About Me

My photo
Strategic Thinkers, Social Science Researchers, writing on Geopolitics, International Affairs, Foreign Policy, Military Affairs. All views and opinions on the blog are personal. Follow Blog hawkeyereport.blogspot.in

November 15, 2016

Beyond The Himalayan Barrier: The Chinese Question (Part III) – Analysis



In the first part this paper, it was sought to analyse Chinese perceptions, possibilities of a new world order centred on China, and its military and naval aspirations. In the second part of the analysis, the role of the Chinese in the growth of communist regimes and how the secret service in China aided that was examined. Successful cyber warfare as a key ingredient of their strategic play formed a part of the analysis. Finally the correlation of spreading Islamic fundamentalism and China and its impact on India was looked at.



China’s ascendance as an economic powerhouse and military superpower has started altering the cultural, political, social, and ethnic balance of global power and is in the process of creating a whole new world. According to conservative estimates, China will overtake the United States as the world’s largest economy by 2027 and will ascend to the position of world economic leader by 2050. But the full repercussions of China’s ascendancy have been little understood. Answers to some of the most pressing questions about China’s growing place on the world stage can be understood by looking at how China will seek to shape the world in its own image.

The Chinese have a rich and long history as a civilization-state. Ninety-four percent of the population still believes they are one race, the Han Chinese. The strong sense of superiority finds a resurrection in twenty-first century China. This is also used to strengthen and further unify the country. A culturally self-confident Asian giant with a billion-plus population, China will resist globalization as we know it. This exceptionalism will have powerful ramifications for its neighbours. As China is already cementing its position as the new centre of the East Asian economy, the mantle of economic and, therefore, cultural relevance will pass from Manhattan and Paris to Beijing and Shanghai. The relationship and attitude toward China will affect India’s peace. Therefore an attempt has been made to explain the upheaval that China’s ascendance will cause and the realigned global power structure it will create directly affecting India’s policies on economy, oil and its relations with the US.
China and Global Oil Play

According to former Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, the short supply of energy resources is a “soft rib” in China’s economic and social development. Wen Jiabao’s statement reflects the importance China’s leaders place on the energy issue. This issue is considered a matter of national strategic significance and one that has considerable impact on whether or not China can sustain its development. It is perceived as an issue over which the Chinese have little control, given their reliance on foreign imports and foreign security of their lines of transportation. These dependencies on foreign supply (the “reliance problem”) and security (“the Malacca dilemma”, so named because of the vast quantities of oil that must pass through the Malacca Straits, which is secured by other countries’ navies) are the main threats to China’s energy security. Based on these dependencies, it is important to understand what China is doing to minimize these threats and why, despite such efforts, the lack of effective governmental mechanisms to respond in a crisis may still leave China’s energy market insecure and vulnerable.

China was a self-sufficient energy-producing country until 1993. But while its oil consumption grew by more than 55 percent from 1994 to 2000, its oil production increased by only 11 percent. Its imports grew more than twenty fold as it became the world’s second highest oil importer after Japan, and in the decade that followed, the highest importer. Foreign oil imports now account for 40 percent of China’s energy market with the gap between supply and demand continuing to widen. According to a report by China’s Academy of Geological Sciences, by 2020, China will need to import 500 million tons of crude oil and 100 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually, which is 70 percent and 50 percent of its domestic consumption respectively. The huge extent to which China’s energy market depends on foreign imports is thus a key indicator of China’s lack of energy security. Perhaps even more significant is the rate at which the country has moved from self-sufficient exporter to over dependent importer. To a country that is seemingly still to come to terms with the free-flowing dynamics of market economics and globalized trade, such newly emergent dependence on the unpredictable and uncontrollable free market is unnerving.

