ashok321
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A Dokalam solution will emerge from where India and China want to be
The Dokalam stand-off has entered a delicate phase leading up to the Xiamen Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) Summit in the first week of September. What happens from now on will largely determine whether or not this boundary contest escalates into a full-blown India-China crisis impacting all key aspects of the relationship.
Television and video wars apart, the bottom line is that the substantive elements of this relationship are built on the working principle that differences over the boundary will not impede progress in other spheres of bilateral interaction. It was, in fact, this distilled Chinese wisdom that made it possible to elaborate on a more expansive agenda.
This umbrella framework always found a way to deal with difficult moments on the contested boundary. And there were quite a few in the last decade. But for the first time, the tenor and shrillness of a classic border dispute has dominated the interaction to a point that there's now visible stress on other dimensions of the India-China conversation.
Let's start with Brics itself. The forum is an important stage for China, far more vital today when the US has begun looking inward under President Donald Trump. If the G20 and the World Economic Forum were key platforms for articulating a refreshed Chinese view on open trade and anti-protectionism, then Brics is the forum for complete expression of solidarity alongside other key emerging economies.
An overhang like the Dokalam dispute helps none. While China, as both host and the leading economic power in the grouping, will be looking to drive the agenda on its terms, an intransigent India is the last thing it wants on its hands. More significantly, it might just push New Delhi to weigh options for a bilateral deal with the US.
Let's not forget that the first shale oil deal came through in the past week, followed by Trump's positive play on India in his South Asia vision. The revival of a security-conscious mindset towards China, coupled with the fear of actual conflict, will soon undo all the recent work on easing barriers for Chinese investments.
Already, there's a cloud over Shanghai Fosun's $1.3-billion proposed acquisition of Indian drugmaker Gland Pharma, a deal that requires the Cabinet's nod. All on Fast Burner In the past year, over 20 Chinese companies were given security clearances, the fastest rate ever in the recent past. And that's because a time bar was put to the process, so that security and intelligence agencies could not squat on a proposal for long.
Similarly, many visa categories for China were removed from the Prior Referral Category — a sort of a blacklist of about half-a-dozen countries like Pakistan, North Korea and Iraq. Like in any government system, the choke on China was a result of a deep-seated suspicion of Chinese intent, strengthened by past events, which prevented India from looking at Chinese investment more objectively.
That today, there is relatively a more predictable environment for Chinese business is due to a shift in emphasis on letting opportunities, not intractable problems like the boundary, decide the course of the relationship. It would indeed be a major setback to progressive elements on both sides if the security clamp were to be reintroduced. In any case, there's enough chatter on the imbalance favouring China in the mammoth $70-billion trade between both countries.
The fact is, India also needs Chinese investment, and any such reversal accompanied by an anti-China nationalist fervour is detrimental even for New Delhi, which is pursuing a policy of building multiple global partnerships than be counted in one camp or the other. The problem in dealing with the Dokalam crisis is the tendency to frame it in classic balance-of-power terms, where authority is expressed by deployment and use of force.
So, theoretically, China can balance India by getting Pakistan into the picture, or make any such kind of a move. But conventional global power politics has moved on. The world today is a more interconnected, interdependent network of supplies, services, goods and knowledge where boundaries matter less and less in determining power.
What matters is perception. So, for those gaming military combat, here's a question: how will such a skirmish rub off on both sides? Not good. It may even look impetuous, like the Pangong Tso face-off video. And regardless of who gets the better of whom, reputations on both sides will suffer a costly damage. India must understand that China is a global power, not the diffident neighbour that Jawaharlal Nehru once took to Bandung.
Great Bridge, Not Great Wall Beijing, on its part, must figure out a way to build mutually benefiting stakes in its relationship with neighbours. Else, its growth will breed insecurity, with imminent fear of escalation whenever there is a difference or dispute. To that end, Xiamen could even be an opportunity, just like Sanya was in 2011, the last Brics summit in China, when both sides found a way around the issue of China giving stapled visasto residents of Jammu and Kashmir.
Either way, the short point is that a solution to the Dokalam stand-off will emerge from the bigger India-China picture, from where India and China want to be, rather than from where they are.
