Hindi-Chini bhai nahi

It’s time that India stopped being timorous where China is concerned and realised that China’s intentions are entirely imperial, its communist grounding notwithstanding. China has not once supported India in the international fora, while India bends over backwards to accommodate China’s long economic march.

By Amarjeet Singh

China was militarily inferior to India till just recently in the 1990s, which is why China had to hurriedly withdraw behind the McMahon Line in 1962. That India became ready to adopt the little known Thorat plan to trap China in 1962 is not well known. They were weaker in 1965 and 1971 when they threatened to invade India during the Indo-Pak and Bangladesh wars, which is why they couldn't attack, although Mao was itching for a war in 1965 and chastised Ayub Khan for not continuing with it.

But, in 2005, China officially outspent India by four times in military spending (US$ 81 billion for China versus US$ 19 billion for India), which may actually be six times considering its secret programmes. In 2004, the differential was the same (US$ 60 billion for China versus US$ 15 billion for India). Thus, China is increasingly buying more each year compared to India. With military expenditure assumed to grow at 10 per cent per year till 2050, China will have officially outspent India by US$ 49 trillion in actual money, equivalent to a cumulative present worth of US$ 7.3 trillion at five per cent inflation, which is 10 times more than the current GDP of India of US$ 0.7 trillion. To place numbers further in perspective, US$ 7.3 trillion is equivalent to Rs 32,120,000 crore. This is not a joke. With this much extra military expenditure, China will be able to purchase the equivalent of 102,200 multirole combat aircraft, of which India is planning to purchase a mere 180 for its air force and navy. At this rate, China won't need nuclear bombs for India—its airplanes will be enough to bomb India to dust. What are planners and ministers doing about this? To be honest, they don't have the capability to gaze hard into the future and take tough decisions. India is being sent down the tubes.

Over the years, China has developed a formidable military force. Today, it is disproportionately ahead of India in every military field. While China's land boundaries are only 1.5 times that of India's, and its coastline twice as long, it has four times more artillery, three times more aircraft, 2.5 times more armour, and 2.5 times more missile defence, while its attack submarines will outnumber US submarines in the Pacific by five to one, by some estimates, by 2025. Its DF31A and CSS4 missiles can reach not only Mumbai and Kanyakumari, but Miami and Kalgoorlie.

The threat from China is serious enough: India is more than 70 years behind the world in submarine and aircraft carrier construction. In contrast, China has been producing submarines approaching US and Russian standards, as well as nuclear attack submarines, since the 1980s. They have been building about 30 multirole J-10 combat aircraft per year since 1984, and now are researching the J-XX stealth fighter, while India bungled its HF-24 in the 1960s and hasn't quite properly got its act on the LCAC. The Arjun battle tank is only a showpiece, while India's only attempt at exploding an underground H-bomb in 1998 was at best a fizzle. China's top-secret underground nuclear submarine base was unknown till February 2006 when a US satellite snapped a picture that is available on the Internet.

And now, China is going to run circles around India: it is going ahead with a naval base in Gwadar despite US objections, has a naval monitoring base in Myanmar, and is constructing another naval base in Bangladesh. For its part, India has not even got a defence treaty with Japan that also feels threatened by China.

India's arms purchases are heavily dependent on foreign corporations, and India has not adequately invested in its own armament industry, although it talks a lot about it. If words could kill the enemy, one wouldn't object. Even now, India funds defence research with Russia, but not enough in India. For the US$ 3 billion spent on the Admiral Gorshkov, India could have produced three or four aircraft carriers of the same size at home.

China's military record is replete with aggression and threat. Since it became a republic in 1949, it assailed Tibet 1951, occupied Sinkiang 1954, shelled the Taiwanese islands 1954, silently crept into Aksai Chin 1955-57, completed the occupation of Tibet 1959, assaulted India in 1962 and backstabbed Russia on Cuba, fired on Russian ships on the Amur river in 1967, clashed with India at Nathu-La Pass in 1968, fought with Russia on the Ussuri river in 1969, violated the Non-Proliferation Treaty by supplying nuclear parts to Pakistan in 1975, invaded Vietnam in 1979, continued to supply nuclear materials to Pakistan through the 1980s and 1990s, is feverishly planning the invasion of Taiwan, taunts Japan every month, claims parts of Bhutan and all of Arunachal Pradesh, and talks down to India every time on border issues. Some say that China's aggression was mostly during Mao Zedong's time, and that China has been relatively quiet since 1980. However, Mao's aim was to “rule the world” and Mao's brutal legacy lives on, as was evident by the Tiananmen massacre of 1989 and the persecution of the Falun Gong in 1999.

