http://www.tribuneindia.com/2014/20141002/edit.htm#4
Inder Malhotra
Some believe the incursion at Chumar was the handiwork of PLA commanders acting on their own. This is absurd. For it is Xi Jinping (above) who controls the PLA
RODERICK MACFARQUHAR, Professor of history and political science at Harvard, is an internationally respected authority on China. Way back in the 1980s he had published a three-volume account of the origins of the Cultural Revolution in that country. In the last of these volumes he had an elaborate chapter tellingly titled “Mao’s India War”. He did not refrain from pointing out what had gone wrong on the Indian side but was masterly in refuting Neville Maxwell’s perverse thesis that the brief but brutal border war in the high Himalayas in 1962 was “India's China War”. The reason I am stating all this is that in a highly noteworthy recent interview he has not only put in perspective the September 17-19 summit between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping but also pointed out what it really means to the future of relations between these two Asian giants. This should be compulsory reading for all Indians interested in China, and especially for those with any say in the making of New Delhi’s China policy.
Even at the height of bonhomie and warmth between the two leaders on the riverfront of Sabarmati in Ahmedabad — with the honoured guest clad in an Indian-style jacket presented by Modi — many in this country had felt troubled. For exactly at that time a serious and large Chinese incursion into the Chumar area in the Ladakh region to the south of the Line of Actual Control was taking place. The number of Chinese troops on Indian territory was as large as 1,000. To his credit, Modi ordered that 1,500 Indian soldiers should face the intruders. Some Indians tried to comfort themselves with the notion that the unacceptable incident might be the handiwork of the People’s Liberation Army commanders acting on their own. This was absurd. For it had been clear for some time that Xi, the most powerful President of China since Deng Xioping, controlled the PLA. He was the Chairman of the Military Affairs Commissions of both the Chinese Communist Party and the government. Modi publicly took up the border issue and at the joint press conference, demanding its “early solution” as well as clarification of the LAC to avoid repeated incidents like the one at Chumar then taking place. Xi did not reply at the same forum but used his address to the Indian Council of World Affairs to plug the standard Chinese line: that the border issue was left by history and that both China and India were competent enough to settle minor incidents that occurred because claims on where the LAC lay differed.
Macfarquhar confirms this analysis and adds that Xi has repeatedly emphasised the party leadership of the military. Making excessive concessions to India would not be in keeping with the “profile Xi has established with the Chinese public, which is as a strong nationalist leader”. What the eminent Sinologist had to say further needs to be quoted fully and underscored. “If my reading is right, Xi was basically telling Modi that you may be a strong leader, but I am telling you that we have got the advantage of the terrain on the border and we can exploit it”. What Macfarquhar did not say but is a reality we cannot afford to overlook is that the Chinese do not consider us to be in the same league as they. Furthermore, they are proud of the tremendous difference between their economic and military power and India’s.
This does not mean that China either wants or needs a war with this country. What it does want and would try to ensure is that this country, like every other, is unable to challenge or undermine Chinese territorial sovereignty, strategic interests and core concerns. For this reason China is carefully watching the outcome of Prime Minister Modi’s talks with President Obama just as it has watched the development of close relationship between India and Japan after Modi’s visit to Kyoto and Tokyo. India has its own compulsions. It prefers to be a strategic partner of the United States but not an ally. Japan needs India as a major Asian ally and has the US as a “back-up”.
Japan has begun to be worried about the safety of its massive investments in China. That should explain why its promise of investing $35 billion in India over five years is much greater than China’s $20-billion commitment over the same period. Yet China does want greater economic engagement with India while retaining its ability to crack the whip on the disputed India-China border when necessary. One instrument for this is China’s comprehensive help and support - including in nuclear and missiles arena — to its “all-weather friend”, Pakistan. On the other hand, Xi has promised to support India’s claim to be a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation of which China and Russia are the leading members. One more area where China will find it necessary to be on the same page as India is the post-US Afghanistan where a new government has taken over. Uighur rebels in Xinjiang are getting a lot of support from the Islamists on the Afghan-Pakistan border.
Policymakers in South Block will do well to pay heed to Macfarquhar's view that chances of a boundary agreement between India and China are “very slim”. Quite apart from the fact that the Chinese are totally opposed to making any big concessions, they have already indicated that it is no longer the question of a “swap” that Zhou En-lai had proposed in 1960 under which India could have the McMahon Line in the Northeast by ceding Aksai Chin in Ladakh to China. The Chinese are now demanding the Tawang area even though they are claiming the entire Arunachal Pradesh. This India cannot accept. Any hope that there might be a clarification and confirmation of the LAC is also unrealistic. For the present confusion suits Beijing very well.
