The China angle

China is getting set to play a bigger role in Afghanistan. It is in talks with the Afghan government to establish a military facility in the narrow Wakhan corridor which separates Kashmir from Tajikistan and borders Xinjiang. It has also appointed a new ambassador to Afghanistan.

The Chinese motives are two fold. First, to block Uighyur militants from entering Xinjiang from Afghanistan. Second, play a larger regional role to safeguard and further its interests as part of the Belt and Road Initiative. According to estimates, China has already provided Afghanistan $ 70 million worth of military aid in the past three years. Last December, Foreign Minister Wang Yi  said that Beijing was open to the idea of linking  Afghanistan to the China Pakistan Economic Corridor. Among the projects discussed in this context are an expressway to link Peshawar and Kabul, a trans-Afghan highway linking Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia.    

According to an Afghan defence ministry spokesman, discussion on the proposal for a base has been on since December. Broadly, he noted, the plan is to have the Afghans build the base with the Chinese helping finance it and also provide the equipment and training for the Afghans. According to some reports, Afghan and Chinese forces are already conducting joint patrols in the area.

The Wakhan corridor itself has not been affected by the war that has been fought in Afghanistan since the late 1970s. But from China’s point of view it is an important point from where Uighyur militants, many of who have escaped from the collapse of the Islamic State in Syria, can enter Xinjiang. The Chinese have for years kept a wary eye in the region because of the presence of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement militants in Afghanistan-Pakistan border region.  It is this factor which has also motivated the Chinese activities in the Gilgit Baltistan region.

The new Chinese ambassador to Afghanistan Liu Jinsong is a familiar face in New Delhi  where he has been an Acting Ambassador who has not hesitated to address tough questions on Sino-Indian relations, including the Doklam issue. According to the South China Morning Post, Liu was born in eastern Zhejiang, but raised in Xinjiang. He was previously deputy director of the international cooperation office and one of the directors of the Silk Road Fund.China has claimed that it faces an increased threat from returning jihadists. One official claimed that the number of those intercepted on the border in 2017 had gone up ten fold, but he refused to provide actual numbers. Last November, the Syrian ambassador to China had claimed that there had been 5,000 or so Chinese fighters in the IS.

As a result of the threat, China has undertaken an unprecedented crackdown on the Uighyurs. Restrictions have been placed on the teaching of their language, as well as on their Islamic religious practices. Last week China’s Defence Minister Chang Wanquan said that Beijing would uphold Xinjiang’s stability and “build an iron wall to enhance border defence.” Most of the police personnel recruited in Xinjiang come from the Han provinces of the country.

Since 2010, China has sharply enhanced its economic aid and investment in Afghanistan. One important area has been a pledge for a  $ 3.5 billion dollar investment in the Aynak copper mines. But to take advantage of Afghanistan’s rich natural resources, there must first be peace and stability in the country. In 2016, as a gesture signalling its interest, China sent a railway train through various Central Asian countries to the northern border town of Hairatan in Afghanistan.  

As a signal of its newly assertive regional policy, Beijing has also sought to cut out a role for itself in bringing stability to Afghanistan. IN December 2017, China hosted the first China-Afghanistan-Pakistan Foreign Ministers’ Dialogue where it expressed its willingness to play a “constructive role” in improving Afghanistan-Pakistan relations and extending the CPEC to cover Afghanistan as well. Earlier this meeting had taken place at a lower level. Last year, China was also part of the revived SCO contact group on Afghanistan. In a meeting attended by the SCO member states at the deputy minister level, the Afghan delegation was led by the deputy foreign minister Hikmat Karzai. Afghanistan is seeking full membership in this organisation. China is also part of the currently defunct Quadrilateral Coordination Group along with Pakistan, US and Afghanistan.

Afghanistan is naturally keen to be drawn into the regional integration plans being mooted by Beijing. It is aware that with the CPEC, Chinese influence has, if anything, increased in Islamabad. And where the US has lost leverage, China has gained. For their part the Pakistanis are fine with the Chinese role because Beijing usually goes out of its way to accommodate Pakistan. More important, an increased Chinese presence in Afghanistan will offset India’s influence. The US is also supportive of China and has said that it would like to encourage all regional partners to play a positive role and support the Afghan government.

