China in South Asia for Peace & Stability?

Many security analysts have often asked the question as to why India's rise is benign whereas China's rise seen as a threat? However, recently, I came across an entirely different argument as to how Chinese rise & rising influence in South Asia can bring about peace. A recent article written by a former foreign service officer argued that "the rise in China's influence in the region can lead to peace and regional stability provided we [India] eschew outdated notions of "sphere of influence."" I fail to understand the logic. He went on to argue that "On the contrary, a struggle will inevitably ensue if India chooses to contest China's growing influence since the quintessence of that choice will be that India is prepared to sacrifice peace and stability in the region in its quest for regional primacy. Our South Asian neighbours will only see our choice as a quest for regional hegemony and they cannot be expected to accommodate hubris."

Now that China has become the second largest economic power, should we sit back & just relax and say our destiny, our future rest in the hands of China? The Chinese being the second largest power, will have greater interests across the continents, but does this mean India adopt a defeatist strategy and say our future lies with China and China alone? Is that a good idea?

The full article is available here.



South Asia beckons China

M.K. Bhadrakumar

A peaceful South Asia can be built only if India works with China. The alternative will be war and mayhem and history provides many examples.

An Assistant Secretary dealing with South Asia in the State Department in Washington a decade-and-a-half ago once took justifiable pride that she only needed a clutch of minutes to get the Indians all worked up into a tizzy. What the loquacious U.S. diplomat, who was an old India-Pakistan hand familiar with the human frailties (and vanities) in our part of the world, meant was that Indians never bothered to crosscheck facts when they came across an unpalatable thought.

She had a point. And her adage holds good. When an opinion piece by the U.S. strategic analyst, Selig Harrison, appeared in the New York Times recently alleging large-scale Chinese military presence in the Northern Areas of Pakistan, history seemed to repeat itself. Our tribal instincts resurfaced. It still remains foggy on what basis Mr. Harrison painted the apocalyptic vision of war drums beating distantly in the obscure Himalayan mountains. The regions beyond the northern edges of Kashmir comprise tangled, inaccessible mountains and it is highly improbable that Mr. Harrison wrote on the basis of any first-hand information regarding the 22 secret tunnels in which 11,000 Chinese soldiers belonging to the People's Liberation Army reportedly huddle uneasily alongside stockpiles of deadly missiles that could be launched against India. (Actually, the Pakistani authorities have invited him to go to that picturesque region and take a good look himself.)

Not much ingenuity is needed to discern that Mr. Harrison based his opinion piece on intelligence sources. All he would say later was that his story was based on “western and regional intelligence sources.” Who could be these sources? Politics should, after all, begin with asking a few blunt questions. Were these sources Pakistani, Afghan, Iranian, Russian or Chinese who guided Mr. Harrison? Seems illogical. Were they Indian sources based in Delhi — or Indian “analysts” comfortably located in Singapore? Indeed, by a process of elimination, we arrive at the conclusion that the greatest likelihood seems to be that Mr. Harrison's sources were American. This of course is by no means casting aspersions on Mr. Harrison's integrity. In fact, he has been most candid about his thesis when he concluded his opinion piece with a stirring call to the U.S. administration. He wrote: “The United States is uniquely situated to play a moderating role in Kashmir, given its growing economic and military ties with India and Pakistan's aid dependence on Washington.

“Washington should press New Delhi to resume autonomy negotiations with Kashmiri separatists. Success would put pressure on Islamabad for comparable concessions in Free Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan … Precisely because the Gilgit-Baltistan region is so important to China, the U.S., India and Pakistan should work together to make sure that it is not overwhelmed … by the Chinese behemoth.”

Both Islamabad and Beijing have since repeatedly and unequivocally refuted the contents of Mr. Harrison's article. Top Indian officials who have full access to intelligence have also off-the-record given their estimation that any Chinese presence in the Gilgit-Baltistan region could be related to flood-relief work and some development projects and it doesn't involve Chinese regulars of the PLA. They are also inclined to accept the Chinese assurance that there is no change in Beijing's stand on the Kashmir issue, including the part of Kashmir that is under Indian governance.

Equally, in their assessment, Chinese nationals are not taking up habitation in Gilgit-Baltistan, but come to the region from time to time to build infrastructure projects and they go away upon the completion of those projects. Delhi regards the figure of $1.7 billion as Chinese investment in Northern Areas and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir as far-too inflated a figure. As a senior Indian official put it “They [the Chinese] are a business-like people and they won't invest in that kind of area like that.”