The Dokalam stand-off has entered a delicate phase leading up to the Xiamen Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) Summit in the first week of September. What happens from now on will largely determine whether or not this boundary contest escalates into a full-blown India-China crisis impacting all key aspects of the relationship.
Television and video wars apart, the bottom line is that the substantive elements of this relationship are built on the working principle that differences over the boundary will not impede progress in other spheres of bilateral interaction. It was, in fact, this distilled Chinese wisdom that made it possible to elaborate on a more expansive agenda.
This umbrella framework always found a way to deal with difficult moments on the contested boundary. And there were quite a few in the last decade. But for the first time, the tenor and shrillness of a classic border dispute has dominated the interaction to a point that there's now visible stress on other dimensions of the India-China conversation.
Let's start with Brics itself. The forum is an important stage for China, far more vital today when the US has begun looking inward under President Donald Trump. If the G20 and the World Economic Forum were key platforms for articulating a refreshed Chinese view on open trade and anti-protectionism, then Brics is the forum for complete expression of solidarity alongside other key emerging economies.
An overhang like the Dokalam dispute helps none. While China, as both host and the leading economic power in the grouping, will be looking to drive the agenda on its terms, an intransigent India is the last thing it wants on its hands. More significantly, it might just push New Delhi to weigh options for a bilateral deal with the US.
Let's not forget that the first shale oil deal came through in the past week, followed by Trump's positive play on India in his South Asia vision. The revival of a security-conscious mindset towards China, coupled with the fear of actual conflict, will soon undo all the recent work on easing barriers for Chinese investments.
Already, there's a cloud over Shanghai Fosun's $1.3-billion proposed acquisition of Indian drugmaker Gland Pharma, a deal that requires the Cabinet's nod. All on Fast Burner In the past year, over 20 Chinese companies were given security clearances, the fastest rate ever in the recent past. And that's because a time bar was put to the process, so that security and intelligence agencies could not squat on a proposal for long.
Similarly, many visa categories for China were removed from the Prior Referral Category — a sort of a blacklist of about half-a-dozen countries like Pakistan, North Korea and Iraq. Like in any government system, the choke on China was a result of a deep-seated suspicion of Chinese intent, strengthened by past events, which prevented India from looking at Chinese investment more objectively.
That today, there is relatively a more predictable environment for Chinese business is due to a shift in emphasis on letting opportunities, not intractable problems like the boundary, decide the course of the relationship. It would indeed be a major setback to progressive elements on both sides if the security clamp were to be reintroduced. In any case, there's enough chatter on the imbalance favouring China in the mammoth $70-billion trade between both countries.
The fact is, India also needs Chinese investment, and any such reversal accompanied by an anti-China nationalist fervour is detrimental even for New Delhi, which is pursuing a policy of building multiple global partnerships than be counted in one camp or the other. The problem in dealing with the Dokalam crisis is the tendency to frame it in classic balance-of-power terms, where authority is expressed by deployment and use of force.
So, theoretically, China can balance India by getting Pakistan into the picture, or make any such kind of a move. But conventional global power politics has moved on. The world today is a more interconnected, interdependent network of supplies, services, goods and knowledge where boundaries matter less and less in determining power.
What matters is perception. So, for those gaming military combat, here's a question: how will such a skirmish rub off on both sides? Not good. It may even look impetuous, like the Pangong Tso face-off video. And regardless of who gets the better of whom, reputations on both sides will suffer a costly damage. India must understand that China is a global power, not the diffident neighbour that Jawaharlal Nehru once took to Bandung.
Great Bridge, Not Great Wall Beijing, on its part, must figure out a way to build mutually benefiting stakes in its relationship with neighbours. Else, its growth will breed insecurity, with imminent fear of escalation whenever there is a difference or dispute. To that end, Xiamen could even be an opportunity, just like Sanya was in 2011, the last Brics summit in China, when both sides found a way around the issue of China giving stapled visasto residents of Jammu and Kashmir.
Either way, the short point is that a solution to the Dokalam stand-off will emerge from the bigger India-China picture, from where India and China want to be, rather than from where they are.