Though there is generally positive attitude towards China’s efforts to mediate between Pakistan and Afghanistan, there are questions about its capacity to deal with the situation. With its stance that it does not like to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries, Beijing has lacked the experience of dealing with such situations. Dealing with the complex Afghan situation and the slippery Pakistanis will not be any easy task for the Chinese.

Greater Kashmir February 5, 2018

So many Kasganjs: Prolonged intimidation of Muslims will shred the social and political fabric of India

Listing the books on Xi Jinping’s desk during his annual New Year telecast has become an internet meme. This year, among other books, netizens noticed The Gray Rhino, a bestseller by Michele Wucker, whose theme is the need to recognise and act against dangers – fiscal, social or political – that are in plain sight in front of us, but often ignored.

A major danger confronting this country these days is the fraught communal situation. The violence in Kasganj should alert us to the consequences of using political polarisation for winning elections. In this case, a rally by a group of young men triggered the violence which, the senior BJP leader and governor of Uttar Pradesh Ram Naik has termed as “shameful” and a “blot” on the state. In a Facebook note (since removed) Raghavendra Vikram Singh, the district magistrate of Bareilly, observed a “strange trend” where people entered areas dominated by Muslims and raised slogans against Pakistan. The intention, he implied, was clearly to provoke.

Provocation has taken many forms. On Monday, the Supreme Court issued a notice to the states of Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan on their alleged failure to comply with an earlier court order to check instances of vigilante violence over cow protection. It does not take a genius to figure out that these actions are linked to the politics of our times, call them majoritarian or communal or whatever. People are, of course, free to choose their politics, but they and their leaders urgently need to consider the dangers that are now increasingly manifest.

The partition of the country in 1947 was a Black Swan event. Many of its actors, including some say Jinnah himself, did not believe that it would actually happen. Populist politicians think they are in control of the narrative and one day we discover that they have taken us over the brink. Today, despite the obvious train wreck we confront, there is a strange silence at the apex of the government. Though senior leaders like Vice-President Venkaiah Naidu obliquely, and Ram Naik directly, have raised the alarm.

In 1947, millions were displaced and hundreds of thousands killed. India has not yet recovered from that trauma. A communal breakdown today would result in an entirely different kind of a disaster. Across Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and into Bengal and Assam, Muslims constitute 10-30% of the population with some districts in western UP, east Bihar and Bengal going even higher. These 80 million or so are simply too many to be “sent to Pakistan”. Prolonged violence, intimidation and vigilantism against them would eventually lead to counter-violence. Given their numbers they would not prevail, but the ensuing conflict would surely shred the social and political fabric of the nation.

What is unfortunate here is that India has had one of the most peaceable Muslim populations anywhere. In the past decades, as the high tide of Islamist radicalism lashed the world, Indian Muslims stood out for their moderation born, no doubt, from the environment in which they lived. There were none found in the multi-national Guantanamo prison; the figure of those with IS are less than 10. Taking into account those involved in the Bombay blasts of 1993 and Indian Mujahideen strikes, the number of those killed or convicted for acts of terrorism in the past three decades does not probably exceed 200, an astonishing figure considering our Muslim population is around 176 million. Terrorism here has largely been a state-sponsored event run by Pakistan.

India cannot say it has not been warned. As recently as December 2017, former President Barack Obama called on India to cherish and nurture its well-integrated Muslim population. The Gray Rhino is standing in the middle of the road to our future. It’s up to us to avoid him, or bear the consequences of the crash.

Times of India Feb 3, 2018.

Hosting ASEAN

Last week, India hosted ten ASEAN leaders as chief guests for the Republic Day. This was an  innovative way of showing how important the regional grouping is to us. The chief guest at the Republic Day function has for long been a telegraphic means of conveying the importance Indian foreign policy attaches to a country at a particular juncture. Over the years, we have had the Saudis, Iranians, the French, last year we had the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Many guests have come multiple times. There are some like from Pakistan and China we would not countenance today. The US our good friend was only invited for the first time in 2015.

