Guest Column
India, China, and the Indian Ocean
By Kanti Bajpai
There is a growing view, fuelled by outsiders as well as commentators in China and India, that the two countries are in competition in the Indian Ocean region. C. Raja Mohan’s book (2012), Samudra Manthan: Sino-Indian Rivalry in the Indo-Pacific, is a searching analysis of this possibility. By contrast, the recently-released Chinese “blue book” indicates that while Beijing wants to deepen its engagements in the region, its goals are primarily economic.
China and India have largely parallel interests in the Indian Ocean. They want to access trade and energy, and they want peace and stability in the Gulf and Africa where they have economic interests. Protecting their nationals and businesses operating in these areas is another emerging interest. They also want to make sure pirates don’t attack international shipping and kidnap their nationals.
Both countries have reached out to key African and Indian Ocean states – the Maldives, Mauritius, Madagascar, Mozambique, and the Seychelles – as well as the bigger east and southern African states. China has categorically denied it is looking for bases. India has listening posts in the region but is highly unlikely to ask for bases from states that are fiercely independent and unwilling to be drawn into a rivalry.
Any attempt to interfere with each other’s trade or energy supplies will constitute an act of war every bit as dangerous as an attack on their land borders. Would either side risk it? Surely not, unless the stakes were so high they were willing to contemplate escalation up to and including nuclear war. It is hard to imagine what those stakes might be. Alarmists about the China-India relationship in the Indian Ocean fail to underline this point. China and India can pursue their largely economic interests without provoking each other.
The writer is Professor and Vice Dean of Research, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore.
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News Reports
Bilateral relations
Since Premier Li Keqiang visit to India in May, the Chinese press has been increasingly positive about Sino-India relations, while Indian press reports have remained more sceptical. A People’s Daily op-ed on May 28 reflected China’s unhappiness with what it saw as an attempt on Tokyo’s part to get India inside the ring of strategic partners to counter China, calling Japan a “petty burglar” attempting to stir discord in otherwise harmonious Sino-Indian relations. Indeed, the Business Standard predicted on May 28 that the issue of China would hang over Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Japan in a prominent manner. A day later, it was revealed by Oneindia News that the Japanese government had decided to “loosen its ban” on the export of defence goods and sell amphibious aircraft to India. The same paper also noted China’s “angry and nervous” attitude towards burgeoning Japan-India ties.
Sino-Indian rivalry was evident on other fronts too. Asia Briefing remarked on May 29 that China and India were vying over Myanmar’s energy resources. The Associated Press also reported that the China-India rivalry was extending to the Arctic, where both had applied for observer status at the Arctic council in order to stake their claims to shipping passages, fossil fuels and minerals in the region.
The Times of India reported on June 1 that the Indian Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) could soon grant approval to the Indian Army’s proposal to raise a mountain strike corps along the China border, in an attempt to catch up with what it perceived to be China’s superior military capabilities. NDTV also reported that Chinese forces had built a road five kilometers into India’s territory in the Jammu and Kashmir state. The Times of India reported on June 5 that the Kaspersky Global Research and Analysis Lab had provided evidence that India “had been a prime target of a Chinese cyber-espionage campaign” for the past eight years.
The Times of India also reported on June 2 that top Chinese general Qi Jianguo, deputy chief of the general staff of the People’s Liberation Army, had asserted during the Shangri-La Dialogue that Chinese warships would continue to patrol waters where Beijing had territorial claims. The Hindu reported on June 8 that China, for the first time, attempted to spell out its strategy to secure its interests in the Indian Ocean in its first “blue book” on the region. The blue book made a case for China to deepen its economic engagements with the Indian Ocean Region’s (IOR) littoral states, but stressed that Beijing’s interests would be driven by commercial — rather than military — objectives. Commenting on China’s port strategy, The Economist expressed the opinion that “China’s port strategy is mainly motivated by commercial impulses… But it could become a flashpoint for diplomatic tensions.
News Reports
Trade and Business
The Business Standard carried an analysis on June 1 describing why Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar co-operation with neighbouring countries was vital for India’s northeast.
The Global Times noted in a June 3 op-ed that the promotion of the development of an economic corridor linking Bangladesh, China, India, and Myanmar (BCIM) was a highlight of Chinese Premier Li Keqiang’s recent visit to India that would ultimately shape the biggest free trade area in the world, boosting the foreign trade of the BCIM countries and empowering bilateral trading.
The World Bank Global Development Horizons (GDH) Report noted that China and India would be the largest investors among developing countries in 2030, accounting for 38% of the global gross investment. The two countries would also account for almost half of all global manufacturing investment.
The Hindu reported on June 6 that the United States had exempted both China and India, among a few other countries, from sanctions for importing oil from Iran, noting that these countries had significantly reduced their dependence on Iranian oil in the last six months. According to The Hindu, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) had lowered both China’s and India’s growth estimate in 2013; in China’s case the OECD estimated a 7.8 per cent growth – down from the previous estimate of 8.5 per cent; in India’s case, the growth estimate was 5.3 per cent, down from 5.9 per cent. However, the Financial Express reported the findings of a HSBC study showing that that India had grown at a higher rate than other BRIC countries, including China, during the month of May.
