India Insight

Where has India’s hawkish stance on China gone?

India’s complex diplomacy with China became further muddled on Friday as the chief of the Indian army categorically denied any troop build-up on either side of the Asian giants’ shared border in response to recent reports of Chinese military incursions into Indian territory.

India’s civil government and army officials strike a delicate balancing act in their position on the country’s powerful neighbour, with a hawkish military stance traditionally tempered by more reserved – but domestically unpopular – rhetoric from New Delhi.

However that appeared to be out of date on Friday as General V.K. Singh, Chief of Army staff said neither side was bolstering its border troops, four days after trashing media reports of potential acts of Chinese aggression on Indian soil last September.

“Force deployment on both the sides of the Sino-Indian border has not increased. The force deployment is exactly the same as has been there for a large number of years,” Singh told reporters.

“In this region, the Chinese patrols go up to their perceived region and our patrols go up to our perceived region.”

“When our patrols go to our perceived region, you do not report because they are our patrols. But, when their patrols come, you report that an incursion or transgression has taken place,” he added.

Does the Indian media overplay Indo-Chinese tension?

New Delhi’s flat-out denial of the most recent reports by state authorities of Chinese military incursions across its border with India in Jammu and Kashmir may show a tendency to gloss over such seemingly insignificant events — in favour of bigger strategic and trade interests — that the media appears to ignore.

On Monday afternoon, amidst a lull in the seemingly endless Indian news cycle, all major TV news channels flashed a breaking story of Chinese troops crossing the Indian border in the disputed northern state.

Local news providers in the state declared fears of a “hotting-up of the border”, and former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah was moved to issue fiery rhetoric and even threats of retaliation, which the mainstream media duly published.

Despite the reported incursions taking place in September of last year, the story rapidly found its way to the top of the headline pile, and in the apparent context of a disputed border between unstable bedfellows armed with nuclear weapons, several international newswires even jumped on the reports.

Back in New Delhi, however, India’s ministry of external affairs described the media reports as “baseless”, rubbishing claims from state authorities, and re-printed by news organisations that Indian workers were “threatened” by Chinese troops.

Chief of the Army Staff General V.K. Singh even went as far to defend Chinese troops involved in the alleged border crossings, saying that the local residents on the Indian side of the border were to blame for ignoring government advice over ceasing construction projects. Chinese officials made no remarks on the issue.

Reports of so-called incursions are nothing new, and a high-pitched domestic media debate that routinely raises fears of increased Chinese influence on Indian territory only further muddles a murky and ambiguous history of boots purposefully, or not, crossing borders.

Is India downplaying Chinese border intrusions?

In response to recent reports that two Chinese helicopters intruded into Indian territory in Leh in Jammu and Kashmir, Army Chief Deepak Kapoor said he did get reports of Chinese intrusion but “this is not a new thing.”

“I want to tell you that the press sometimes hypes this but the numbers of intrusions which have taken place this year are on the same level as last year,” Kapoor said.

Soon after that the Indian media reported that Chinese soldiers had crossed the border in Ladakh last week and painted some rocks red.

Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna said, “Let me go on record to say that border with China has been one of the most peaceful boundaries that we have had as compared to other boundary lines with other countries.”

Former Air Force Chief Fali Homi Major and Navy Chief Sureesh Mehta have repeatedly warned that China is a danger to India, and the hawks in the Indian security establishment fear that the Chinese had a strategic plan of encircling India.

Around the time India and China were holding the 13th round of their border talks in August, an article had appeared in China titled “If China takes a little action, the so-called Great Indian Federation can be broken up”.

The article primarily focussed on how China can split India and break it up into 20-30 states like the European Union.

India, China take a measure of each other at border row talks

Sanjeev Miglani

Aug 5, 2009 12:35 EDT

China and India are sitting down for another round of talks this week on their unsettled border, a nearly 50-year festering row that in recent months seems to have gotten worse.

China’s Vice Foreign Minister Dai Bingguo and India’s National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan are unlikely to announce any agreement on the 3,500 km border, even a small one, but their talks this week may well signal how they intend to move forward on a relationship marked by a  deep, deep “trust deficit”, as former Indian intelligence chief B. Raman puts it.

While the entire Himalayan border is disputed, including the Aksai Chin area, it is the row over large parts of India’s Arunachal Pradesh in the eastern stretch of the mountains that has strained ties in recent months.

The Chinese, says Raman,  are demanding that at least the Tawang tract of Arunachal Pradesh, if not the whole of it, should be transferred to it.  They are apparently adamant that if that doesn’t happen, there won’t be any border settlement, he says.

India’s position is that there can’t be a transfer of populated areas in any border settlement. Tawang is a populated area, its citizens are Indians, New Delhi says.

So firmly have the Chinese dug their heels in, that they refused to endorse an Asian Development Bank  irrigation project in Arunachal Pradesh in June on grounds that it was its territory. Last month, India’s Foreign Minister S. M. Krishna confirmed to parliament in a question-answer session media reports about the Chinese objection to the project which appeared to have stung India.

Xinjiang – the spreading arc of instability

Sanjeev Miglani

Jul 9, 2009 08:29 EDT

China’s troubled Xinjiang region shares borders with eight countries, which is perhaps one reason President Hu Jintao dropped out of the G8 summit to head home, underscoring the seriousness of the situation and the need to quickly bring the vast oil-rich region under control.

Xinjiang touches Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, besides the Tibet Autonomous Region.

China, as this piece for the Council on Foreign Relations points out, has long been concerned that these states on its periphery both in central and south Asia may be tempted to back a separatist movement in Xinjiang because of the Uighurs’ cultural ties to its neighbours.

To that extent it has cultivated close ties with some of these neighbours, even trying to promote direct trade between Xinjiang and the provinces of neighbouring countries just over the border.

In April this year, the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region signed an agreement to establish friendly provincial relations with Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province, according to this report in the state-run China Daily.

The two sides agreed to explore partnership in oil and gas resources, bilateral trade and agriculture besides vowing to accelerate work on a long-planned direct rail link.

More importantly, Pakistan’s ambassador to China, Masood Khan, who signed the agreement, said the two sides must deepen their partnership to oppose “terrorism, extremism and separatism.”

Is India bending over backwards to please China?

Simon Denyer

Jun 3, 2008 04:26 EDT

India’s opposition Bharatiya Janata Party has accused the government of a “craven” and “slavish” attitude to China.

The BJP and others argue that the coalition government has failed to prevent repeated Chinese incursions along the disputed border, from Ladakh in the northwest to Arunachal Pradesh in the northeast.

And by trying to muzzle the Dalai Lama and close down Delhi during the Olympic torch relay, it has shown weakness, which will only encourage China to throw its weight around more.

There is also concern about the modernisation of the Chinese army, and the steady improvement of road and rail links in Tibet which are altering the military balance of power. Then there is talk of fresh Chinese claims to the northern tip of Sikkim.

“Given the growing perception that the UPA government lacks resolve… it is no surprise that Beijing has put the historically undisputed border with Sikkim back into contestation,” the Indian Express wrote in an editorial. Bharat Bhushan in the Mail Today said India had bent over backwards to China without any apparent dividend, while Brahma Chellaney argues China is trying to tie India down in the Himalayas “in order to avert the rise of a peer rival in Asia”.

But does India have any choice but quiet diplomacy? Should India swallow its pride and keep China happy over the Tibet question, even put up with a bit of border wrangling, and concentrate on the bigger picture?

Trade ties are booming and India stands to gain from a closer relationship with China, after all.