The media has given its own spin to the event. Briefing the media, an MEA official did not respond directly to a question on weather ASEAN wanted India to play a role against China. Her non-committal response was that “India-ASEAN relationship stands on its own.” Yet the spin given to the report was that the ASEAN wanted India to play a more assertive role in the Indo-PacificActually, if you look at the Delhi Declaration adopted by India and the ten leaders, you will see that the “Indo-Pacific” is not mentioned at all. All that the Declaration says is that the ASEAN and India would cooperate for the “conservation and sustainable use of marine resources in the Indian and Pacific Oceans in accordance with international law, notably the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Seas.” This is the only reference to the Indian and Pacific Oceans. The Declaration has the standard text in the issue of freedom of navigation and overflight and peaceful settlement of disputes under the principles of international law, including UNCLOS. It also reiterated support for the Declaration of the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea and hoped for an early conclusion of negotiations between China and ASEAN on a Code of Conduct in the South China Sea.

As of now ASEAN is India’s fourth largest trading partner; India is ASEAN’s seventh. It is also a major destination for outbound investments, with some 20 per cent going to ASEAN, mainly Singapore, with whom India has its deepest ties.

ASEAN has been China’s third largest trading partner for the past six years and China has been the ASEAN’s biggest trade partner for the past eight years in a row. More important, many Chinese companies are linked to ASEAN production centres through global value chainsA  big issue in the Indo-ASEAN agenda is the completion of the negotiations for the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership which have yet to be completed. Earlier India was seen as the spoiler in the negotiations. But now it is clear that the differing demands of RCEP countries—China, Australia, Japan, Korea, the ASEAN nations themselves—are also responsible for the delay in concluding the negotiations. But if India steps up its political and strategic profile in the region, the ASEAN may be more accommodating to Indian demands in the RCEP negotiations. 

India, of course, has an important trade and investment agenda in the ASEAN region. But given its larger ambitions, it needs to draw in ASEAN into its connectivity plans. But it has not been able to do its bit, for example, in developing the Trilateral Highway, that would link India’s north-east with Myanmar, Thailand and onwards to Malayaia.  But these plans  include not just the developments of ports and roads, but also procedures and agreement for the smooth movement of goods and services. The Japan-India sponsored Asia Africa Growth Corridor will have a meaning only if the ASEAN acts as its eastern anchor.

ASEAN is also interested in connectivity and there are many areas that can be fruitfully explored, including the linkages of India’s east coast ports – Haldia, Paradip, Vizag and Chennai with ASEAN destinations.

Given the strategic nature of the Bay of Bengal, India has, since the 1990s, engaged ASEAN nations in maritime exercises bilaterally and multilaterally. As Modi pointed out in an article published in 27 different ASEAN newspapers, India has no disputes with any of its land or maritime neighbours—Myanmar, Thailand and Indonesia. This provides depth and transparency to ties between us and forms the basis of a deep relationship.

With China ignoring the verdict of the arbitration tribunal on the South China Sea, there is not much evidence of any effort to push back against China’s brazen tactics. The few weak freedom of navigation operations  have done little to assuage ASEAN fears and the US withdrawal from the TPP  undercut whatever hope there was of a coherent policy response to China in 2017.

Over the past decade, the ASEAN has been significantly weakened. Because it takes decisions only by consensus, certain pro-Chinese countries like Cambodia and Laos have weakened its voice, particularly when it comes to standing up to China.

 Modi’s gesture has, no doubt, been seen as helpful by the ASEAN which has for long sought the role of India as a balancer against the pull of China. But New Delhi needs to be careful not to get sucked into a China-ASEAN quarrel. India cannot make up for the disarray within ASEAN in relation to China. What India needs to do is to step up its economic game with ASEAN,  and perhaps political payoffs will follow.

Greater Kashmir January 29, 2018

Modi is rewriting India's ties with ASEAN

When he is not tied up in winning elections, Prime Minister Narendra Modi uses his considerable energy to push the boundaries of India’s foreign policy. In the past weeks, there have been two important aspects of this — the visit to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos and the hosting of 10 ASEAN leaders as chief guests for the Republic Day.

