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It's Tibet
China's irrational fears about India's democracy will fuel their strategic competition possibly leading to military confrontation, says N.V.Subramanian.
New Jersey, 17 December 2010: If you go beyond the headlines about Wen Jiabao's visit to India and the (not un-understandable) attempts of the Manmohan Singh government to give a positive spin to it, one thing is clear. China and India are set on a course of strategic competition which may or may not lead to military competition but would still remain unresolved. At bottom, totalitarian China is battling democratic rising India, and since India cannot make compromises with its democracy, India and China are destined for competition that might not get better without becoming worse.
The problem unfortunately lies all with China. Any objective commentator would reach that conclusion. Without totally subscribing to Lord Curzon's principle of buffer states, at least in this age of globalization, economic blocs, WMDs, and so forth, it is still possible to rue Tibet's annexation by China from an Indian standpoint. It removed Tibet as a buffer state between expansionist Middle Kingdom China and a status quo power like India.
The Indian foreign minister, S.M.Krishna, blundered by equating Tibet with Jammu and Kashmir in conversations with Wen. J and K of its own volition acceded to India after Pakistan state-backed invaders destroyed the sanctity of the Standstill Agreement. On the other hand, China overran Tibet causing the Dalai Lama to flee to India. As analyzed in earlier NewsInsight commentaries, that act of the Dalai Lama fleeing to India and his subsequent asylum in the country put India firmly in negative light with China. Further, the Indian decision to grant asylum to the Dalai Lama enduringly delegitimized the Chinese occupation of Tibet, and while the Chinese intuitively understood this, India did not.
At various times, India has sought to use the Dalai Lama as a bargaining lever, forgetting that he is an untradeable gem as a potential leader (it counts his successors too) of an independent buffer state of Tibet. Often in the geo-strategic commerce between nations, undervaluing a possession is worse than freely parting with it. Perhaps the biggest contribution of the Sino-Indian stalemate would be its role in spurring the Indian government to reassess the true value of Tibet for India apropos hegemonic China.
Maybe this reassessment is happening. For example, the reaction of the Tibetan government-in-exile about the Sino-Indian border issue at the conclusion of the Wen Jiabao visit was saturated with meaning. The exile government sought to insert itself into the dispute, going so far as to say that there was, in geo-sovereign reality, no China-India border but only an India-Tibet frontier. China had to settle issues with Tibet, implying thereby that there was no case in fact for any Sino-Indian border settlement.
It is tempting to suppose that the Tibetan government-in-exile's reiterated position was silently induced by New Delhi. China has this hilarious notion/ suspicion that everything that appears in the Indian media, including in this magazine, is managed by the Indian government, which anybody who knows a tiny amount about India would instantly disregard. Therefore, when this writer supposes a link between the latest Tibetan government-in-exile's position and inducements by New Delhi, it is a supposition. It is not based on inside information. It may be so and equally it may not be. But if it is not, it is an area for the Manmohan Singh government to consider.
The nub of the matter is that as a totalitarian state, China has more irrational fears regarding its unity than a democracy like India. China is perfectly rational in believing that democracy will undermine and terminate one-party CPC rule. If you go by the CPC definition of China as one including Xinjiang, Tibet and Taiwan, then it perhaps has valid fears that democracy will lead to downsizing. It certainly does not wish a repetition of the Soviet fate. But China is irrational in apprehending that somehow India is evangelical about its democracy in respect to it, deriving in the main from the asylum given to the Dalai Lama more than fifty years ago.
But China may become a victim of a self-fulfilling prophecy. By obsessing itself with Tibet in its relations with India, China may have triggered off a process whose end-state may indeed be an independent buffer state of Tibet. There is much that has gone awry in India's dealings with China, but one positive outcome of the Wen Jiabao visit is a conscious and determined attempt on the part of the Manmohan Singh government to address the trade imbalance that favours China. India cannot go down the slippery slope of America's gross indebtedness to China. China uses its vast and growing economic clout as a strategic weapon, and India has made welcome moves in a direction to protect itself.
The exhortation of this writer to the Indian government is not to view China in compartments but to see it as a composite strategic competitor and foe. A democracy like India may pull in different directions but not a totalitarian state like China. This is not to suggest absolute uniformity of opinion within the Chinese ruling hierarchy. At any given moment, the military will be extra nationalistic and corner the politicians and especially the moderates among them. Equally, the hard-line politicians will have no compunction in throttling the internationalists and accommodationists. Democracy as a system of government may be under questioning in various parts of the democratic world. But that does not diminish China's totalitarian insecurities vis-a-vis democracies like India. The relationship between China's present assertiveness and its growing internal vulnerabilities has not been adequately examined for this factor.
In sum, Wen Jiabao's visit to India has brought some insights, which the Indian government would be sensible to embrace. In this writer's view, Sino-Indian rivalry will not be resolved till China remains a totalitarian state, which could be so for the foreseeable future. By daring to attend the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony for the Chinese dissident, Liu Xiabo, disregarding Chinese pressure, India has burnished its democratic credentials. It is as significant as the granting of asylum to the Dalai Lama fifty-one years ago. India has to learn to bear the cross of democracy, and it is never too late to begin. With China, this will be as good as it gets.
