The prospect for normalisation of relations between India and China would doubtless be better if Peking were finally to accept that peace in South Asia and the relative freedom of the countries in the region from external interference are contingent on recognition by it and others of India’s pre-eminence. But is that so? I, for one, am not persuaded that it is. Indeed, I am not even persuaded that Peking has finally given up the policy of promoting insurrections in this country, especially in the north-eastern parts. I, therefore, regard it as quite extraordinary that hardly any Indian commentator raises the issue of Peking’s policy towards Pakistan, though the Chinese have felt more than free to castigate this country’s policy of friendship towards the Soviet Union. Some myopia this!
Thanks to the cold war, the massive Western propaganda and, ironically enough, the equally massive Soviet-communist propaganda, Indo-Soviet friendship has been viewed almost universally, even in our own country, in the context of the East-West competition for influence in the third world. But while in reality it has not prevented this country from having reasonably close relations with the West – it has been a member of the British Commonwealth; it has received a large amount of Western aid; it has freely imported Western technology; and it has extensive trading ties with the West – this friendship has helped New Delhi cope with the Pakistani and Chinese challenges which, without the assurance of Soviet support, could have proved much more dangerous than they in fact have.
Problems
In this context, it may also be pertinent to make another point. In spite of its involvement in the non-alignment movement from the very beginning – Mr Nehru was one of the initiators of the Belgrade conference in 1961 – since the mid-’fifties – India’s horizon, for all effective purposes, has been limited to the surrounding region – South Asia plus Iran and Afghanistan. In 1961, it sent a contingent to join the UN force in Zaire to prevent the secession of Katanga. But that was an aberration. This policy has been the product of a variety of factors, the most important being the enormity of problems at home and the lack of hostility towards the two superpowers. The Chinese, too, have faced heart-breaking problems at home. But they have been hostile to one super-power or the other and for some years to both. As such their perspective has been different. Mr Nehru deliberately tried to blur this distinction between Indian and Chinese policies in the ’fifties. But he succeeded only in confusing his own countrymen.
Our failure to present our policy in a proper and realistic perspective has cost us dearly all these years in that it has led to avoidable misunderstanding both at home and abroad. But so far it has been a cost we could live with. Now the cost is threatening to become too heavy. Nothing can illustrate it better than the fact that in our own country the advocates of a cautious approach towards China have been put on the defensive because hardly anyone is willing to recall the Chinese support to Pakistan in 1965 and 1971, the Chinese attack in 1962, the Chinese support to Naga and Mizo rebels all these years and the massive expenditure we have had to incur on these counts to the grave detriment of our economic growth. In the propaganda war, Peking has already won the first round. For, it has already managed to create the impression that while it wants friendly relations with India, New Delhi is dragging its feet and that, too, only because the latter does not wish to offend those “impossible” Russians who have already “grabbed” Afghanistan and are out to “grab” Iran.
Mr Vajpayee has reason to be on the defensive in certain respects. As India’s minister for external affairs, he clearly cannot, for instance, defend his previous position on “Akhand Bharat” or the Arab-Israeli dispute. But he does not need to be apologetic on China. China has hurt India pretty badly which, by the worst reckoning, India has not done to China if only because the geographical factor has been against it.
Influence
Moreover, the Chinese have mixed up cause and effect. They did not become hostile to India because it has leaned too heavily towards the Soviet Union. On the contrary, it did so because they had turned unduly hostile, perhaps under the baneful influence of the “gang of four” and their chief who was no other than the “Great Helmsman” himself, as they very well know. It is, therefore, for them to reverse their policy before they can legitimately expect a change in India’s. And such a reversal must, in sum, involve acceptance of India’s pre-eminence in South Asia and all that implies.
Though not in the narrow sense, it is also pertinent to pose the question whether the present Chinese leadership can sustain its anti-Soviet and modernisation drives. While it is highly premature to attempt an answer to this question, I am inclined to take a rather sceptical view. To put it most succinctly, indeed dangerously succinctly, I am inclined to believe that while anti-Sovietism is consistent with the Maoist emphasis on the development of agriculture and rural industry, it is not with modernisation on the proposed scale.
Though the Chinese modernisation plan is not as lopsided as Russia’s was under Stalin, it will call for discipline and order of a similar kind and lead to a sharp reduction in differences between the Chinese and Soviet models of development. And, as modernisation proceeds, the Chinese will find themselves facing problems very similar to the ones other communist societies have faced. They then must move either towards Soviet-type centralised planning and controls or towards a market- guided economy and they, too, are likely to opt for the first alternative because the latter involves a steady decrease in power and influence of the communist cadres which cannot be acceptable in a communist society. Such a development must revive the debate over foreign policy between pro-Soviet and anti-Soviet elements in the leadership. Such a debate clearly took place in Peking from 1956 when Mao initiated the “Great Leap Forward” campaign, to 1965 when he managed to overthrow the head of state, Mr Liu Shao-chi.
It is also evident that the West cannot buy China’s policy towards the Soviet Union. For it must deal with the Kremlin if it is to avoid a dangerous escalation in the nuclear arms race and prevent the proliferation of armed conflicts; the Soviet market is too attractive for the European members of NATO, especially for West Ger many, and the Soviet Union is too rich in mineral resources to be ignored as a trading partner. Moreover, serious problems are certain to arise between the West and China as the latter pushes ahead with modernisation. Already some persons in the West are raising warning signals. Perhaps it was in response to such signals that The Economist, London, ran an editorial “A friend in Need’ in its August 19, 1978, issue.
It wrote: “Do we really want to help create a modern, industrialised China of maybe 1-1/2 billion people, quite a lot of them modern, industrious soldiers, sailors and missilemen, by the year 2000?…. The thought of China even at Britain’s current level of economic development, but 25 times as big, raises all the predictable eyebrows…. At whose cost would this industrial monster find its raw materials? What is to prevent the new giant, reared as a counterweight to Russia, turning on its rearers? Might a marriage of Chinese diligence and Japanese technology produce, son of the Yellow Peril, a new version of the ‘co-prosperity sphere’ that really would, this time, dominate the world?”
The Economist answers the question regarding the desirability of Western help to China in the affirmative but on the assumption that, in the final analysis, China will fail to join the rank of great industrial powers. The relevant paragraphs deserve to be quoted: “The idea that the turn of the century could see a gigantic new Chinese industrial power, Britain- multiplied-by-25, has anyway to be taken with a large pinch of salt. There are so many things about China which are going to impose limits on the speed and extent of its industrialisation.
Tendency
“There is its sheer size, and the inevitable clumsiness a centralised Leninist system is prone to in so huge a country. There is its age-old tendency to come apart at the seams at regular intervals, before a new centralising dynasty pulls it together again; in present circumstances, this tendency makes the centralising planners reluctant to let efficient regions grow faster than inefficient ones for fear of the political consequences. There is, above all, the survival, despite Mrs Mao’s disappearance, of a radical, levelling, half-underground opposition which does not want the things which make rapid growth possible, and cannot be wholly ignored.
“Even on the kindliest assumptions, including a fair amount of Western aid, the realistic prospect for China by the year 2000 is not a Britain-times-25, or even a Poland-times-40, but a still unwieldy and largely rural country of far too many people which has nevertheless managed to build up a reasonably competent, if neither huge nor hyper-efficient, industrial sector. The world can probably live with that prospect.” And so can India. But friendly ties are a different proposition. They call for a community of interests which is hardly perceptible at least right now.
(Concluded)
The Times of India 25 October 1978