Both were important in their own ways. The Davos timing was not a day too late. In the past year, the world economy has seen a distinct uptick, even while the foremost economy in the world, the US has sought to undermine globalisation. Modi’s strong assertion of the virtues of globalisation comes a year after Chinese premier Xi Jinping made the same point at Davos.

South China dispute

India and China upholding globalisation will impart stability to the global system, something neither can do without. Not to be left behind, US President Donald Trump, too, has shown up at Davos to declare that even he could live with a selective America First approach to the issue.

Equally important was the Modi move towards the ASEAN. With China ignoring the verdict of the arbitration tribunal on the South China Sea, there was not much evidence of any effort to push back against China’s brazen tactics. The few weak freedom of navigation operations did little to assuage ASEAN fears and the US' withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) undercut whatever hope there was of a coherent policy response to China in 2017.

The net result was an effective breakdown of the ASEAN into countries that were openly pro-Chinese, such as Cambodia and Laos; others leaning to China, such as Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Myanmar; and a few wary of Beijing, such as Vietnam, Singapore and Indonesia. There is no doubt that economically, China has deeper relations with the ASEAN.

As of now, ASEAN is India’s fourth largest trading partner; India is ASEAN’s seventh. It is also a major destination for outbound investments, with some 20 per cent going to ASEAN, mainly Singapore, with whom India has its deepest ties.

ASEAN has been China’s third largest trading partner for the past six years and China has been the ASEAN’s biggest trade partner for the past eight years in a row. More important, many Chinese companies are linked to ASEAN production centres through global value chains.

The trade factor

Modi’s efforts to woo the ASEAN may not have immediate economic consequences, but it will definitely be a signal to the ASEAN that India is willing to play the role envisaged by Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew in the early 1980s maintaining an effective balance of power vis-à-vis China. In an oped he wrote for 27 newspapers, Modi emphasised the cultural and civilisational links between India and the region, and more importantly stressed the fact that though we share land and maritime boundaries with three ASEAN nations, we do not have disputes with any.

This is in contrast to China which has disputes with Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia and Indonesia. The last named had been somewhat restrained in getting involved in the South China Sea issue but has now decided to make formal declaration that no part of its waters are in the South China Sea. This is in relation to the Natuna islands which the Chinese recognise as part of Indonesia but insists that the two countries have overlapping claims to maritime rights there.

Countering Beijing

India, of course, has an important trade and investment agenda in the ASEAN region. But given its larger ambitions, it needs to draw in ASEAN into its connectivity plans. India has a $1bn (Rs 6,359 crore) credit facility for infrastructure development in ASEAN region as well as a Rs 500 crore project development facility for the poorest ASEAN countries. The Japan-India sponsored Asia-Africa Growth Corridor will have a meaning only if the ASEAN acts as its eastern anchor. There is need to push ahead and actually implement some of the schemes.

Given its proximity to India and its importance in global value chains, ASEAN is in a vital zone of India’s strategic interests. After speaking of Look East, New Delhi now says we are Acting East. So far, India’s performance has been below par. But there is little time to lose. As China’s Belt and Road Initiative advances, there is a  need for countries of the region to provide an effective riposte.

Relations with ASEAN are not an easy job. It is one thing to have good ties with individual countries like Vietnam, Indonesia and Singapore, and quite another to synchronise ties with the regional association with a significant history. India has not been too good in working outfits like ASEAN or, for that matter, the European Union.

Mail Today January 29, 2018

Is China the New Ambassador of Globalisation in the Trump Era?

The purpose of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ positive comment on Prime Minister Modi’s Davos speech is quite transparent. When the election of Donald Trump had dampened the ardour of globalists at Davos in January 2017, Xi had made a robust defence of globalisation and said that protectionism would be the equivalent of “locking oneself in a dark room”.

Modi’s attack on protectionism is being spun by the Chinese media as confirmation that Xi has positioned China as the champion of this key issue. Nevertheless, they are only one facet of the increasingly complex Sino-Indian relationship.

