India and China out to mend fences
Friday, April 25, 2003
asia.scmp.com
AMRIT DHILLON in New Delhi
Prickly, suspicious, fractious, hostile, rivalrous: such have been Sino-Indian relations for the last 40 years. If Indian Defence Minister George Fernandes can inject a more positive note into this troubled relationship, his trip to China this week will be rated a success.
Neither side expects much of substance to emerge from his visit; the purpose is to mend fences. Some symbolism would be nice but no one is banking on it.
Besides discussing the Iraq situation, bilateral ties, and international terrorism, Mr Fernandes' talks in Beijing are meant to lay the ground for the Indian prime minister's visit later this year.
It is the first visit to China by an Indian defence minister for a decade, a measure of how cool relations have been; compare this with the three visits to Beijing in 2002 alone by Pakistan's General Pervez Musharraf. The frostiness deteriorated to cryogenic levels in 1998 when Mr Fernandes justified India's nuclear tests by pointing to China as India's "enemy number one". Until last March, there was not even a direct flight between New Delhi and Beijing.
Indian analysts are hoping India can forge a more consistent and more honest policy towards China. India has tended to swing between wildly unrealistic hopes and exaggerated notions of Chinese turpitude. And while it has harboured deep grievances against China, it has shied away from taking them up. It was noteworthy, then, that when Mr Fernandes addressed the National Defence University of the People's Liberation Army, he said it was time they discussed their differences with candour.
Partly what has happened is a reflection of national tempera<130>ments. The Chinese are realistic and pragmatic. Indians are congenitally emotional. A generation of Indians really believed in the heady "Hindi Chini bhai bhai" ("Indians and Chinese are brothers") slogan of the Nehru government in the late 1950s and have never quite recovered from China's invasion of India in 1962. China's closeness to India's rival Pakistan has made things worse: as American Sinologist Alastair Iain Johnston has remarked, Pakistan is China's Israel.
But analysts believe India can now engage China with more self-assurance. They say the nuclear tests created psychological parity, India's economic growth has allowed it to arrest its relative decline vis-a-vis China, and relations with the US, Australia and East Asia have improved substantially.
"India need neither romanticise Beijing nor demonise it," said Sino-Indian expert Raja Mohan. "It's time to be pragmatic. Neither can wish the other away."
A new approach seems to be emerging. For example, External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha recently said Indian policy would be based neither on fear of China's power nor envy of its economic achievements but would be forward-looking and optimistic. Even Mr Fernandes, an inveterate China-baiter, has warned Indians they cannot continue to entertain the notion that their democratic credentials somehow balanced out China's far more impressive economic record.
India may be moving towards a new, more positive thinking that heralds a kind of closure after the trauma of the 1962 war. Commentator Jyoti Malhotra says: "With closure, India might be able to get back to the ordinary business of living and dealing with China."
The Chinese, while concerned about India's rapprochement with the US, are trying to strike a positive note. Premier Wen Jiabao told Mr Fernandes: "I think during the past 2,200 years, about 99.9 per cent of the time we have had friendly co-operation." Both countries, he said, needed to build more goodwill. |