News Reports
Energy and Climate Change
According to a 3 June report in Dawn citing data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), China, India and Pakistan have increased their nuclear arsenals within the past year, causing peace in Asia to be “fragile”. “While states have avoided direct conflict with each other and have stopped supporting insurgent movements on each other’s territory, decades-old suspicions linger and economic integration has not been followed up with political integration,” SIPRI said.
Firstpost India reported on June 3 that India had failed to meet its commitments towards tackling climate change mainly due to bureaucratic hurdles while China, the world’s biggest polluter, had a better record. While China managed to meet its targets, India faced limitations in its implementation strategy.
Analyses and Commentaries
Writing in Bloomberg News on May 27, Chandrahas Choudhury argued that despite ongoing political tensions, the growth in India-China trade was a cause for optimism. He also argued for the need for India to envision a more ambitious and assertive foreign policy and trade strategy. Srinath Raghavan, Senior Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, opined in a commentary in The Hindu on 30 May that India would do well to reciprocate China’s recent efforts to reach out and build better relations with India.
G. Parthasarathy, former Ambassador of India to Pakistan, took a contrarian view of China’s intentions with regard to India. Writing in the New Indian Express on June 2, he explained how China had managed to outmanoever a clumsy India, subduing the enemy without fighting, with strategies from Sun Tzu’s Art of War. On June 5, Parthasarathy wrote another op-ed in the Hindu Business Line, arguing that “appeasing an assertive China is a recipe for marginalisation”, and stating that “China inflicted a national humiliation on India” by intruding 19 km into Indian territory. Writing in Future Directions, Liu Zongyi and Jabin Jacob also analyzed the recent China-India border stand-off from both Chinese and Indian perspectives.
In a Global Times article of May 31, Liu Zongyi warned that India ought to be wary of a strategic relationship with Japan, in light of the latter’s history of war crimes during World War 2. In a Global Times op-ed of 5 June, Rajeev Sharma analysed the China-India-Japan triangle, arguing that strained China-India and China-Japan bilateral relations would not “block” the India-Japan relationship. Summing up the blossoming India-Japan relationship, Forbes commented on May 29 that India’s “love affair” with Japan was fueled by disputes with China. Haider Rizvi analysed China’s role in another ‘triangle’, China-India-Pakistan, and stated that growing China-India relations could help to improve India-Pakistan relations. Hussain Zaidi, writing in The News, also noted the existence of a growing Sino-Pakistan relationship, but conceded that “Pakistanis need to bear in mind that Sino-India engagement has much greater potential than Pak-China relations.”
Writing in the Global Times, Binod Singh analysed the largely negative impact on bilateral relations of the Indian media which “over-amplified” the recent China-India border conflict. Lora Saalman also wrote a supporting analysis in the Global Times, largely placing the blame for the China-India border conflict on the highly nationalist stance taken by the Indian media. Zachary Keck, writing in The Diplomat, analysed the implications of the recent decision taken by the Indian government to boost troops by over 40,000 personnel at the China-India border.
Writing in the Asia Times, Madhu Bhalla described China’s strategy as being comprised of “shock-and-awe” tactics and outlined the differences between Indian and Chinese foreign policy assumptions and their implications. A Hindustan Times commentary by Pramit Chaudhury on 7 June also argued that China seemed to think that the Sino-Indian relationship was going “swimmingly”, showing that India had not managed to effectively convey its concerns regarding China’s “erratic and opaque” foreign policies. Writing in Pakistan Today, Kuldip Nayar conveyed much scepticism of China’s intentions towards peaceful bilateral relations with India, stating, “Beijing never kept its word. There is no assurance that it would in the future”. Brahma Chellaney also commented on the “Sino-Indian divide” in an op-ed in China-US Focus, arguing that “to prevent China from using its trade prowess to achieve political objectives, New Delhi must not shy away from employing market access to advance its strategic interests.” Finally, YaleGlobal strategic affairs commentator Harsh Pant assessed the messy state of China-India relations, arguing that the new dispensation in Beijing had marked India as “a foreign policy priority.”
Journal Articles
Manmohan Agarwal and John Whalley’s NBER Working Paper, “China and India: Reforms and the Response: How Differently have the Economies Behaved?” compares the relative performances of China and India using two different methods which provide very different pictures of their relative performances. China was found to have done better than India in most of the indicators studied.
University of New Hampshire Earth system scientist Steve Frolking, together with Tom Milliman, Karen Seto and Mark A Friedl, recently published “A global fingerprint of macro-scale changes in urban structure from 1999 to 2009” in Environmental Research Letters. The paper maps the growth of China’s and India’s megacities through satellite imagery, and finds that while Chinese cities are rapidly expanding their material infrastructure stock in both height and extent, Indian cities are primarily building out and not increasing in verticality.
Compiled and sent to you by Centre on Asia and Globalisation and the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore.
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