The Chinese spokesperson hailed Modi’s opposition to protectionism, and said that it conformed to the belief by most countries that economic globalisation is in the interest of all countries.

Asked whether there would be coordination between India and China to oppose protectionism, the spokesperson said that China and India “have a consensus and common interest” in opposing trade protectionism and promoting globalisation.

Speaking of the China-India relationship, he said China believed that India was a big neighbour and that their imperative was to maintain a steady growth in the relationship and enhance “mutual understanding and trust”.

There should be no reason to raise doubts about this posture. Globalisation has been the key to the Chinese economic miracle and will be the key to ours as well. There is therefore a common interest in ensuring that the forces of protectionism are opposed at every turn.

Even so, an important reason for the Chinese posture is the fact that in the era of Trump, Xi Jinping is seeking to make China the leader of the forces of globalisation. Not surprisingly, “globalisation with Chinese characteristics” has its own nuances as is evident from the design of China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

But in this one year since Xi seized the standard of globalisation at Davos, we have also seen other aspects of what is being called China’s “sharp power” – the bullying of countries like South Korea, influence peddling in Australia and New Zealand, reports of Chinese heavy-handed tactics to force companies to transfer technology and so on.

In this past year, India and China have also had one of their most serious confrontations in the Doklam area. This is an issue which has not quite gone away, given the fact that China has strengthened its military forces in the area and there is every chance that once the snows melt, there could be tension once again.

2017 has also seen India drawing perceptibly closer to  the US. This has been marked by the revival of the Quadrilateral, a politico-military coalition of the US, Japan, India and Australia aimed at balancing Chinese power in what is being called the “Indo-Pacific”.

None of this should occasion any surprise. For some time now, Sino-Indian relations have featured the 4 C’s in varying measure – conflict, cooperation, containment and competition.

Doklam was the indication of conflict, but so, too, did we have cooperation  manifested by India (and Pakistan) becoming full members of the Chinese-led Shanghai Cooperation Organisation in June 2017.

On issues of globalisation and trade, India and China have been closer to each other than India and the US. China and India are joined together with Russia, South Africa and Brazil in BRICS and the Shanghai-headquartered New Development Bank that it set up to promote the growth of developing economies.

Likewise, India is a  founder member of the Beijing-headquartered Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank .

Containment and competition are somewhat more difficult categories to define.

China is seeking to pin down India in South Asia and its chosen instrumentality is Pakistan. As long as Pakistan is hostile to India, China does not have to do much but give strategic assistance to Islamabad to enable it to offset India’s size.

Over the years, China has provided Pakistan with not just economic and military aid, but helped built its nuclear weapons capacity and missiles as well.

The Chinese have now stepped up their efforts to pin India down in its own region by sharply stepping up its activities in South Asia. On one hand, they have developed deeper links with Pakistan through the CPEC programme. On the other, they are stepping up their economic and political links with Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

We can speculate that the reason Doklam occurred was because China wants to push Bhutan away from its close ties with India and decided that shaking up Thimphu a little bit could aid the process.

In turn, the Chinese worry about India becoming part of a US-led containment system aimed at China. The facts are that in the era of globalisation, it is simply not possible to contain large nations like India and China. This is not to say that containment is not present in China’s South Asia policy or American policy towards China.

The challenge for both China and India is to find ways of doing business with each other. Conflict and tension would do them both great harm and is the worst of all options.

Both must work out ways of competing with each other for political and economic influence without getting caught in the kind of negative spiral that characterises their relations today.

The Quint January 26, 2018

China wary of India’s strategic potential

China appears to be coming around to the view that India, despite having a much smaller economy and military, is emerging as a strategic competitor of sorts by aligning itself with Japan and the United States.

Ironically, the US has come to the same conclusion about China. Its recent National Security Strategy noted that China and Russia challenge American power, influence and interests, and are attempting to erode American security and prosperity. In other words, like the erstwhile Soviet Union (Russia), China, too, must now be seen as a strategic competitor rather than a country that would, over time, liberalize.

