India, China pirouette for 'super-power' position
India, China pirouette for 'super-power' position
By M.G. Srinath
NEW DELHI (DPA): Asian giants and neighbors India and China
have begun a bout of shadow-play in a bid to assume the mantle of
power supremacy in the region.
Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee left on Sunday for
a week-long official visit to Vietnam and Indonesia as part of
Delhi's renewed "look East policy". He is also scheduled to visit
Japan next month. But no dates have been announced yet.
On Tuesday, senior Chinese leader and former premier Li Peng
arrives in India on a eight-day visit as part of a "goodwill
trip".
Reports from Hanoi suggest that Vajpayee will discuss during
his three-day visit issues like China and security issues with
Vietnamese President Tran Duc Luong, Prime Minister Phan Van Khai
and Defense Minister Pham Van Tra.
Vajpayee's visit is the first by an Indian premier since 1994,
the year before Vietnam joined the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations (ASEAN).
Vietnam currently holds the chair of the 10-member regional
body, which India has wooed in recent efforts to present a united
front in relation to China, which borders both Vietnam and India.
India and China are dialogue members in the ASEAN Regional Forum,
a broader 37-nation security grouping.
Last month Hanoi and Beijing signed agreements settling an
age-old border dispute in the Tonkin Gulf. A year earlier the two
countries signed a historic land border treaty.
Yet Vietnam as well as several other ASEAN members,
particularly the Philippines, routinely express concern over
hegemonic Chinese claims of disputed islands in the South China
Sea.
India has been inwards to reduce the Chinese influence in the
ASEAN region during the recent past months.
Last November, India along with five Southeast Asian nations
signed an agreement in the Laos' capital of Vientiane to promote
multifaceted cooperation in the areas of tourism, culture,
education and communication.
In addition to India, the other signatories of the Vientiane
Declaration of Mekong-Ganga Cooperation were Laos, Thailand,
Cambodia, Vietnam and Myanmar.
Although Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh says the
regional grouping was not a snub to China, it is clear that
Delhi's effort is to contain Beijing through direct dealing with
the economic bloc countries via Myanmar.
India's relations with China has been a roller-coaster ride
over the decades. Delhi was one of the first countries to
recognize the new government of the communist People's Republic
of China in 1949.
China's invasion of eastern Tibet upset the balance of power
the following year. It soon deteriorated when the Tibetan
spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, fled to India along with a
large number of followers.
This was followed by a brief but bitter border war in 1962,
with the two Asian giants still claiming vast swathes of each
other's territory along their 2,010 kilometer border.
The war led to a 14-year break in diplomatic relations.
Both sides are also wary of each other's nuclear capabilities.
Delhi and Beijing traded insults soon after India conducted a
series of underground nuclear tests at Pokhran in May 1998.
To add to the problem, Indian businessmen during the past
months have began to complain bitterly at the Chinese dumping of
goods, which has began to hit the domestic market.
Li Peng, number two in the Chinese hierarchy, is also the
chairman of the National Peoples' Congress, euphemistically
regarded as Communist China's equivalent of Parliament.
He comes to India as a guest of Indian parliamentary Speaker
Ganti Balayogi. The Chinese leader will meet Vajpayee, Indian
federal President K.R. Narayanan and others during his Delhi
visit.
Li Peng has been Beijing's "pointman" in improving ties with
Delhi over the last decade. He was the Chinese premier when the
first break-through in India-China relations took place during
former Indian premier Rajiv Gandhi's visit to China in 1988.
He was also in charge in 1993, when the two neighbors signed
the agreement on maintaining peace and tranquility along the
international Line of Control (LoC).
Li Peng comes to India when the bilateral ties between Delhi
and Washington is blooming in its full glory. Beijing is wary of
this for it feels threatened that its power of influence in the
Asian region will go down.
Sujit Datta, senior fellow at the Institute of Defense Studies
and Analyses (IDSA), an Indian think-tank, feels although India-
China bilateral relations are improving, there are still many
points of differences.
These include: Beijing asking India to sign the Nuclear Non-
Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Chinese supply of nuclear and missile
technology to Pakistan and refusal to condemn Islamabad's support
to Muslims' rebellion in Indian Kashmir.
China has said that it will not sacrifice its "all-weather"
relations with Pakistan while attempting to improve and develop
relations with India.