Global warming
The Chinese PM's visit put the bilateral relations in a multilateral perspective
By Jehangir S. Pocha
The series of agreements and warm atmospherics generated by Chinese Premier Wen Jia-bao's four-day visit to India are ushering in a new era in India-China ties. And that will have a major impact on Asia and the world.
Foremost among the raft of 11 measures agreed to by Wen and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was a clear indication from the Chinese side that Beijing would support India's inclusion into an expanded United Nations Security Council. Significantly, the announcement came just a day after the two sides agreed to a new set of guiding principles on how to settle the boundary dispute that has bedevilled ties between the two since 1958. Though the principles were nothing new - each country would hold onto the territory it already controlled - Wen's comment revealed how far China and India have travelled since 1998 when then defence minister George Fernandes had called China India's No. 1 enemy.
Though then prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee did sooth ties between the Himalayan neighbours during his visit to Beijing in 2003, it fell to Singh to sound a sweeter note, when he said: "India and China can together reshape the world order." With this, he lifted India-China cooperation beyond the realm of bilateral relations and brought it into the domain of global geo-politics.
That world-changing theme was faithfully maintained by Wen, too. Speaking at a joint CII-Ficci conference in New Delhi, the normally reserved premier cast aside a prepared speech to tell the gathering of Indian business leaders that increased understanding and trade between China and India was essential to "peace and prosperity in the world" and to the creation of a new "Asian century".
Moving seamlessly between macro strategic issues and micro commercial ones, Wen outlined why China and India need to cooperate on global multi-lateral issues such as the WTO and Kyoto Protocol, and why commercial technological advancement is the only way for both countries to solve their development problems. "We have to fight tough battles with no fallbacks," he said, in a frank reference to the domestic challenges China faces as it continues to transform itself. "In the end, the winner in any competition will be those countries that have the most intellectual property rights."
Economic Imperatives
To put substance behind this soaring rhetoric, the Chinese side announced a series of agreements with Indian hi-tech companies, including a deal to train 100 Chinese engineers at Infosys. Wan Jifei, chairman of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, who was travelling with Wen, said Chinese firms such as Huawei had entered into agreements valued at about $1.16 billion with their Indian counterparts.
That, if it all came through, would dwarf the $230 million Indian companies have invested in China. It would also drive the need for both countries to draw up an investment protection agreement, and India's commerce minister Kamal Nath said one was already being planned.
China and India also signed a comprehensive five-year plan aimed at improving ties in areas like finance, education, science, technology, tourism, and civil aviation. For example, the flights between the two countries will increase from the present seven a week to 42.
Such high multiples have been characteristic of India-China trade for the last few years as bilateral trade increased from $100 million in 1994 to reach $13.6 billion last year. As a result of the current initiatives it "is expected to reach $30 billion by 2010", said Kamal Nath.
Interestingly, Wen also talked about the need to involve rural communities and agriculture in the reform and restructuring process underway in both China and India. Leveraging his domestic reputation as a champion of the downtrodden, Wen said there could be no real emancipation for China and India if there was no emancipation of farmers and agriculture.
In this light, it is particularly significant that China and India have also agreed to commence a feasibility study on establishing a bilateral free trade agreement (FTA). When implemented, it could have far-reaching implications for domestic farmers and the agricultural sector in both countries.
The FTA would end up creating the world's largest market. And with China, India, Japan and South Korea also on track to sign similar FTAs with the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN), Asia will emerge as the largest and richest common market in the world by 2015.
That such promising economic extrapolations are the essential glue to what Wen called a "bridge of friendship linking our two countries" was driven home by the fact that it was hi-tech Bangalore, and not New Delhi, that the Chinese premier chose as his first stop.
Historical Baggage
Ironically, it was while Wen was visiting the Indian Institute of Science at Bangalore, another icon of India's technical prowess, that one of the deepest historic rifts between China and India reared its heads to underline how any détente between the two is still fraught with risks.
Tenzin Tsundue, a Tibetan exile and general secretary of a group named Friends of Tibet, evaded the premier's security detail to clamber atop the colonial-era tower of the institute and wave the Tibetan flag. The incident revealed how Tibet remains a potent human and political fissure, almost 50 years after Jawaharlal Nehru gave the Dalai Lama refuge when he was fleeing China's invasion of Tibet in the late-1950s
Though Wen tried hard to present China as a nation reforming not only its economy but also its politics, many in India remain sceptical and memories of India's 1962 border war with China have not been totally erased from the collective memory of either nation.
Significantly, India chose the day just before Wen arrived here to announce that it would begin constructing its first indigenously designed and built aircraft carrier. Over the past two weeks New Delhi has been actively - and very publicly - considering a US offer to supply it with F-16 and F-18 fighter jets.
In China, wariness of India's military intent, though waning is still significant.
Great Power Games
Both Wen and Singh have been frank in asserting that the increasing warmth in India-China ties is based on China's and India's common interests in reshaping the global economic and security system to accommodate their growing power and needs.
But there's also no doubt that both the US and Russia feature prominently in China's and India's view of each other, albeit in very different ways.
" China has started taking India seriously in part because of India's growing military ties with the US," said Rahul Bedi, New Delhi correspondent for Jane's Defense Weekly. "That's made the Chinese very nervous and now they're wooing India too." That - coupled with the growing economic and military closeness of both China and India with Russia - has given further credence to the idea that the three countries are working on creating a strategic triangle that could challenge the US.
The idea is brushed aside by many Indian and Chinese experts. " China and India realise they need the uniquely stabilising role the US plays in the world to continue - at least for now," says Jin Linbo, director of Asian-Pacific Studies at the China Institute of International Studies in Beijing, which is closely affiliated to the foreign ministry.
Bedi says the question facing India is its inability to carry any grand plan, regardless of what form it takes, forward.
" India is essentially a nation of event managers, and the political system does not have the courage to execute large-scale ideas," he said. "Indian individuals and military services are second to none in conceiving strategies, but the political system just cannot implement them."
For example, Bedi says, it was the original intention of the Indian Air Force to station Su-30 fighters in the Andaman-Nicobar islands. That would give India a strong position in the strategic Indian Ocean, through which 75 per cent of the world's oil passes. But Bedi says the plan is languishing because "suddenly some secretary got flustered over how Indonesia would react. In that sense we are like a spastic trying to clap. The mind is there and wants to do it, but the hands just cannot connect. It may be a crude statement, but sadly it's true".
Yet there is no doubt that "the global scene will soon be trilateral with the US, China and India", said Subramanian Swamy of the Janata Party, who is a close China-watcher.
For now, India can run with the Russia-China rabbit and hunt with the US hound. But while ideally a multi-polar world should allow all major powers to reach equations with each other - the reality is that in George W. Bush's "with us or against us" world, India might have to make some difficult choices in the near future. That's why the fact that the Indian foreign minister will be flying to Washington D.C. just days after Wen leaves New Delhi has not escaped the notice of analysts.
Swamy says that India has understood it will be this triumvirate that will determine the world's future is heartening "because it means we are not Pakistan-obsessed any more". Indeed, Pakistan hardly figured during Wen's visit.
" India and China will soon be consuming as much raw materials as the US, and this will change things for everyone," Swamy says. "By 2050 China and India may be as rich as the US. How the three learn to work together will determine human history."