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| China turns keen on engaging with India | | | ABID SHAH
New Delhi, Oct 21: Strangely, Beijing has turned out to be more keen than India for a meeting between the Premiers of the two countries. Both Wen Jiabo and Manmohan Singh are slated to attend a conference of the Association of South East Asian Nations, beginning Friday in Thailand. Even as there have been doubts back home about the possibility of a meeting between Manmohan Singh and Wen Jiabo, the Chinese foreign office confirmed on Wednesday evening that the two leaders would meet on Saturday during their Thailand visit to discuss bilateral issues.
From Delhi’s point of view this is a welcome sign. Given China’s recent stridently anti-India moves leading to some sharp verbal exchanges between the two countries, more so through their media, there was a little chance left for the two sides to redeem things or at least to agree to attempt to do so.
Yet experts here feel that beneath China’s recent tough positioning vis-à-vis the border and other issues there has always been a desire to resume serious engagement with New Delhi. The Ministry of External Affairs, mainly its Secretary, Ms Nirupama Rao, did not miss this and, thus, Indian reaction to Chinese muscle flexing, whether through incursions in Ladakh, or claims over Arunachal Pradesh, was always measured, balanced and even marked with enormous restrain.
But the question arises why Chinese want to talk to Delhi. And in case they were resorting to unlikely moves to lend urgency to the need for talks between the two countries what they would like to gain from this. There are no precise answers for the moment to these questions. Yet one of the observer points out that Beijing sees Manmohan Singh as their best bet in whose rein the Sino-India trade has been galloping at a much faster rate than ever before. And this among other reasons is also because the Prime Minister has been greatly enamoured by China’s economic liberalisation and the enormous growth it resulted in.
A proof of this is that during the Maharashtra polls held for now outgoing State Assembly Manmohan Singh expressed the wish to turn Mumbai into Shanghai. Yet the situation around this time’s elections for the same Assembly was totally changed with their being held amid the backdrop of Chinese incursions in Ladakh and Beijing’s objections to Manmohan Singh’s visit to Arunachal Pradesh to address election rallies held in the North-Eastern State alongside. Moreover, India under Manmohan Singh took care of not letting Tibetan protestors into China during the time of Beijing Olympics games despite the attempts by refugee youth from Tibet to cross borders.
Somehow the outcome of these friendly gestures has not been along the expected lines from New Delhi’s point of view and this resulted in indignation as reflected in Indian media reports in the wake of aggressive positioning by China against India around the time of China’s national day that was observed with a massive military display on October 1. Thus, there has been a public outcry here that aimed at pulling the Government out from complacency and pay attention to the sanctity of frontiers whether in the Northern or Eastern Himalayas.
China not only took umbrage to the fast changing public opinion against it throughout India but in actual terms, as per the experts of Sino-Indian affairs, this also threatened huge demand for Chinese goods in India. In some cases like the sale of China-made Diwali toys, fireworks and crackers that suffered a slimming this time as also undercover supply of Chinese goods to India through Ladakh border in the wake of increased Indian surveillance after Chinese intrusions, China could well sense that its business interests could take a beating if angry exchanges between the two countries go on for long.
Yet there is no denying the fact that China and India have a long-standing border dispute that the two Asian giants have to resolve if they are to be taken in a better esteem by the rest of the world, including the West, mainly Europe whose prestige has been so great as to render most of the third world into virtual client States.
Former diplomat and an assertive spokesman for India’s cause, Mr G Parthasarthy is of the point of view that “China settles its border disputes only when a weakened neighbour succumbs to its pressures.” In an article recently published in London, Mr Parthasarthy has criticised the present day New Delhi ‘mandarins’ for their inability to be taken seriously by China and exhorted to match China in military might as well as economic growth to assert better. Yet the veteran diplomat does not want to foreclose option of talks with China and says that it is not India alone that has boundary disputes with China since Beijing still has disputes on its maritime boundaries with Japan, Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines, Brunei and Malaysia.
Mr Parthasarthy says that the 1980s was the right time that was missed by Indian side when China was serious about solving border problem with India. The reason for this being that was the time when China was embarking upon economic liberalisation and, thus, was keen to lessen the baggage of old hostilities lingering for whatever reasons. This might have been the case at that point of time but as of now in Manmohan Singh China has an advocate of a shared economic template and, thus, through the next few days all eyes are on the Prime Minister as to how he tackles the dragon.
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