It is not uncommon for the Indian media to report on Chinese transgressions into Indian interests almost on a weekly basis. However, in reporting this “sensational” news on an event-by-event basis, the desi media is missing the larger picture, something an UK news so correctly outlet points out. India and China are in the throes of a cold war, one that is redefining the balance of power in Asia. [Times]
Indo-Chinese relationships never recovered from the 1962 war, and to make worse for relationships between the two, China provides arms to Pakistan on a regular basis. Of recent, with the India-US nuclear pact, things have taken a turn for the worse.
“Since 1962, I think Chinese strategists have basically decided that they can deal with India on their own terms,” said Evan Feigenbaum of the Council on Foreign Relations, an American research centre. “But when you introduce the United States into that equation, it introduces all kinds of uncertainties. I think we’re in for a period of India-China tension.”
India meanwhile has its own concerns about Chinese involvement in South Asian countries. Burma and Pakistan have always been pro-China. Bangladesh and Nepal have come into the picture on the side of China.
China has been trying to negotiate a friendship treaty with Nepal to replace the one that has tied the country to India since 1950. Beijing’s growing clout in Bangladesh was highlighted last week when armed police closed a photo exhibition organised by Tibetan activists.
Chinese presence in Sri Lanka has forced India to open up a naval base in, of all places, the paradise island of Maldives.
On the southernmost tip of the Maldives lies the island of Gan, a tiny patch of coconut palms and powdery white beaches.
India is preparing to reopen the base to station surveillance aircraft, helicopters, and possibly ships, to monitor Chinese vessels in the Indian Ocean. Under a deal signed in August, India is also installing radar across the Maldives, linked to its coastal command.
Both countries publicly deny that the move is aimed at Beijing, but privately admit that it is a direct response to China’s construction of a giant port at Hambantota in nearby Sri Lanka.
The need to increase their clout not only spans across South Asia but also on other continents.
Economically, the competition is most intense in Africa, where India and China are vying for resources and markets in a rerun of the “Scramble for Africa” by colonial powers.
China began courting African nations a decade ago, offering investment and trade in exchange for soft loans and development aid with no political conditions attached. But India is catching up fast, pledging $5 billion in credit and hundreds of millions of dollars in financial help at an inaugural India-Africa summit last year. At stake is not just access to industrial raw materials, but support for India’s bid for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, which China opposes. India is also trying to make up lost ground in South, South-East and Central Asia.
A little bit of friendly political rivalry between two emerging powers? Hardly. In a competition reminiscent of the USA-USSR space race from the 60s and 70s, the India-China cold war is boldly going where …. man has gone before ….. but not too often.
Technologically, the contest is playing out in a 21st-century Asian version of the Cold War space race. India launched its first unmanned lunar mission, Chandrayaan-1, last year and plans to land a man on the Moon by 2020. China sent its first taikonaut into space in 2003, and plans its first manned lunar mission by 2024.
As politicized as this is, the struggle at the base of it all, is an ideological one, between the populist style democracy of India and the authoritarian communism of China. The original Cold War lasted for the better part of four decades but died at the Berlin Wall to the tune of a 80s hair metal band. How will the India-China Cold War end and who will emerge victorious? And more importantly whose tune will it end to? Judging by the result of the previous Cold War, one has to feel good about India’s chances but one can only hope it’s not Himesh Reshammiya’s tune playing at the Berlin Wall of this Cold War.
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