Evidently, there is a glaring disconnect in New Delhi between those who know and generally prefer not to speak and those who rave but have no flair or patience for checking the facts on the ground. The problem with disregard of facts is that incrementally you withdraw into a smaller and smaller coil of rage and ultimately resign yourself to a sense of powerlessness, frustration and defeat. Should that be the fate of a great country like India that has survived for millennia?

Ultimately, it all boils down to China's presence in the South Asian region and, as the Prime Minister put it the other day, “we have to reflect on this reality, we have to be aware of this.” The issue is: what is the nature of the “reality” so that we can come to terms with it?

The reality is China's growing power and influence that need to be tackled in regional politics. The security of our region and its future will significantly depend on the choices that China makes. Having said that, we too have choices to make. Even if India fails to overtake China economically, it will nonetheless be the second-strongest regional power and will be the most serious constraint on Chinese power. That is to say, the manner and the directions in which India chooses to use its power is going to be no less important than China's actions in their impact on regional stability.

Of course, our choices are going to be harder than China's. The heart of the matter is that a stable, peaceful South Asia can only be built if India works with China. The alternative will be war and mayhem and history provides many examples. The point is, there is a fundamental choice involved here — the choice between “influence” and stability. India and China are on the same side — both want influence and neither seeks instability.

However, we cannot insist that regional stability is synonymous with India's primacy. The international community will only mock at us if we do so in this era of globalisation. As, for that matter, was the region in a blissful state of stability even in the halcyon days when India's influence reigned supreme? In short, the rise in China's influence in the region can lead to peace and regional stability provided we eschew outdated notions of “sphere of influence.” On the contrary, a struggle will inevitably ensue if India chooses to contest China's growing influence since the quintessence of that choice will be that India is prepared to sacrifice peace and stability in the region in its quest for regional primacy. Our South Asian neighbours will only see our choice as a quest for regional hegemony and they cannot be expected to accommodate hubris.

Alas, a segment of our strategic community seems to think that South Asia can be peaceful only under Indian tutelage. It perceives China's desire to expand its influence in the region as inherently threatening. But what is the alternative? China has already grown to be the second biggest economic power in the world. With such economic power, political and strategic power inexorably follows. To quote from a recent thoughtful essay by well-known Australian scholar Hugh White, “China's power, controlled by China's government, must be dealt with as a simple fact of international politics. If Americans deny the right to exercise its power internationally within the same limits and norms that they accept for themselves, they can hardly be surprised if China decides not to accept the legitimacy of American power and starts pushing back. These days it can push back pretty hard.”

Again, all evidence so far points to a distinct pattern that China wishes to expand its influence in South Asia without breaking international law or the rules set out in the Charter of the United Nations. China has not used its power improperly. The fact that China has growing ambitions to develop communication links via South Asia to the world market bypassing the Malacca Strait (which is an American “choke-point”) or that China aspires to explore the vast untapped potential for regional trade and investment in South Asia do not make the Chinese policies illegitimate. Our dilemma is that we are used to exercising a level of regional primacy in the neighbouring countries and we may have come to regard it almost as a mark of our national identity. Clearly, the instinct to “fight” to keep our perceived regional primacy stems from a wrong notion.

The rise of China's influence doesn't have to be a story of India's weakness but can remain a story of Chinese strength. What is it, arguably, that prevents Indian companies even today from spreading wings to the mountains, jungles and beaches of Nepal, Myanmar or Sri Lanka with the gusto with which the Chinese businessmen are doing? Last week, Yunnan commenced direct flight to Colombo. Why is it that a Raipur-Colombo air link remains “uneconomical?”

Nothing like this Chinese “challenge” ever happened before in the South Asian region. Japan or America or Britain could have mounted it in these six decades, but they didn't. But then, they weren't South Asia's neighbours. China is a neighbour.

Rising Chinese Power: A Common Agenda in India-Australia Dialogue?

While the recent attacks against Indian students in Australia will top Indian External Affairs Minister SM Krishna’s agenda in Canberra, India should not lose sight of certain strategic imperatives that could potentially drive the two countries to a closer partnership. Can a rising Chinese power emerge as a striking imperative between New Delhi and Canberra in the coming years?