Energy supply disruptions and unpredictable surge in prices could undermine China’s rapid economic growth and job creation, and in turn raise the real spectre of social instability and impaired national security. There is no denying the adverse impact that problematic energy supplies can have on China’s national security. What possibly worries the Chinese policymakers more than reliance on foreign imports is the extent to which the reliance is confined to the Middle East. Not only is this region the most volatile part of the world, it is embroiled in geopolitics and is the centrepiece of American foreign policy. While 18 percent of U.S. oil comes from the Gulf, 60 percent of China’s oil comes from there; this too mostly from just three countries namely Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Oman. Because import sources are limited and the United States and Japan have a lock on much of the oil market, China is forced to find alternate suppliers.

The result is a Chinese energy policy that directly competes with energy demands of other countries. The reliance on oil from the Middle East and Africa leads to an excessive reliance on the Malacca Straits for passage of the oil tanker ships. This has always been considered highly susceptible to blockade. Without pipelines to route its oil through and only a small portion of oil coming from Venezuela (crossing the Pacific Ocean from the east), almost 85 percent of China’s oil passes through the Indian Ocean, Malacca Straits, and the South China Sea. Any interference in this strategic passageway by nations trying to contain China or by pirates or terrorists intent on disrupting the global market could halt nearly all of China’s energy supply. Thus the Chinese see the Malacca dilemma threatening their normal oil imports which in turn jeopardizes China’s economy and may imperil even its defence.

Though India has been emphatic about not letting such an eventuality come to pass, assurances do not seem to cut ice with the Chinese. China’s inability in securing its energy requirements has so far been attributed to its lack of naval power to patrol sea lanes and the presence of the Indian navy in the Indian Ocean. While China can boast of growing global influence, when it comes to energy security, the extent of China’s military and diplomatic influence is much more sober. With that factor in mind, China is now exploring both the security of its interests (the deployment of its naval vessels in the Indian Ocean region) as well as alternate means of passage (such as the Gwadar pipeline and the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor or CPEC). At some point therefore, it ceases to matter what the monetary cost of the project is; instead it is simply a question of the guarantee.

Relevance for India: The Chinese are both critical of their country’s ability to secure sea lanes and wary of developing new markets in contrast to India. To this end, a steep rise has been seen in (ostensibly) patrolling activities by the Chinese PLA Navy. It has also in recent years put the entire weight of its financial power behind acquisitions of oil fields in Africa and Central Asia. Most of these contests are a direct confrontation between the Chinese and Indian oil companies. India has usually lost to its competitors from the Middle Kingdom. This is a potential flash point between interests of both economies. The presence of the Chinese navy has also been seen with some trepidation by India, and not without reason; as was seen in the first part of the analysis, Chinese naval presence is growing at a much faster pace than India and in the years to come will be in a position to directly threaten interests, including in the traditional military/ naval sense. Simultaneously, China’s energy diplomacy aims at posturing as a partner for joint stability, prosperity, and development with concerned energy supply countries, regions, and companies. It is trying to diversify sources internally as well to include investments in wind, solar, and nuclear energy, build a strategic reserve and build naval and air capacity so it has the capability to project power in distant seas.

The world consumes a cubic mile of oil per year. This is growing by just over one percent per year and is forecast to accelerate. A third of this is used by China. By 2025 its cars alone would need another Saudi Arabia or two. Indian growth also gives similar prognosis. Oil is the world’s biggest business and economy driver and as a source of energy is indispensable, at least in the foreseeable future. The diplomatic, military or functional costs of acquiring oil are justified by the necessity of sustaining development and prosperity. Possible substitutes are either too small or slow or immature or unattractive or all of these. It is also premature to speculate about life after oil; imperative for the foreseeable future is to design realistic and practical measures to cater to this threat and align long term policies to this exigent and strident demand.
Clash and Confluence of Economies

Indians live in a world affected by domestic economic change and greater integration into the global economy. Gains from economic growth and reform mean rising commercial farm income and increased business and employment opportunities in the cities. Globalisation has meant an intersection of interests beyond electronics, academics, business, medicine, and journalism across borders.

