Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao will shortly visit India. Media pundits inspired by MEA are ecstatic. They talk of a great Sino-Indian partnership and ...
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao will shortly visit India. Media pundits inspired by MEA are ecstatic. They talk of a great Sino-Indian partnership and of a new Asian century. But is China, or America, trustworthy? There exists an unholy nexus between corporate America and the People's Liberation Army (PLA). It's the real axis of evil. Both the American and Chinese governments bend to its dictates.
Consider China. Hu Jintao recently took over the PLA from Jiang Zemin to become China's supreme boss. Deng Xiaoping had appointed Jiang and Hu at the same time. Deng announced Hu would succeed Jiang. Neither Jiang nor Hu served in the army. One can only conjecture how much control either has over the PLA.
China's premier, Wen Jiabao, is coming to mend fences. Why, then, should China's foreign minister Li Zhaoxing visit Nepal, and King Gyanendra visit China, also in April? If the Sino-Indian border is settled, but the Indo-Nepal border turns critical, things will be worse for India.
Earlier, this column had said that sweet talk by Chinese interlocutors was not enough. They had to show what they could deliver. By design or default, the Dalai Lama has called their bluff. He said he wants Tibet to remain with China. If Tibet was the excuse for PLA hardliners to prevent China respecting India's space, that excuse has disappeared. But China's first official reaction was to rebuff the Dalai Lama.
Consider America. Pakistan offered arms to King Gyanendra against declared US-UK policies. Yet the US will supply to Pakistan F-16s capable of dropping nuclear bombs. So, was Pakistan, with Chinese encouragement and US consent, playing the PLA card to pressurise India? In Islamabad, Condoleezza Rice warned Pakistan against Iran's nuclear ambitions. Concurrently, the US Export-Import Bank, a federal agency, approved a $5 billion loan to the China National Nuclear Corporation to buy a nuclear power plant from Westinghouse. The CNNC had thrice earlier illegally helped Pakistan and Iran build nuclear arms. Vice-President Dick Cheney is pushing the deal.
In this cloak-and-dagger atmosphere, Indian negotiators should identify India's core strategic interests and unblinkingly focus on them. Indian policymakers harbour delusions of global grandeur. They are lulled by flattery from Chinese negotiators. They might profitably heed these recent words of former Chinese ambassador to India, Cheng Ruisheng: "China has never perceived India as a real threat. Even when India went nuclear, it was seen as an annoyance." The contempt was unconcealed.
(Puri can be reached at rajinderpuri2000@yahoo.com)