So far in South Asia, China has followed a convenient model of offsetting India’s advantages by backing Pakistan to the hilt. Given their enhanced clout in South Asia, and the fact that their economy is five times that of India and their military considerably stronger, they seek a situation where India quietly accepts Chinese primacy, or is subdued through the Chinese politico-military policy in the South Asia and Indian Ocean region (SA-IOR).

However, India has a sense of its own self-worth and place in the global scheme of things and accepting Chinese primacy in its own neighborhood is not part of it. And so it is seeking to offset Chinese power through growing proximity to the US and Japan, who have their own reasons for wanting to keep China in check. Ever since Modi has come to power, India has accelerated these efforts.

The signs of a Chinese shift are visible in many different ways.

Within days of his re-election as General Secretary of the Communist Party of China in October 2017, the Chinese media published a letter by Xi to a Tibetan herder family praising them for their effort “to protect the Chinese territory” by living for decades in an isolated region on the border with Arunachal Pradesh. This is as clear a signal you can get that the very top echelons of the Chinese leadership are concerned about issues relating to their border with India.

Another sign came from an opinion piece in the South China Morning Post by Senior Colonel Zhou Bo, an honorary fellow with the PLA Academy of Military Science. Zhou, who speaks fluent English, is a familiar figure in the international circuit, attending seminars, forums and workshops, mounting a strong defense of Chinese positions on a range of issues. Zhou says he has served on the Indian border and was one of the people who articulated a tough line on Doklam to a group of visiting Indian media personnel in Beijing even as the crisis was unfolding.

In his op-ed, Zhou said that the Doklam incident may have been the outcome of India’s “strong sense of hopelessness” with regard to being outstripped by China in terms of economic and military power and “its hallucination of being encircled by China.”

He maintained that the Doklam outcome “was not even a tactical victory for India” because the Chinese have continued to remain there and have resumed road construction activity, albeit in another area.

Sharp rise in China’s border defense activity

But perhaps the most important part of Zhou’s article was his declaration that India is going to be the net loser now because “the disputed border was not on China’s strategic radar” but now, the Doklam standoff has “provided China with a lesson on reconsidering its security concerns.” As a result, China would enhance its infrastructure construction.

Zhou is right. Indian military sources confirm a sharp uptick in China’s border defense construction. Till now, comfortable with their economic and military lead over India, China did not really categorize India as a competitor of any kind. In any case, support to Pakistan was sufficient to keep India off-balance. On the border, taking advantage of the relatively easier terrain and India’s lackadaisical pace, the Chinese were able to build high-quality roads to every part of the border.

On the Indian side, road construction has plodded along. Contrary to claims, China’s deployments in Tibet were modest simply because it would require enormous resources. But China maintained a significant surge capacity amounting to some 30 divisions that could be deployed, if necessary.

Indian mountain corps, ballistic missile Agni V

But over the years, India’s infrastructure has improved and its border posture has become stiffer and ready to counter China’s incursions in places like Depsang and Chumur. Some years ago, India reached a point where it began to think of raising a mountain strike corps. Traditionally, given the terrain, India has maintained a defensive posture in the Himalayas, but the raising of a strike corps, of a type that would carry the battle into Tibet has rung alarm bells in China.

What we are now seeing is that China is enhancing the permanent presence of the People’s Liberation Army at various points on the border and constructing permanent cantonments or residential areas.

Another interesting signal as to just how this is working is available from the report, following testing of the Agni V missile on January 18. The test of the medium-range ballistic missile was hailed by the Indian media because it could cover most of China.

A CCTV programme reported for the first time the existence of a base in northwest China with a huge X-band phased array radar which is usually part of a ballistic missile defense system. According to the report, the radar, which is on the Qinghai plateau, would cover any possible launch from the Indian subcontinent and pass it on to a surface-to-air missile (SAM) system which would be the equivalent of the American Patriots or Russian S300s.

Whether these SAMs can actually knock out a missile like Agni V is a big question. And in our nuclear age, would a country risk everything on the reported efficacy of its ballistic missile defense system?

Asia Times, January 24, 2018