In India, two million English-speaking college students graduate yearly, and most work for one tenth the salary that a comparable U.S. worker receives. Low cost and high quality telecommunications have opened up Business and Knowledge Processing Outsourcing options. Other outsourcing spans the technology spectrum, including software code writing, chip design, product development, accounting, Web site designing, animation art, stock market research, radiology, airline reservations, tax preparation and advice, transcribing, consulting, prayers for the deceased, and other support services, especially in Bangalore and Hyderabad.

Emerging technically talented Indian diaspora provides the skills for India to play a major role in the global information technology industry. In the late 1990s, Indian immigrants ran one third of the technology firms in Silicon Valley, California. Indian and Indian-American-owned companies in the US have become suppliers to U.S. corporates. Indian software firms raise capital in the US to acquire US companies, set up offices to interact with clients, and undertake research and innovation. India’s software sector represents a skill-based, high value export oriented sector. The sector has also attracted considerable foreign direct investment by multinationals. Indian manufacturing sector too, though still in nascent stages, has increasingly taken the world by storm. Essentially, Indian strengths lie in a young work force, increasing levels of education, cheap labour and low costs of setting up businesses.

In Mao’s China, the ideology stressed upon prices determined by the state, state ownership of the means of production, international and regional trade and technological self sufficiency, non-economic (moral) incentives, egalitarianism, socializing the population toward selflessness, continuing revolution and development of a holistic communist person. From 1952 to 1966, pragmatists, primarily managers of state organizations and enterprises vied with Maoists for control of economic decision making. But during this period, Mao and his allies won out, purging moderates from the Central Communist Party (for example, Deng Xiaoping) to workplace committees.


After Mao’s death in 1976, the Chinese, under Deng recognized that despite the rapid industrial growth under Mao, imbalances remained from the Cultural Revolution, such as substantial waste in the midst of high investment, too little emphasis on consumer goods, the lack of wage incentives, insufficient technological innovation, too tight control on economic management, the taxing of enterprise profits and too little international economic trade and relations. Economic reform, which began in late 1979, included price decontrol, decentralization, agricultural household responsibility, management responsibility among state-owned enterprises (SOEs), small entrepreneurial activity, and township and village enterprises (TVEs).

Since 1980, China has had virtually the fastest growth in the world. Chinese growth rates are overstated as they are heavily based on growth in physical output figures rather than deflated expenditure series and managers understate capacity and over report production to superiors to receive the greater reward received by those who meet or exceed plan fulfilment. But the fact remains that despite over reporting and continuing market distortions China’s growth under market reforms has been rapid (albeit uneven in some parts). China’s step-by-step approach during the last two decades of the 20th century contrasted sharply with Russia’s more abrupt changes in strategy in the early 1990s. China’s reform started as socialism with Chinese characteristics and gradually evolved to a socialist market economy. China’s weaknesses are its inability to fully integrate with the global economy, an aging work force and blatant disregard for intellectual property rights. Its continued communist hangover also contributes in no small measure to restricting growth.
Relevance for India: Despite the challenges that it faces in its transition, the Chinese economy has grown at a phenomenal rate and indeed the state apparatus is faced with a problem that it needs to sustain this high trajectory to maintain its internal cohesion. This naturally brings it into a direct conflict with the equally fast growing Indian economy, with the competition for resources, capital and captive enterprise heating up. India is also perceived as a better option for investments owing to its democratic government, stability of its capital markets and emphasis on innovation and free enterprise. Equally irrefutable is the trade equation of the two countries. Therefore it is a paradoxical situation in that there is both a confluence and a clash of the two economies. Future strategy related to China’s equation with India could be heavily influenced due to this reason and must be factored in to India’s policy decisions to obviate conflict while continuing protection of Indian interests.

Conclusion: Strategic Interests and Policies
In a peculiar situation, India finds itself increasingly at cross roads in a bid to decide the sway of its foreign policies. Traditionally non-aligned, it is now of greater importance to, and exerting greater influence on decisions both in the US and in China. The Joint Declaration signed in 2005 by US President George W. Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is seen akin to President Nixon’s opening to China.

