Author: David Blair in New Delhi
Publication: The Telegraph, UK
Date: September 16, 2008
URL: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/2827488/India-must-not-show-weakness-to-China.html
India's defence ministry occupies the soaring
colonnades of the Secretariat Building, an imposing legacy of the British
Raj in the heart of New Delhi.
This is the capital of a country enjoying an economic boom, where hundreds
of millions have been lifted from poverty and entered the world of shopping
malls and mobile phones. But inside a symbol of an old empire, India's military
establishment is contemplating the challenge posed by the other new world
power on its northern frontier.
China and India, which together comprise almost
40 per cent of the world's population, harbour a longstanding rivalry which
could shake the world in future decades.
Their 2,100 mile border, spanning the Himalayas,
is the longest disputed frontier on Earth. China defeated India in a border
war in 1962 and now occupies 16,500 square miles of territory claimed by its
neighbour in the Himalayas. Officially, China also lays claim to an entire
Indian state, Arunachal Pradesh.
Aside from territorial wrangles, however,
the root cause of India's suspicion of China lies in the belief that Beijing
is striving for mastery of Asia as a precursor to rivalling the US as a global
power. This thinking, which pervades India's armed forces, helps explain the
sustained increase in the country's defence budget and New Delhi's increasingly
close links with the US.
Once, Pakistan's threat to the disputed territory
of Kashmir dominated India's military planning. Today, China is seen as the
central challenge - and India views itself as a barrier to the vaulting ambition
of its neighbour.
"If you wish to establish hegemony on
the Asian land mass, the one power you have to deal with is India," said
General G. D. Bakshi, a senior research fellow at the United Service Institution
in New Delhi. "India sits like an unsinkable aircraft carrier across
the ocean and astride their key shipping lanes."
China's rising influence in Asia "must
be at our expense", he added, and India could not afford to send a "message
of weakness".
India's armed forces have been alarmed by
China's recent moves. Thanks to their common antipathy towards India, China
has a longstanding alliance with Pakistan. The two countries are now building
a new port at Gwadar on Pakistan's coast.
On India's eastern flank, China has allied
with Burma's military regime and begun constructing another deep water port
on the Bay of Bengal. These developments are being closely watched inside
India, where the prospect of a Chinese naval presence on both the western
and eastern seaboards is viewed with deep foreboding.
Sujit Dutta, a China specialist and government
adviser at the Institute for Defence Studies, said these moves amounted to
the "strategic encirclement of India". He believes that China's
aim is to contain India by allying with neighbouring countries and preventing
New Delhi from competing with Bejing's influence in Asia.
China's rapid modernisation of its own armed
forces is seen as the central plank of this strategy. "China's military
modernisation will affect India whether we like it or not, especially when
the boundary issue is not settled," said Mr Dutta. "The response
is that we must incrementally increase all our elements of national power:
military, economic and diplomatic."
A permanent Chinese naval presence in the
Indian Ocean would be a "red line" for India, said Mr Dutta. "If
China's navy comes into this area and says 'we are going to protect our trade',
then that changes the whole game."
India has increased its defence budget by
150 per cent over the past decade, with the navy and the air force receiving
the lion's share of the gains. When the country tested nuclear weapons in
1998, the government made clear that China - not Pakistan - was the motive
behind this move.
A booming economy has made this military expansion
affordable. India is now enjoying annual growth of eight per cent, based on
a thriving service sector. Gleaming shopping malls have appeared across New
Delhi, designed to serve a thriving middle class which may already number
some 300 million people.
This remarkable success - coming after decades
of stagnation under the weight of an old fashioned command economy - has bolstered
India's national self confidence. The country has a higher profile on the
world stage than ever before, symbolised by its bid for permanent membership
of the Security Council and the recent agreement with the US to benefit from
civilian nuclear technology.
Salman Haidar, formerly India's Ambassador
in Beijing and once the most senior official in New Delhi's foreign ministry,
points to the original vision of Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister.
"Nehru's vision was of India as a significant and weighty presence in
the world. We should become a large and worthy global presence, capable of
helping to reshape the world, but not through conquest or aggressive behaviour."
As India's international influence grows,
its vexed relations with China become ever more important. Diplomats in New
Delhi are often more sanguine than the generals. Privately, they accuse the
military establishment of using China's supposed threat to justify the huge
increases in India's defence budget.
"Armies are very good at inventing excuses
for getting more arms," said Mr Haidar. "I think this claim of strategic
encirclement is sheer rubbish. China is like we are, it's a growing economy.
It's military capacity is increasing, just as ours is. To expect China to
treat the Indian Ocean as an area to which it does not have access is utterly
unrealistic."
China was not a "blind giant", said
Mr Haidar, nor a "colossus which is ready to hit out and make trouble
for everyone". Instead, India and China had "common interests",
especially over trade and climate change. In these vital areas, they have
often combined to balance the leading Western powers.
"The question of whether there is an
ineluctable rivalry between India and China or whether the future will produce
more convergence between them is pretty open," said Mr Haidar.
But military men speak very differently. "The
challenge and the conflict is inevitable and one would be foolish to ignore
it," said Brigadier Arun Sahgal, deputy head of the Centre for Strategic
Studies. The question of which view is vindicated by events could scarcely
be more important.