Joel Fitzgibbon, in the preface to the 2009 Defence White Paper titled, Defending Australia in the Asia Pacific Century: Force 2030, noted that the “biggest changes to our outlook … have been the rise of China, the emergence of India and the beginning of the end of the so-called unipolar movement.”
The white paper added that Chinese rise in the economic, political and military spheres and the resultant regional military modernisation have triggered significant concerns in Australia. More specifically, the defence white paper noted that the Chinese military modernisation could “affect the strategic reach and global postures of the major powers.” It added that the Chinese military will also be the strongest in Asia, with significant margin and will have power projection as one of its major features. The “pace, scope and structure” of such modernisation, the white paper notes, can trigger concern among the Asian neighbours, unless China undertakes some serious confidence building measures among these neighbours. The more serious worry for Australia is the implication of a reduced US strategic presence in the Asia-Pacific that would trigger regional powers to shoulder their own security. These concerns are reflected in a series of research essays and analyses in Australia looking carefully at the growing Chinese power and more importantly at how that power will be used or what kind of an international player would China turn out to be.
The 2007 Australian National Security Report had also highlighted concerns about China. It stated that “the pace and scope of China’s military modernisation, particularly the development of new and disruptive capabilities such as the anti-satellite (ASAT) missile, could create misunderstandings and instability in the region.” However Australian Defence Minister Brendan Nelson, during his recent visit to Beijing, backtracked a bit, saying that Chinese military modernisation programme was not a threat and that Australia’s support of an anti-ballistic missile defence system being developed by the US and Japan was directed at “rogue states” such as North Korea and non-state actors and not at China. He also had to reassure his hosts that India was not being included in any emerging coalition, something that appears to be particularly bothering Beijing.
In the case of Australia, there appears to be significant difference between the intelligence agencies and the policy makers, particularly the defence department. The intelligence agencies appear to be going along with a more benign China (“the growth of an ‘engaged’ China”) as opposed to the defence department that visualizes “inevitable collisions” as China becomes more powerful.
India also has concerns about China. Although economic ties between the two countries have improved significantly, there is a significant gap between the two countries on politico-strategic affairs and the evolving Asian security framework. While the rise of China has created ripples in India, the most worrying has been the pace of its military modernisation and the secrecy that shrouds it. There have been concerns also about the decision-making process in China. The military leadership in China sometimes appears to have an agenda of its own as was witnessed in a few cases in the recent past. More importantly, decision-making during crises is almost a prerogative of the military leadership. This will have adverse implications particularly for countries like India, US, Japan, Australia and Russia.
Another concern stems from the uncertainty of a more powerful China It is not certain whether the China’s rise would lead to a period of stability or be one with destabilising consequences for the region and the world at large. This fear arises from the fact that China has pursued an aggressive military modernisation, much beyond its stated objective of defending against external intervention in Taiwan. While China has continued to argue that its military modernisation and capability building are geared towards a crisis on the Taiwan Straits, its ambitions could go well beyond that, as several recent reports show, including the Australian defence White Paper. There have been many reports of China developing an aircraft carrier. Reports also show that China has deployed new missile units outfitted with conventional theatre-range missiles at various locations in China that could be operationalised in a variety of non-Taiwan contingencies, which has implications for India. Similarly, the missile re-organisation that China undertook in July 2007 is noteworthy. According to the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), satellite photographs reveal the deployment of the DF-21 medium-range missiles at Delingha, which could put at risk all of northern India, including New Delhi. These missiles could potentially target Russian ICBM fields, although it is reasonably certain that China does not intend to target Russia. There have also been significant improvements in China’s AWACS capabilities (Air-borne Early Warning and Control) and aerial-refuelling programmes.
In the long-term, the increasing Chinese defence expenditure and its military modernization could give China arena capacity to dominate Asia. These trends also suggest that other powers need to be cautious in estimating the consequences of China’s rise. Rise of new powers have altered the security milieu historically. However, if the rising power indicates that its intentions are peaceful and defensive, essentially through its defence/military postures, this could reduce the suspicion and thereby help create a peaceful region. This has not been the case with China. China has exhibited ambitions to form a Greater China comprising of the Mainland, a politically and economically integrated Taiwan, and Hong Kong and Macau.
If these trends continue, rising Chinese power could possibly become the biggest strategic imperative for both India and Australia to strengthen their strategic partnership. Although the earlier efforts in terms of quadrilateral initiative have died, it might be in the interest of like-minded countries to join their hands together in cementing a stable and peaceful order in Asia. It may also be worth the effort to see how China can be brought into the camp through CBMs, particularly in the military-security arena.