Without Tibet, India would only have about 200 miles of border with China (Sinkiang) in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, compared to the 5,408 km border we currently have. Without China's unlawful occupation of Tibet, we would have no border problem with China and face no threat. Indeed, we would be happy to trade and cooperate with them. China has of its own accord precipitated poor relations with India since its Tibetan invasion.

China has always been inimical to India: China openly sided with Pakistan in the 1965 and 1971 wars; the 1967 Naxalbari peasant uprising was led by pro-Maoist elements; a pronunciation by Mao titled "Spring Thunder over India" gave full moral support for the uprising; in 1969, Naxalbari-inspired communists formed the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist); in 1988, China warned it would "teach India a lesson" if it did not cease "nibbling" at Chinese territory, which was out of the question given that Tibet is not their territory; China has offered no support to India for a permanent seat on the Security Council, even though India voted in 1962 for China. It opposed India's entry to Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, while itself wanting to become an observer of SAARC. Last year, it opposed the US-India nuclear deal, and may yet oppose the deal at the nuclear suppliers group. China has been nothing but trouble for India, and yet India finds that it should engage in confidence-building measures with China, when China is insincere. India has been lulled by them once too often. Remember, Chou En-lai visited India as a “brother” in the summer of 1962 and launched an invasion of India the same October.

India's only likely long-term friends are the US and Britain—friendships that India would be wise to cultivate. China has friends, too—countries such as North Korea and Myanmar, Pakistan and Iran, Zimbabwe and Venezuela, Sudan and Bangladesh. All these countries are close to despotic. In fact, it is because of tacit Chinese support that the Darfur problem in Sudan is intractable, and why Iran is thumbing its nose at the United Nations. Awash with newfound money, China has been upgrading its military logistics infrastructure in Tibet at a steady pace. The highlights of these are the US$ 3.1 billion Gormo-Lhasa railway; building of new roads, supply lines and airfields close to the Indian frontier; and building numerous missile silos criss-crossing Tibet. They have poured close to 300,000 troops into Tibet. Why should China do these things close to our border? What long-term aim do they have? The trouble is that an aggressive China, freshly resurgent and militarily strong, may eventually force a military solution to the long-standing territorial and boundary dispute in the eastern Indian sector. India must be more than prepared.

It is ridiculous that China pushed its way into our neighbour's house, and now claims our neighbour's border as its own. From a legal standpoint, India needs to discuss Tibetan border disputes only with the legitimate government of Tibet, not with China. However, if our babus in government had more courage, we would not have to kowtow to Chinese bullying. Nehru threw dust in Indian eyes by saying that “not a blade of grass grows in Aksai Chin” so we should not grieve its loss to China. However, any well informed person knows that monasteries and settlements exist in Aksai Chin; pine forests are abundant. Aksai Chin is not a cold desert.

Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel was right: We should have sent military forces to Tibet in 1951. The consequences of not having done so are now in front of us: India became unbalanced after 1962, forcing it deeper into the Russian orbit, even though it was Khrushchev who had originally blessed the 1962 Chinese invasion of India. This led the US to approach China as a counterweight to Russia in Kissinger's famous 1971 secret trip to China from a Pakistan airbase. This resulted in massive US economic investments into China in the 1980s and 1990s that have made China rich beyond measure.