Inder Malhotra
Some believe the incursion at Chumar was the handiwork of PLA commanders acting on their own. This is absurd. For it is Xi Jinping (above) who controls the PLA
RODERICK MACFARQUHAR, Professor of history and political science at Harvard, is an internationally respected authority on China. Way back in the 1980s he had published a three-volume account of the origins of the Cultural Revolution in that country. In the last of these volumes he had an elaborate chapter tellingly titled “Mao’s India War”. He did not refrain from pointing out what had gone wrong on the Indian side but was masterly in refuting Neville Maxwell’s perverse thesis that the brief but brutal border war in the high Himalayas in 1962 was “India's China War”. The reason I am stating all this is that in a highly noteworthy recent interview he has not only put in perspective the September 17-19 summit between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping but also pointed out what it really means to the future of relations between these two Asian giants. This should be compulsory reading for all Indians interested in China, and especially for those with any say in the making of New Delhi’s China policy.
Even at the height of bonhomie and warmth between the two leaders on the riverfront of Sabarmati in Ahmedabad — with the honoured guest clad in an Indian-style jacket presented by Modi — many in this country had felt troubled. For exactly at that time a serious and large Chinese incursion into the Chumar area in the Ladakh region to the south of the Line of Actual Control was taking place. The number of Chinese troops on Indian territory was as large as 1,000. To his credit, Modi ordered that 1,500 Indian soldiers should face the intruders. Some Indians tried to comfort themselves with the notion that the unacceptable incident might be the handiwork of the People’s Liberation Army commanders acting on their own. This was absurd. For it had been clear for some time that Xi, the most powerful President of China since Deng Xioping, controlled the PLA. He was the Chairman of the Military Affairs Commissions of both the Chinese Communist Party and the government. Modi publicly took up the border issue and at the joint press conference, demanding its “early solution” as well as clarification of the LAC to avoid repeated incidents like the one at Chumar then taking place. Xi did not reply at the same forum but used his address to the Indian Council of World Affairs to plug the standard Chinese line: that the border issue was left by history and that both China and India were competent enough to settle minor incidents that occurred because claims on where the LAC lay differed.
Macfarquhar confirms this analysis and adds that Xi has repeatedly emphasised the party leadership of the military. Making excessive concessions to India would not be in keeping with the “profile Xi has established with the Chinese public, which is as a strong nationalist leader”. What the eminent Sinologist had to say further needs to be quoted fully and underscored. “If my reading is right, Xi was basically telling Modi that you may be a strong leader, but I am telling you that we have got the advantage of the terrain on the border and we can exploit it”. What Macfarquhar did not say but is a reality we cannot afford to overlook is that the Chinese do not consider us to be in the same league as they. Furthermore, they are proud of the tremendous difference between their economic and military power and India’s.
This does not mean that China either wants or needs a war with this country. What it does want and would try to ensure is that this country, like every other, is unable to challenge or undermine Chinese territorial sovereignty, strategic interests and core concerns. For this reason China is carefully watching the outcome of Prime Minister Modi’s talks with President Obama just as it has watched the development of close relationship between India and Japan after Modi’s visit to Kyoto and Tokyo. India has its own compulsions. It prefers to be a strategic partner of the United States but not an ally. Japan needs India as a major Asian ally and has the US as a “back-up”.
Japan has begun to be worried about the safety of its massive investments in China. That should explain why its promise of investing $35 billion in India over five years is much greater than China’s $20-billion commitment over the same period. Yet China does want greater economic engagement with India while retaining its ability to crack the whip on the disputed India-China border when necessary. One instrument for this is China’s comprehensive help and support - including in nuclear and missiles arena — to its “all-weather friend”, Pakistan. On the other hand, Xi has promised to support India’s claim to be a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation of which China and Russia are the leading members. One more area where China will find it necessary to be on the same page as India is the post-US Afghanistan where a new government has taken over. Uighur rebels in Xinjiang are getting a lot of support from the Islamists on the Afghan-Pakistan border.
Policymakers in South Block will do well to pay heed to Macfarquhar's view that chances of a boundary agreement between India and China are “very slim”. Quite apart from the fact that the Chinese are totally opposed to making any big concessions, they have already indicated that it is no longer the question of a “swap” that Zhou En-lai had proposed in 1960 under which India could have the McMahon Line in the Northeast by ceding Aksai Chin in Ladakh to China. The Chinese are now demanding the Tawang area even though they are claiming the entire Arunachal Pradesh. This India cannot accept. Any hope that there might be a clarification and confirmation of the LAC is also unrealistic. For the present confusion suits Beijing very well.
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