China’s war by other means

February 02, 2011

by Ashok K Mehta

Notwithstanding Beijing’s clever talk on relations with New Delhi, the fact remains that China will leave no stone unturned to contain India in order to dominate Asia.

Along with Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, the China factor (perhaps for the first time) crept into the Kashmir discourse last week at a London conference attended mainly by the India-bashing, India-baiting Kashmiri diaspora. It was the Mirwaiz, who during Friday prayers, first mentioned that as China holds portions of Jammu & Kashmir, it is a stakeholder in the Kashmir dispute. The Mirwaiz has met Chinese officials abroad — the last time it was Director of Foreign Affairs Ying Gang at the Human Rights Commission meeting in Geneva in 2009. He has welcomed China’s stapled visa policy for Jammu & Kashmir which, ironically, was the reason he could not visit China.

On a cold and frosty day in London, Kashmiris kept going round and round the Mulberry bush till it came to China when they asked: Why is India envious of China-Pakistan friendship?

The China-Pakistan all-weather strategic alliance against their common adversary India is at least 50 years old and results in mutual benefits. China has nurtured Pakistan with nuclear and conventional weapons, including missiles, and international and diplomatic support to try and wean it away from the US. China supported Pakistan in its 1965 and 1971 wars against India and aided insurgencies in our North-East. China is the only country that does not wag a finger at Pakistan over terrorism. In the UN Security Council, Beijing blocked the naming of Jamaat-ud-Dawa’h as a terrorist organisation. Of all the P5 leaders who visited India in 2010, China’s Prime Minister Wen Jia Bao was the only one to bracket his visit with Pakistan.

Whenever Pakistan is in trouble its leaders rush to Beijing. “China is like going home,” Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari said during a visit to China in December 2010, adding “there is an internal romance with China. We are in love.”

China needs Pakistan to keep India tied down in the region for access to the Indian Ocean and to mineral-rich Afghanistan once American and Nato troops leave. It wants to integrate Pakistan economically with its western Xinjiang region and with Islamabad’s help contain the separatist Uighurs movement. China does not acknowledge nuclear and missile proliferation to Pakistan. Chinese scholars tell Indians: “Yes, we are responsible for Pakistan’s nuclear capability. But that was before we signed the NPT. It has not happened since then… but if it has, we are sorry for it.”

China’s involvement in Jammu & Kashmir is part of the larger China-India rivalry but integral to China’s grand design to access the warm waters of the Indian Ocean through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and Pakistan. The Khunjerab-Gwadar strategic corridor has immense potential if it can be realised. China occupies 43,180 sq km of Jammu & Kashmir — 5,180 sq km of Shaqsgam Valley ceded by Pakistan in 1963 in violation of the Karachi Agreement (1949) and UNCIP (1950), and 37,350 sq km annexed in late-1950s in Ladakh through which it built the strategic West-East link to Tibet through Aksai Chin. Territorially India holds 45 per cent, Pakistan 35 per cent and China 25 per cent of Jammu & Kashmir.

China’s seizure of Aksai Chin and Pakistan gifting Shaqsgam Valley gave China a voice on Jammu & Kashmir. Its position has oscillated between calling for plebiscite to neutrality depending on the play of China-India relations and China’s domestic comfort levels. On Jammu & Kashmir, it says (or used to say) that it will deal with it after New Delhi and Islamabad have resolved the issue.

Chinese words and deeds changed visibly in 2008 after abandoning the policy of ‘lying low and biding time’ due to its economic miracle and impressive military modernisation. India’s own strategic partnership with the US and its Look East policy which Beijing sees as encirclement of China are new drivers of the rivalry when China’s aim is to dominate Asia.

Beijing wants to alter ground rules for the India-China border talks. By excising 1,500 km of border in Jammu & Kashmir and reducing it from 3,488 km to 2,000 km, it is challenging India’s claim that the State is an integral part of India. It has already reneged on the agreed political parameter of ‘not disturbing populated areas’ in the eastern sector. By introducing stapled visas for Jammu & Kashmir and not Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, refusing visa to the Northern Army Commander, aggressive behaviour along the Line of Actual Control and deploying Chinese engineers and PLA in Gilgit-Baltistan, China is upping the ante by ending its neutrality and challenging India’s sovereignty over Jammu & Kashmir, mostly likely trying to ‘trilateralise’ a bilateral dispute. The idea is to further delay the resolution of the border dispute till China becomes so strong that it can dictate the terms of settlement. This has been the trend over the last three decades despite India’s repeated pleas for introducing ‘a sense of urgency’ while China counsels patience and invokes history.

Indian officials label the intrusive policy shift as a covert position since China’s overt stance, they say, has not changed. By lopping off 1,550 km of the border they cannot remove the presence of our troops, they add. China refrained from commenting on last year’s violence in Srinagar unlike Iran which noted that Kashmiris were ‘fighting for their independence’. Mr Wen Jiabao’s remarks while in New Delhi last year on India and Pakistan resolving differences through dialogue and in Islamabad to leave traditional conflicts aside and focus on economic cooperation are used to support the ‘no-shift factor’ in China’s overt policy.

The Chinese wizardry in quotations is legend. Mr Wen Jiabao in 2004 said, “China and India have enjoyed friendly relations over 2,000 years or 99.9 per cent of total time of our interaction. In terms of conflicts, the conflicts between our two countries only lasted two years or less than 0.1 per cent of total time. Even in case of conflicts we could always turn swords into ploughshares.”

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, on the eve of Mr Wen Jiabao’s visit, said that in the last five years he had met China’s President Hu Jintao and the Premier close to 20 times. But there is little to show for it. Earlier he had noted that China was entering South Asia in a concerted manner. The recent arrest of Chinese spies and revelations about Beijing reopening its links with insurgents in the North-East as well as Maoists expose the Chinese.

Mr Wen Jiabao may say conflict between the two countries lasted only 0.1 per cent of the time. But 99.9 per cent of it has been war by other means by Beijing.

source:the Pioneer