Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, is scheduled to visit China from January 13 to 15, 2008 for talks with the Chinese leaders. This will be his first visit to China. He did not accept an invitation from the Chinese government to attend the June, 2006 summit of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (SCO) at Shanghai as an observer. The government of India explained his decision not to go as due to the fact that India's status as only an observer of the SCO did not warrant a presence at the level of the Prime Minister. Among the other observers, Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan were represented by their heads of state--Presidents Pervez Musharraf, Mahmud Ahmadinejad and Hamid Karzai. Chinese officials suspected that the Prime Minister's decision not to go was actually due to the US suspicion that one of the objectives of the SCO was to counter the US influence in the Central Asian region.
Shri Atal Behari Vajpayee, the predecessor of Dr Manmohan Singh, had visited China in June 2003. Mr Wen Jiabo, the Chinese Prime Minister, had visited India in April,2005, and President Hu Jintao in November,2006. Dr Manmohan Singh has, however, been meeting his Chinese counterpart in the margins of other multilateral summits such as the recent (November 2007) ASEAN summit in Singapore.
India-China relations continue to be characterised by a mix of mutual concerns, mutual suspicions and mutual goodwill. The concerns on the part of India have been in respect of the unresolved border dispute. The on-going talks on the subject between the specially-designated representatives of the two Prime Ministers have reportedly got stuck on the Chinese claim to Arunachal Pradesh, particularly to the Tawang Tract. With the Chinese going back on the understanding reached by the Prime Ministers of the two countries during the visit of Mr Wen Jiabo to India in April, 2005, that they should avoid any territorial adjustment in populated areas, it is evident that the Chinese are not prepared to give up their demand relating to Arunachal Pradesh.
While one can understand the hard bargaining by the Chinese on this issue, what should be a matter of particular concern to the Indian public are the frequent reports of Chinese troop intrusions into Indian territory, an intrusion into Bhutanese territory and reported Chinese objection to some structures erected by Indian troops in Indian territory in Sikkim. While the government of India has denied or played down the gravity of most of these reports, the fact that such reports keep appearing in our media from time to time itself indicates the continuing trust deficit between the two countries arising from the unresolved border issue. Just as they have gone back on the past understanding that populated areas should not be disturbed, are they also preparing to go back on their commitment made in 2003 to Shri Vajpayee that Sikkim was no longer an issue between the two countries? Are they trying to link any de jure concession on Sikkim by them to an Indian de jure concession on the Tawang Tract? That is a question, which must be bothering the minds of Indian policy-makers.
The heavy investments by the Chinese for the crash development of the road and rail infrastructure in Tibet and for extending the road and rail networks towards Tibet's borders with India and Nepal and the reported desire of the Nepalese government, now increasingly dominated by the Maoists, for the extension of this network to Nepal should add to India's concerns, if this has not already done so. The recent statements of Shri A.K.Antony, the Defence Minister, after a visit to Sikkim in the first week of December,2007, on the need for paying urgent intention to a rapid (he used the expression "dramatic" ) development of the road and other infrastructure in our territory adjoining Tibet should be welcomed as an overdue wake-up call. It is to be hoped that this call is followed up seriously with concrete time-bound projects on the ground and that we do not slide back into another spell of complacency as we are in the habit of doing in relation to China.
Our ability to hold our own against China in the undesired event of another confrontation with China would depend on the state of our intelligence agencies, the Army and the Air Force. While the Army and the Air Force are receiving the required attention, one has an impression that there has been a downsizing of our intelligence capabilities vis-a-vis China. This, if true, would be very unfortunate and would show that we have forgotten the lessons of the Sino-Indian conflict of 1962 and are letting ourselves be lulled once again into another spell of complacency.