But Indian omissions have persisted. We failed to condemn Chinese aggression in Tibet in 1951 even though Britain and the US were literally begging for India to take the lead so they may follow. In fact, Nehru pursued the ill-conceived Panchsheel principles of peace and the “Hindi-Chini bhai-bhai” slogan that China was happy to toe along with for a while. In 1959, we failed to recognise the Dalai Lama as the legitimate head of Tibet when the issue was red hot. The US continued to supply armaments to the Tibet resistance well into the 1960s, but India could not even give the Dalai Lama paper status as a head of state. In 1988, Rajiv Gandhi signed off Tibet to China; in 2003, Vajpayee did the same; Last month, Manmohan Singh iterated Chinese suzerainty over Tibet, although the Chinese feel guilty enough since they want repeated reconfirmation. India has not reacted in its best interests.

By now, an entire generation has grown up in China being brainwashed that the Dalai Lama was head of a separatist movement that wished to take Tibet away from China. The communist regime in China has distorted history. They have stolen another's lands and property and claimed it was always theirs. They have brought sorrow to Tibetans, whose religion and culture was closer to India's than China's. While China may distort the truth inside China, the rest of the world will always remember.

Moreover, China encourages its citizens to visit Tibet, and settle there. They have transformed Tibet into the “spirit” of China. A saying in China runs: “You are not mad if you don't visit the Great Wall, but if you don't visit Tibet your life is not complete.” So, they have snatched spiritual Tibet from the Tibetans and Buddhists to usurp it for their own spirit and encourage illegal migration. China's atrocities in Tibet are worse than those of the Japanese in China in World War II, which China brings to the frontburner every month against Japan.

Chinese atrocities in Tibet increased in the 1980s and 1990s: massive deforestation, nuclear dumping, human rights violations, defacement of Tibetan culture, mass genocide, moving one million Han Chinese immigrants per year into Tibet, and reducing Tibetans to slaves.

In spite of all such Chinese abuses and threats on our northern border, we have doubly and triply increased rapprochement efforts, when a proud nation would have acted otherwise. We can boast some diplomatic successes here and there owing to the rapprochement, such as presidential visits and opening of Chinese missions in Kolkata and Mumbai—but let us not fool ourselves, because the underlying tensions can't disappear, and China has still not supported India on the Indo-US nuclear deal and permanent member status at the Security Council.

In 2005, India developed with China a “strategic partnership for peace and prosperity” and commenced trade across Nathu-La. These thaws are only valid till China stabs India in the back, as it did after the Panchsheel partnership. India's approach seems to be to play between China and the US, not realising that the evidence is there to see that China aims to reduce India, no matter what else. Intellectuals often think it is fashionable to talk of peace in the new world order, not incorporating the factor that China has sinned on India's border in Tibet; politicians and bureaucrats bury their head in the sand as far as Tibet goes. A reversal of India's China policy is necessary. The only item that India should accept, and tell China so, is the complete withdrawal of Chinese forces from Tibet and the restoration of the sovereign government of Tibet. It is also time for India to justly recognise the Dalai Lama as head of the Tibetan government and make no bones about it. The world will follow suit—Germany, Japan, Britain, to start with, since numerous countries already feel disconcerted with China in Tibet. Chinese sentiments on the matter do not matter, and if we do things right, we don't need to fear them, either. Nevertheless, let it be said that we have no battle against the nice and beautiful Chinese people, but the behaviour of the communist government incites resentment. It is time to confront the chimerical dragon. It is time, for once, to stand for what is righteous.

The bottomline is that communist China is aggressive and provocative. It has debased the culture and spirit in Tibet and holy places and continues to occupy a sovereign nation, Tibet. Till as long as Chinese forces remain in Tibet, a military conflict between India and China sounds quite inevitable, whether India likes it or not—and, in this case, later, if not sooner. All the rapprochement and appeasement of China will have been to no avail. And India's current plans to acquire three air defence ships by 2012, build a new naval base, and project its naval force in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR); upgrade the army's howitzers, use Net-centric warfare, and start an army air wing; launch satellites and induct Brahmos; and develop strategic air reach, will still leave India second best in the region, at best. Last checked,

there was no future for being second best in war. But it appears that India will be at the brute end of that war if the nation does not immediately revamp its economic-political system to generate comparable economic and engineering growth for sophisticated military training and effective indigenous armaments. China is rolling ahead much too fast and the urgency is much too pressing, for which India needs an immediate revolution of policies as well as of its political culture.