America agreed to recognize India as a responsible state with advanced nuclear technology and pledged to support its civilian nuclear program and urge others to do the same. This agreement caught observers in the strategic community by surprise. It was difficult to understand why the US made a large concession on non-proliferation rules in exchange for a vague exchange of Indian support to help the US combat AIDS, support countries seeking a Global Democracy Initiative and otherwise support India’s economic development in a number of areas.

The scenario has been repeated during the tenure of President Obama, and of late, with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s overtures, the equation seems to have turned positively convivial. This may be a possible counter to China; American policymakers feel a rich, strong, yet still authoritarian China will pose security challenges to Washington. Simply put, the US now views China as a long term strategic competitor. The move towards cooperation with India can be explained as a form of hedging against China, as the only country that competes militarily with the US. Since the end of the Cold War the US has been helping Beijing become richer and stronger, hoping to see it become democratic and rise peacefully. However, uncertain about China’s strategic intentions, the US now feels the need to create a strategic competitor and the choice narrows down to India for obvious reasons.

As the US rethinks its India policy, it finds itself confronting a host of geopolitical challenges. It is engaged in a long global counterinsurgency against radical Islamic terrorism. Simultaneously, a rising China poses a long term challenge. Hence, America must enlist allies to secure its interests and sustain the US led world order that has been the basis for economic development and relative peace. India may prove a partner in confronting both these challenges. As a liberal democratic country, New Delhi accepts that the more democracy spreads, the safer Indians will be. India has been one of the foremost targets of jihadi terrorist attacks and shares an interest with Washington in bringing them to an end. China has been a historic rival to India, and China’s growing power is viewed in New Delhi with apprehension. India too shares an interest in maintaining a balance of power in Asia ensuring that China does not predominate. Although India is a rising power with its own aspirations, it is unlikely to challenge US predominance in Asia in the short term. (Neither will it accept a hegemonic America in perpetuity).

The fact that India is a liberal democracy will help the two countries develop necessary relations with less suspicion and tension than characterizes the Sino-American relationship. India’s non-aligned foreign policy and fiercely independent strategic culture will however make the prospects for strategic partnership more difficult. In Central Asia too, the US finds its continued support to Pakistan growing untenable. Instead of accepting a Communist China led Central Asia, the US deems fit to help India posture in the region to make it compatible with the move towards democratisation. It is axiomatic that Afghanistan cannot be pacified if the border with Pakistan is unpoliced, and insurgents have free rein to come and go as they please. Yet that is what is happening. Since 9/11, Pakistan has been forced to accept formally the fall of the Taliban. But of late, evidence suggests that it is assisting the Taliban to regroup in and around the Pakistan-Afghanistan border areas. It seems a matter of time that Pakistan with its history of proliferation and support to Islamic jehadis comes a cropper as far as US support is concerned. Then the tilt would be in favour of India and it would become all the more important for India to decide its biases.

Indian policy framework would necessarily have to explore these issues with intent to providing long term solutions to them. The Chinese perspective may be different than the Indian, but may not have a different view of the future. Threats of containment based on diplomatic, political, and economic imperatives are a matter of concern to India as much as they are to China; what is required is to obviate these spiralling out of control, becoming flash points and resulting in possible military conflicts. Threats as India perceives them also affect China in similar (or slightly modified) forms; it would be incumbent on policy makers to mould the framework in such a manner that more synergies are obtained and both nations move towards mutual cooperation rather than ominous conflicts.

Beyond The Himalayan Barrier: The Chinese Question (Part II) – Analysis



In the first part this paper, it was sought to analyze Chinese perceptions, possibilities of a new world order centered on China, and its military and naval aspirations. In this part of the analysis, the role of the Chinese in the growth of communist regimes based on their own perception as torch bearers of Communism after the fall of socialist Russia has been examined.



