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India and China - Nepalese point of view

EjazR

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India-Nepal-China
News in Nepal: Fast, Full & Factual

AMEET DHAKAL
When Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal visits China next month, our northern neighbor will seek assurance that Nepal will take care of the Chinese interests, as India did during his visit to New Delhi last month. The growing assertiveness of India and China in Nepal is a result of the “quiet competition” between the two at the regional and global level. As the rapidly growing economic giants and aspiring super powers in the multi-polar, ploy-centric world, Sino-India relationship is marked with both mutual cooperation and mutual suspicion, making their future relationship, especially in the long run, acutely uncertain.

The kind of pressure Nepal will face from these two giants in the future will partly depend on the quality of the bilateral relationship that will evolve between the two. It’s, therefore, important to keep an eye on the key issues in the Sino-India relations.

There are, at least, five issues shaping the Sino-India relationship and are likely to do so in the foreseeable future.

First is the massive growth in bilateral trade and the long-term economic interest of the two countries in one another. China and India have always exceeded their bilateral trade targets in the recent times. When their bilateral trade volume was a scant $6 billion in 2002, they first set the target of $10 billion, then $20 billion and then $30 billion by the end of 2010 but saw their trade volume exceed $50 billion in 2008.

As China and India are poised to become the world’s largest and second-largest economies by 2050, according to American investment bank, Goldman Sachs, they will need each other’s market more than ever. For the two largest world economies sharing a common border, and with a population of one billion each, the interdependence that the bilateral trade will create will be unparalleled in history, and it will play a crucial role in avoiding future confrontations and stabilizing the Sino-India relations. India and China are, therefore, most likely to continue to deepen their bilateral trade and economic cooperation and focus on the modernizations of their nations, both of which have a vast swath of underdeveloped regions and face daunting developmental challenges.

Second, there is a growing convergence between China and India on a number of global issues ranging from post-WTO trade regime to energy flows to environmental responsibilities. They have jointly opposed the West’s effort to tie labor and environmental standards with Third World’s export and have lobbied to end agricultural subsidies in the West. They also prefer a multi-polar world order and often share views on the issues of sovereignty and foreign interventions.

Third, the unresolved border dispute between the two countries, however, continues to sap their confidence in each other, especially on the Indian side. India still sees the 1962 Sino-India war as a Chinese betrayal and Indian elites are yet to fully overcome the trauma of the war that China provoked, and comprehensively won. “Since the short, sharp and disastrous war of 1962, could it just be that we have brainwashed two or three generations of Indians to live in dread of the dragon,” wrote Shekhar Gupta in his Indian Express column that appeared on September 12.

Though the two countries have successfully pushed the border issues on the back burner since they started their first post-war border dialogue in 1981, there is still a great deal of suspicion among the “Indian strategic community” about Chinese intentions. China’s official position that the border disputes can be resolved “when conditions are ripe” is also often interpreted in some Indian quarters as “when the balance of power has adequately shifted toward China’s favor”. Indians often cite how China resolved most of its border disputes with Russia and all of its border issues with Vietnam, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, dealing with each of them from the position of relative strength. Furthermore, many Indians also fear that China could use border excuse whenever it wants to pull the plug on India and to provoke open hostility.

Fourth, China’s military and nuclear ties with Pakistan—India’s arch rival—also continues to mar the Sino-India relationship. Though China defends its ties with Pakistan as a normal relationship between two sovereign nations, many Indians harbor a strong perception that China is using Pakistan to counterbalance India in the region. Many in India even subscribe to the so called “Sun Tzu Strategy” under which “Beijing can be friendly with New Delhi and not constitute a near or medium term military threat while simultaneously locking India in a nuclear standoff with Pakistan.” But the Pakistan factor is unlikely to count as much in the future Sino-India relationship. With growing asymmetry between India and Pakistan, and because of its growing stakes with India, China will see Pakistan less and less as a strategic counterbalance against India. If a third country can influence the Sino-India relationship in the future, it is the United States. If the growing US-Indo bonhomie and their nuclear cooperation gains a more permanent form, aimed at countering China, it can acutely strain Sino-India relationship and make the whole region volatile.

Fifth is water— this is an issue that has a potential for a sustained discord between China and India in the years to come. Both of these countries are already water-strapped, and it will only grow in the future as their vast rural areas and rapidly expanding cities vie for increasingly scarce water. Along with a rosy prediction of India becoming the world’s largest economy in 2050, only behind China, there is also another grim prediction: India will run short of water for its 1.7 billion populations. “2050 is a very frightening sort of picture,” A K Bajaj, chairman of India’s central water commission has been quoted as saying.

In this context, India is concerned about China’s major inter-basin and inter-river water transfer projects on the Tibetan plateau that will impact flows of international-river into India. China’s reported plan to reroute Brahmaputra River northwards has left India deeply worried.

From our national interest’s stand point, it is important to be watchful of how each of these issues impact Sino-India relations in the future. Growing cooperation or competition—or possible overt conflict— between China and India will have implications for Nepal. Our best interest would be to facilitate Sino-India cooperation wherever we can—one of such future opportunities may arise in providing transit routes between the two countries— and distance ourselves and maintain “absolute neutrality” in case of any conflict between the two Asian giants.

How clearly and convincingly can we state this position before India and China and how firmly we can hold onto it, even during times of strains, will be the major test of our foreign policy.

The success of such a policy also partly depends upon how strongly we begin to respond to the security and other concerns of China and India. Tibet is the major concern for China in Nepal, while for India it’s the fake Indian currency and infiltrations of militants through Nepal. We have to address each of these issues with utmost sincerity. We have been generous enough to host Tibetan refugees in Nepal but let’s tell them—and others concerned—that we will no longer tolerate any kind of Tibetan protests in the streets of Kathmandu or any activities or infiltrations to destabilize Tibet.

We enjoy a good relationship with Pakistan and should continue to nurture that but we should also send a clear message that our stakes with India are too high to be neglected and we will not tolerate any foreign activities directed against her from Nepal. Let’s also improve our airport security, keep concerned foreign airlines on a strict vigilance, and maintain a zero-tolerance against militant-suspects.

As we demonstrate our resolve to take care of the Chinese and Indian sensitivities in Nepal, we should also ask them to refrain from any direct intervention. Trying to micromanage politics and events in Nepal will invite unnecessary competition between India and China and it will eventually hurt their interests as well as ours.
How much will India and China withdraw from such activities in the future and trust the Nepali state to be the best guarantor of their interests will be an indicator of the success or failure of our foreign policy.
 
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