Jyeshtha Krushna Trayodashi
By Ashok Mehta
India, like others, follows a ‘One China’ policy but deals with two Chinas. The "peacefully rising China", which "understands and supports India’s aspirations to play a greater role in international affairs" but merely lip services it, actually regulates a relationship on its own terms. This is the China which Indian leaders want to emulate economically and frequently make believe there is space for both to rise and prosper. This China will soon overtake the US as India’s largest trading partner.
The other China is the one that inflicted a humiliating defeat over the boundary dispute in 1962 and has kept bullying and needling India without diplomatic grace and sophistication. It is opposed to India’s permanent membership of the UN Security Council, entry into the Asian economic and security structures and recognition as a state with nuclear weapons. Its blatant use of Pakistan and other negative strategies ensures India is kept confined to South Asia courtesy its strategic encirclement: ‘String of Pearls’, a chain of naval bases designed to undermine India’s pre-eminence in the Indian Ocean region.
China’s military modernisation is moving at a frenetic pace. Defence spending has registered an annual increase of 17 per cent, officially amounting to $ 70 billion, though Western analysts say it is double that amount. The upgrade in military infrastructure in Tibet has trebled the operational and logistics capabilities of the PLA. Its strategic programmes are on the rise too.
The boundary dispute, which hurts India, has for all intents and purposes remained on the back burner, periodically subjected to the charade of political and cartographic mechanisms for its resolution. It is a zero sum game. Cleverly, the Chinese have raised the political cost of any settlement to unacceptably high levels even raking up boundary dispute on the settled Sikkim border.
Dealing with the two Chinas are officials in foreign office who believe relations with Beijing have never been better and military commanders who assert that there is a serious disconnect between our perception of Chinese intent and capabilities. But they are being advised to underplay, even underreport, border incidents.
The Chief of Army Staff, Gen Deepak Kapoor’s recent television interview on the frequency of alleged intrusions by the PLA was unprecedented for its candour and content. He emphasised that both Armies were patrolling up to the Line of Actual Control of their perception and transgressing each other’s imagined red lines. He dismissed the aggressive behaviour of the PLA in dismantling military structures on the Dolam Plateau near the trijunction of Bhutan as a matter for Bhutan to sort out with China. It is no secret that India is committed to the defence of Bhutan and coordinates its border talks with China.
Article III of the 1996 CBM Treaty, which outlines several de-escalating measures, cannot be implemented as a mutually acceptable LAC has defied definition and demarcation.
The most recent and sustained fingering by PLA on the border has been in North Sikkim is Gyangyong area. The border with Sikkim was settled in 1890 as per Anglo-Chinese convention along the watershed between the Sikkim Teesta and the Tibetan Mochu rivers. The boundary though has not been jointly demarcated. In 2003 during Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s visit to China, Sikkim was recognised as a State of the Indian Union after India parroted for the nth time that Tibet was an Autonomous Region of China.
On June 16, a vehicle-mounted PLA patrol came one kilometre into the Finger Area making it the 65th intrusion this year in the same area. On one occasion, Indian soldiers formed a human chain to block the entry of the PLA. In 1967, similar Indian tactics at Nathu La blew up into a major border skirmish.
Sikkim’s geo-strategic importance is recognised beyond doubt. Its eastern shoulder descends into the Chumbi valley to the point near the trijunction with Bhutan which is disputed. North Sikkim is the only area in the East from where any meaningful ground offensive into Tibet can be mounted.
During Operation Falcon, following the Sumdorong Chu standoff in Wangdung, heavy tanks, artillery and mechanised vehicles were inducted into North Sikkim in 1987. As matching infrastructure lagged behind and slowed down to zero after the 1993 and 1996 peace accords, the military deterrent capability also withered away. So twice, once after 1962 and again in 1987, infrastructure development plans were aborted.
Only this year, singed by Chinese accusations of a prime ministerial trespass of Arunachal Pradesh was a retired Army Chief despatched as Governor of the State and a development package funded. No Indian Prime Minister has ever visited Tawang which, the Chinese say, has an inalienable connection with Tibet.
The intrusions in Sikkim have provoked the standard official response: From "not yielding an inch of ground" to "integral part of India" to "the matter will be taken up at the appropriate highest level". For at least three days after the June 16 trespass in Sikkim, the media went berserk, painting the incident as a serious breach of faith by the Chinese.
Mr Mao Swe, the Chinese Consul General in Kolkata, defused the crisis by publicly reaffirming Beijing’s recognition of Sikkim as part of India. He added that these were not incursions but differences of perception. For good measure, he said, "The border dispute between India and China won’t be settled soon."
The message is loud and clear. Regardless of the method and level of negotiation, the boundary dispute will not be resolved anytime soon. Vice-Foreign Minister Wu Dawei has injected a strategic dimension to the India-China relationship, whatever that means for conflict resolution.
Why has the PLA become proactive? Why the needling in north Sikkim and why now? Until this year, the Sikkim boundary was a settled issue. Only the status of Arunachal Pradesh was periodically questioned. China, raising the ante on the boundary issue and thus India’s discomfiture, has in part to do with India’s strategic partnership with the US, improving its bargaining position on the boundary question and delaying its full and final settlement.
The PLA’s posturing on the border is risk laden. Indian Army and Air Force do not have an adequate deterrent capability in the East. A counter offensive Corps has remained on paper since 1987. Belatedly two new Mountain Divisions have been sanctioned for the East. We are 20 years behind the Chinese in operational capability and infrastructure.
The Chinese have raised not just the political, but also the military cost by undisguisedly dragging the border dispute. Two companies of the PLA will shortly arrive in Punjab for counter-terrorism exercises with 11 Corps, ostensibly augmenting strategic ties! For soldiers in north Sikkim and elsewhere on the LAC, the contradictions in policy and statement are not easy to comprehend. Managing differences on the LAC is easier in South Block than in Finger Area, especially when China intends to prolong the war of nerves.
Source: www.dailypioneer.com
