border, when they are arming Pakistan and when they go to the United Nations and block the declaration that Lashkar-e-Toiba is a terrorist organisation. What has China got in common with the Lashkar-e-Toiba to block it in the UN?"

"Let us be very, very clear that China is a great country, a powerful neighbour and we have to live in peace, we have to seek cooperation. But if China plays balance of power politics and it plays according to its own rules, then we have to look out for our own interests," he added.

Parthasarathy said, "We need a multi-polar world, I agree with Mr Basu, but not on Chinese terms."

China ruthlessly pursuing own interest?

The panelists said China is not a democracy, it plays by its own rules and it doesn't care about international rules.

There was an article which came out in the China International Institute of Strategic Studies which said: “India should be broken up into 20-30 independent nation states by China, that the Indian state is nothing but a Hindu religion state based on caste exploitation, that China should support ULFA and that there should be another Bengali nation next to Bangladesh.”