The continuing military, nuclear and missile supply relationship between China and Pakistan and the ever-increasing Chinese interest in strengthening their strategic presence in Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Myanmar-- and possibly in Nepal too in the coming years-- are another area of continuing concern for India. We tend to forget that militarily and strategically, Pakistan has benefited more from the supply relationship with China than from the supply relationship with the US.
The Chinese too have their concerns arising from the steadily improving strategic relationship of India with the US, Japan and Australia. While India does not project its relationship with the US as a possible card that could be used against China, that is the way Beijing looks at it. The Chinese concerns were reflected in their comments on the joint naval exercise of September,2007, in the Bay of Bengal involving the navies of India, the US, Japan, Singapore and Australia and on the floating idea of a concert of democracies involving India, Japan, Australia and the US. When the Chinese have no qualms over continuing with their policy of having India excluded from the ASEAN plus three grouping in order to keep India one pedestal below that of China, there is no reason why we should be apologetic about having China excluded from some of our common projects with the US, Australia and Japan based on democracy as the common ideological binding factor-- a glue which cannot bind China.
The mutual suspicions are the outcome partly of the continuing trust deficit and partly of the lack of transparency of Chinese policies. These suspicions are not unique to India-China relations, but are also to be found in China's relations with the US and other Western countries where parliamentarians and policy-makers continue to express concerns over likely invisible threats to their security from the enhanced activities of Chinese intelligence agencies in their territory by taking advantage of the developing bilateral relations. In this context, one has to understand the anxiety of our intelligence agencies to subject proposals for Chinese investments and construction contracts in sensitive sectors such as telecommunications and port construction and in sensitive areas such as Bangalore to greater scrutiny from the security point of view than we do in the case of proposals and projects involving the Western countries. The cautiousness of our intelligence agencies should be understood and appreciated instead of being ridiculed and belittled as one tends to do in India.
It is not as if only the Indian intelligence agencies have suspicions about China. The Chinese agencies too have suspicions about India and tend to protect China with appropriate firewalls. We saw it in the case of India's information technology (IT) majors. Everybody in India, critical of the over-cautiousness of our intelligence agencies, points out that the Chinese have allowed our IT majors to have a major presence in China since 2002 whereas we were reluctant to allow Chinese telecommunication companies to have an equal presence in India--particularly in cities such as Bangalore. And that too if there are retired Chinese intelligence and military officers associated with the Chinese presence.
What those in India, who tend to ridicule our intelligence agencies, tend to forget is that, firstly, the Chinese have allowed our IT majors to have a presence only in non-sensitive cities such as Shanghai. Have they allowed them to have a presence in sensitive areas such as the Sichuan province where many of their military industries are located? Will they allow our IT majors to open offices in Tibet and Xinjiang to benefit the Tibetans and the Uighurs? Secondly, even in non-sensitive places such as Shanghai, while allowing our IT companies to have a presence they kept their businesses confined to dealings with the local offices of Western multi-nationals. They discouraged their own entities--governmental or non-governmental-- from having business with the Indian IT companies.
Only last year, the Chinese slightly changed this policy and started allowing their entities to have business with the Indian IT companies. This change was reflected in the award in February 2007 of a multi-million dollar contract to Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) to implement a comprehensive international trading system for China Foreign Exchange Trade System (CFETS), which is a sub-institution of the People’s Bank of China. TCS has also expanded its presence in Beijing, where its interactions are expected to be more with Chinese government entities than with Western business companies. This is a welcome development.
In February last, TCS, supported by the National Development and Reforms Commission (NDRC) of China, also announced the inauguration of TCS (China) at its new premises at the state-of-the-art Z-Park in Beijing. The joint partners of TCS (China) are the Beijing Zhongguancun Software Park Development Co, Ltd, the Uniware Co, Ltd, and the Tianjin Huayuan Software Area Construction and Development Co, Ltd . It was described as marking the launch of China’s first large scale outsourcing technology company. Speaking on the occasion, Shri S.Ramadorai, the CEO and MD of TCS, was reported to have stated as follows: