It transpires that the Chinese did not intend to spring a surprise on New Delhi. They had indicated to the Indian ambassador in Beijing that it would not be possible for their foreign minister, Mr Huang Hua, to visit this country in October, as earlier scheduled, or even later this year. And Mr KS Bajpai had duly reported this to South Block. Apparently, no one read his report.
Positions
But this cannot be the reason why the minister for external affairs, Mr PV Narasimha Rao, chose to take a soft line on this issue in his reply to the debate in Parliament last week. Even if he felt that way, he could not possibly admit that Beijing had administered a rebuff to New Delhi. He could do so only if he had good reason to abandon the hope of improvement in Sino-Indian relations in the foreseeable future. Clearly it would have been highly premature for him to have reached such a conclusion.
While in view of its recognition of the Heng Samrin regime in Kampuchea and the Prime Minister’s recent statements on Afghanistan, New Delhi cannot dismiss the possibility that the Chinese have had second thoughts on the desirability of trying to befriend it, it cannot rush to conclusions either. There may be a link between the rather aggressive stance the Pakistan foreign minister, Mr Agha Shahi, adopted during his recent visit to New Delhi and the indefinite postponement of Mr Huang Hua’s visit. But we cannot be sure. We have to wait and watch before we can make up our mind.
Indeed, we do not need to. We can leave it to the Chinese to make up theirs. Mr Narasimha Rao was quite right when he said in Parliament the other day that we should let the Chinese determine the pace of improvement in Sino-Indian relations. This exposes him to the charge of passivity. But only those who have no idea of India’s advantages and China’s difficulties would take such a view.
India does not have much to gain from China’s friendship. The northern border has been tranquil for over a decade. Beijing can threaten peace there only at its own peril. Pakistan is in no position to serve as a proxy for China to embarrass or harass this country. New Delhi’s capacity to influence Soviet policy in Afghanistan cannot improve as a result of better ties with Beijing. Since India’s and China’s economies are not complementary, the scope for trade between the two is rather limited. New Delhi would have had a strong incentive to go out of its way to seek friendly relations with Beijing if it regarded the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan as a long-term threat to the region’s and India’s own security. On a sober and sane view it has no reason to feel so threatened.
China is not so well placed. Indeed, it has reason to feel encircled. The Soviet Union maintains on its northern and western borders a one-million-strong military force which it just cannot match in terms of the quality of equipment and striking power. In the south it faces Vietnam which claims to be in a position to shoot its obsolescent MIG-17s and MIG-19s out of the sky. And in the Pacific it confronts a formidable Soviet fleet which is becoming stronger and stronger by the day.
Geography favours China in relation to India. This country cannot mount the kind of offensive on Tibet that China could and did in 1962 in Arunachal (then NEFA) and Aksai Chin. But the geographical advantage having been neutralised as a result of the Indian deployment in the Himalayas and the treaty with the Soviet Union, New Delhi can, if it so decides, promote insurrection in Tibet. At the very least it can mount a propaganda offensive and embarrass the Chinese greatly since the Tibetan people remain bitterly critical of them. The Soviet Union has dropped hints that it would love to see an independence movement rise and grow in Tibet.
Another point generally escapes attention in the discussion of India-China relations. It is that while we possess a policy which is large enough and flexible enough to accommodate all our requirements, China has felt obliged to change its basic policy several times in the last three decades.
Different
India could and did seek Anglo-US military assistance at the time of the Chinese attack in 1962 without compromising either its non-aligned status or its ties with the Soviet Union. Similarly, at the time of the Bangladesh crisis in 1971, if could conclude a treaty with the Soviet Union and receive substantial military supplies and guarantee of support from Moscow against China without either abandoning its policy of non-alignment or damaging its relations with the West on a long-term basis. The United States cut off aid but not the other western countries and international agencies like the World Bank which in any case were the principal sources of assistance.
The Chinese record has been quite different. It is true that the United States had rebuffed Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai during the civil war and extended massive assistance to Chiang Kai-shek. But it does not follow that Mao should have divided the world neatly into Soviet and US camps and declared that a third road did not exist. By refusing to align his country with the Soviet Union he could have made it difficult for the US to maintain a posture of hostility towards China for long. Similarly, in foreign policy terms it was not at all necessary for him to link up the ideological conflict with the Soviet Union in the fifties and the sixties with the border dispute and provoke the Kremlin into deploying truly formidable forces on China’s frontier.
The conduct of his successors has been equally baffling. It is truly extraordinary they should have driven Vietnam into the arms of the Soviet Union, that they should have blocked Hanoi’s rapprochement with the United States and that they should have aligned themselves with a genocidal regime in Kampuchea just because it was hostile to the Vietnamese. Indeed, we cannot be sure how far the Pol Pot government’s genocidal policies and hostility towards Hanoi were the result of Chinese encouragement.
Extremes
Unlike in 1950, the Chinese have not gone in for a formal alliance with the enemy of their enemy. But in view of their bitter experience with one superpower (the Soviet Union), it is surprising that they should have drawn so close to the United States. They tried to bend the Kremlin to their purpose – an anti-US crusade – in the fifties and they failed. Now they are trying to bend Washington to their purpose – an anti-Soviet crusade – and they will fail again. Frustrated with the Soviet Union, they begin to look for accommodation with the West. Frustrated with the United States, they are bound to look for accommodation with the Soviet Union. And frustrated they will be for the simple reason that Washington just cannot do without a measure of detente with the Soviet Union because otherwise the world will become too dangerous a place to live in.
The Chinese are known to be pragmatic. If pragmatism means cynicism, they have certainly been pragmatic like most other great powers. But if pragmatism means a non-doctrinaire approach based on the understanding that other countries are not pieces of a jigsaw puzzle which can be put together to form one coherent whole, they have been far from pragmatic. There is something in the Chinese psyche which compels them to find an enemy and blow him up out of all proportion. In the fifties, the United States was their obsession. In the sixties they said both superpowers were a threat to the peace and freedom of all other countries. In the seventies they moved the Soviet Union to the first place in their demonology. In the early eighties they have become virtual allies of the United States. This phase, too, must end.
All individuals and communities possess an irrational streak. In the Chinese it appears to be stronger than among any other major power. Other great powers have also made blunders. It was, for instance, not necessary for Stalin to order a Communist takeover in Czechoslovakia and provoke the West to forge an anti-Soviet affiance with West Germany in it. It was plainly stupid for the United States to treat China as Russia’s satellite, to seek to isolate China and to get drawn into the civil war in little faraway Vietnam. But they have at least been consistent. China has been anything but consistent. It has swung from one extreme to another. How does one deal with such a country? One can only wait until it shows some signs of stability and interest in mutual comprehension.
The Times of India, 13 August 1980