China, India to hold joint naval exercise

Sides seek to quell boundary dispute

By Jehangir Pocha, Globe Correspondent, 11/13/2003

The naval maneuvers in the East China Sea will cap a series of moves by China and India in recent months to improve bilateral ties. The two nations have been at loggerheads since 1962, when they fought a brief but bitter war over their disputed 2,200-mile common border.

In separate statements, both Beijing and New Delhi said the exercises would allow them to step back from the eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation that has defined their relationship for most of the last four decades.

Three Indian warships will visit Shanghai and conduct search-and-rescue maneuvers with Chinese warships. Shanghai is the port for China's Eastern Sea Fleet. A spokeswoman for China's Foreign Ministry, Zhang Qiyue, told reporters that the exercises, which will involve more than 1,000 personnel, will also focus on "nontraditional security fields," a term increasingly used to describe antiterrorism operations.

Confirmation of the exercises came last week, a day after President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan ended a state visit to China.

After the 1962 conflict, China forged a close relationship with Pakistan, which used arms and support from China to fight three wars with India.

Both India and the United States also say that China illegally supported Pakistan's clandestine nuclear and missile programs.

When India first tested nuclear arms in 1998, followed closely by Pakistan, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee of India explained the decision by pointing to China's nuclear arsenal and its nuclear support to Pakistan.

Professor Shang Huipeng, a specialist on Sino-Indian relations at Peking University, says, "equations are now changing and China and India do not see each other as a threat anymore. . . . China is trying to accommodate India on Pakistan without entirely discarding Pakistan."

Illustrating this balancing act, China conducted similar naval exercises -- its first ever with any country -- with Pakistani warships last month.

But Shang says it is clear that "Pakistan has changed, both in its character and value to China. India and China have understood that their relations cannot be held hostage to the past or any third nation."

Such rapprochement allowed Sino-Indian economic ties to grow steadily since 1999.  Atul Dalakoti, head of the China chapter of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, India's premier business association, said bilateral trade had doubled over the past two years to $5 billion and is likely to double again by 2005.

But defense ties improved only this April, when China invited India's defense minister, George Fernandes, to Beijing. Fernandes, who had once called China "India's number one enemy," surprised his hosts by suggesting the joint exercises.

Two months later, Vajpayee's visit to China, the first by an Indian leader in more than a decade, allowed both nations to make further headway.

Though a series of subtly worded statements and symbolic acts, India recognized China's sovereignty over Tibet, and China recognized Indian sovereignty over the disputed state of Sikkim, the former Himalayan kingdom that India annexed in 1975.

The two sides also appointed special representatives to resolve their boundary disagreements. India accuses China of occupying 14,670 square miles of Indian territory in Kashmir, while China claims 34,750 square miles of land in India's northeast state of Arunachal Pradesh.

Although diplomatic officials in Beijing say India and China's sensitivity to territorial issues makes it unlikely that a solution to the border question will be found anytime soon, they are cautiously optimistic about the warming in relations between the nations.

"The rising military power of India and China is one of the most significant issues in the world today," a European diplomat said on condition of anonymity.

However, other diplomats say they are concerned that the exercises may lead China and India toward embracing the Russian-sponsored idea of a Russian-Chinese-Indian alliance. They say such an alliance could only be aimed at the West and Japan and would create new tensions in global and regional geopolitics.