China - The Game

The message that Narendra Modi has been sending to China is clear: You mess in our backyard, we’ll mess in yours.

“When you have a dog—or in this case a dragon—snarling at you, while at the same time it is vigorously wagging its tail, which end of it do you believe?”

This was a question put to me at a dinner hosted some years ago by a diplomat who had spent considerable time in China.

He then went on to explain how Chinese strategic thinking was pinned around keeping your opponents—and your friends—constantly guessing about your true intentions.

“The thing is,” he continued, ”it is a strategy that works, and has worked not just since the formation of the People’s Republic, but for almost  2,500 years,  from the time of Sun Tzu  (the Chinese military strategist famous his treatise, The Art of War).”

Perhaps this explains the “Hindi Chini Bhai Bhai” propaganda hype months before China attacked India in October 1962, swarming almost to the doorstep of Calcutta before unilaterally withdrawing to its original positions north of the McMahon Line.

More than 50 years later, that attack continues to haunt our strategic thinking. Each October, reams of newsprint and TV prime time are spent on the question: Could it happen again?

Perhaps it also explains the Chinese incursions in Ladakh days before Chinese President Xi Jinping’s official visit to India in September 2014. Or the three-week faceoff at Depsang in the Daulat Beg Oldie sector in April-May 2013, just before Premier Li Keqiang’s visit to India.

Normally, the Indian response to such incursions or transgressions, is to raise strong objections through the “proper diplomatic or military channels”, without ruining the “atmospherics” of a state visit by a Chinese leader.

But in September last year, there was a twist to the tale.

Prime Minister Modi, who had assumed office just months earlier, insisted on raising the issue of the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) incursion in Ladakh’s Chumar section with a startled President Xi and his entourage, soon after they arrived in Ahmedabad on a state visit. Both Xi and his team then assured the Indian side that while they were ignorant of the ground realities, any PLA trespassers into India—a minor event—would be asked to pull back.

A day later, in Delhi, upon learning that the intruders had not withdrawn, the Indian Prime Minister made his displeasure evident.

“Yeh chhoti chhoti ghatnayen bade se bade sambandhon ko prabhavit kar deti hain. Agar daant ka dard ho to saara sharir kaam nahin karta hai. (Even such small incidents can impact the biggest of relationships, just as a little toothache can paralyze the entire body),” he told President Xi bluntly.

It is through that prism that we must see Narendra Damodardas Modi’s  visit to China from May 14 to 16.
But first, a few interesting firsts.

One day before his visit, Modi became the first, and so far only, Indian Prime Minister to have an account on Sina Weibo, the largest social media site in China. Facebook and Twitter are banned in China, and the Internet is extensively policed. Even before he reached, he had 47,000 followers. (Modi’s Twitter account has over 12 million followers.)

“It was his first ‘Hello China’ post that has received the biggest response, with more than 18,000 likes and 12,000 comments,” reported the Voice of America on May 13, a day before Modi’s arrival.

The range of comments varied from warm welcomes to the ‘”treatment of women in India, sexual assault on buses, the problem of poverty…” said the VOA report. But “…a large chunk of the comments…seemed to be fixated on the contentious issue of territory in India’s Arunachal Pradesh that China claims as its own and calls South Tibet.

One Weibo user named Average Nighthawk said: ‘Prime minister, China and India are both victims of colonialism and you should sympathize. Southern Tibet is a problem that the British created. South Tibet should be returned to China!’ But not all agreed. One Weibo user argued that if the criterion for claiming South Tibet was that it was ruled by a Chinese king long ago, then ‘India should claim Pakistan, Bhutan, Nepal and Afghanistan where an Indian king also ruled.”

Two, he is the first Indian Prime Minister to push the blame for the tepid relationship directly into China’s court. “I stressed the need for China to reconsider its approach on some of the issues that hold us back from realising the full potential of our partnership,” He told the media at a joint press conference with Premier Li Keqiang in Beijing.

These include the border issue, the trade imbalance, and the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) announced during President Xi Jinping’s recent visit to Pakistan, which will traverse through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

Three He is the first Indian Prime Minister to be received in Xian, President Xi’s hometown, instead of Beijing. Just like Modi received Xi in Ahmedabad instead of Delhi in September 2014.

In tangible terms, the visit yielded business  contracts worth some $22 billion, an agreement to set up a panel tasked with rationalising the $45 billion trade deficit with China, a decision to open consulates in Chennai and Chengdu, an MoU between the Indian Council for Cultural Relations and the Yunnan Minzu University to set up a Yoga College in Kunming in Yunnan province, and stepped-up cooperation in areas like railways, mining, tourism, ocean studies, more military exercises…the list is long.

“We have common global and regional interests. For example, we have a shared interest in the outcome of the international climate change negotiations. We are both trying to strengthen regional connectivity. Terrorism is a shared threat. Instability in West Asia matters to both of us. Peace and progress in Afghanistan benefits us both. I am confident that our international partnership will deepen,” Modi said at the press conference in Beijing.

As for the border, “We both believe in maintaining the momentum of talks between special representatives on the issue in seeking a plan for a fair and reasonable resolution,” said Li.

Later, addressing cheering students at Tsinghua University, Modi overruled reservations expressed by his own government agencies as well as protests from the Opposition back home by announcing that New Delhi would soon grant e-visas to Chinese visitors to India. This, despite China’s policy of either refusing or stapling temporary visas of people from Arunachal Pradesh and Kashmir visiting China.

But to really put Modi’s China trip in context, we need to bracket it between some events post and prior to the visit.

When he was sworn in as Prime Minister on 26 May 2014, Narendra Modi broke protocol by inviting the heads of all SAARC nations. Other invitees included the Prime Minister of the Tibetan Government-in-Exile Lobsang Sangay, and the trade representative from Taiwan. India doesn’t have diplomatic relations with Taiwan, but both sides exchange trade representatives. As expected, there were howls of protest from Beijing. His trip to Arunachal in February this year prompted more dire warnings and protests, and led to the State-run CCTV showing Arunachal as part of China on a map aired during Modi’s recent visit.

His visit to Japan, China’s arch enemy, in September last year, and the rapidly growing strategic and military relations with the US, Australia and ASEAN nations have also raised flags in Beijing. So did reports just before his China tour that India was poised to ink a deal to develop Chabahar port in Iran, barely 75 km west of Gwadar.

Being built by China in Pakistan’s restive Baluchistan province, Gwadar is part of the so-called “string of pearls” the Chinese are said to be using to “encircle” India. New Delhi has already sanctioned an initial $85 million for the development of Chabahar.

“If nothing else, Prime Minister Modi has lifted Indian strategic thinking beyond the gloom and doom of the 1962 debacle,” said a senior military official.

Post the visit, Modi became the first Indian PM to visit Ulan Bator, Mongolia. A mineral-rich former Communist nation, the country has repeatedly made its discomfort with Big Brother Beijing evident. Reports that India, which already trains Mongolian army officers, plans to raise the relationship to a strategic level are likely to cause some unease in Beijing.

The message going out is clear: You mess in our backyard, we’ll mess in yours. And as for keeping the other side guessing, two can play that game.