Within this conundrum, the role played by the secret service in China has been examined. To further their designs the Chinese have adopted rather successfully cyber warfare; cyber threats seem to be a key ingredient of their strategic play. Further the correlation of spreading Islamic fundamentalism and China, and how it is likely to affect India has also been dealt with in this part. China happens to be at a critical juncture where two transitions coincide, the transition of modernization and the transition from planned economy to market economy. Both transitions are inundated with contradictions and are highly vulnerable to the outbreak of conflicts. Being so intertwined they further enlarge the urban-countryside, regional, wealth and ethnic disparities; all are possible turmoil spark points, if treated unskillfully. This in turn provides tremendous scope for the turmoil and conflict to spill over into neighboring countries such as India.

China’s Role in Growth of Communist Regimes
China‘s rise has seen an outburst of nationalism, driven from two different directions: top-down and bottom-up. From the top, the Communist state has launched an extensive propaganda campaign of education in patriotism since the 1990s to ensure loyalty in a population otherwise subject to domestic discontent. From the bottom, nationalism erupts in mass demonstrations, like the protests against NATO in May 1999 and Japan in early 2005.

Chinese nationalism has thus become one of the most important domestic forces behind Chinese foreign policy, including China‘s approaches toward Asian regionalism in general and the world at large. It both motivates and constrains China‘s participation in regional cooperation. China has embraced a more multilateral strategy to achieve three nationalist goals: (1) to create a stable and peaceful peripheral environment for economic growth and political stability, on which the political legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party now depends; (2) to suppress ethnic nationalism among the minorities in its border areas and maintain its frontier security and prosperity; and (3) to enhance its position with other countries, especially major powers such as Japan, US and India.

The increasing assertiveness of popular nationalism poses a daunting challenge to the Communist state, which has tried to maintain political stability and its monopoly of power for rapid economic development. Nationalism has thus become a double-edged sword; it is both a means for the government to legitimize its rule and a means for the Chinese people to judge the performance of the state. The Chinese government has based its legitimacy on its ability to provide political stability and economic prosperity, including a peaceful, stable, and friendly periphery. As a part of an effort since the early 1980s, Chinese leaders have devised a regional policy known as periphery policy (zhoubian zhengce). In making the periphery policy, however, Chinese leaders have been tested by the contradiction between bilateralism and multilateralism. Historically, China has been wary of participating in multilateral institutions because of its concerns about the possible erosion of state sovereignty or exploitation by foreign countries to restrict China‘s actions. The post Cold War era, however, has witnessed the rise of multilateralism in international and regional affairs, creating more and more pressure on China‘s traditional diplomacy.

Many of China‘s smaller neighbors have preferred to deal with China in multilateral settings because China‘s market potential, military capability, and enormous size threaten smaller Asian states. China‘s conduct of relations with them on a bilateral basis could put them at a disadvantage and raise their suspicions that Beijing might seek to exploit divisions among them to assert influence. Coping with China in a multilateral setting not only gives them the power of collective bargaining but also enhances their security by embedding China in a web of multilateral structure. A recent example of China’s disdain for multilateralism was its instantaneous and extreme reaction to the judgement by the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague in the dispute of the South China Sea.

This power of collective bargaining is particularly important with an increasingly powerful China, which has maintained assertive positions on its territorial and sovereignty claims on land and at sea and has not hesitated to flex its military muscles to reinforce these positions. China‘s neighbors are therefore better situated if they can deal with China in collective bargaining institutions like the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN). Going by this premise, India would do well to leverage its responsible membership in these fora.

As communist regimes collapsed in the late 1980s, the defeat of the communist parties seemed complete. These were the same regimes that had shown no regard for basic civic rights, had strategically planned the economies into negative growth rates, and had displayed a remarkable propensity for corruption and self-enrichment. Over forty years of oppression had left the people with memories that were as bitter as they were vivid, and the popular uprisings of 1989 fought to remove the parties from power. The first demand voiced by the masses of demonstrators in the streets was that the communist stranglehold on the economy and the polity finally end. The democratic breakthroughs of 1989 thus bade farewell to regimes widely despised by their own citizens. Few predicted that the successors to these parties would survive in the democratic political system, much less thrive.

As the new regimes took over, the communist parties were forced to exit from power and governance. They were no longer allowed to organize in the workplace their assets were expropriated, and they were forced to relinquish their auxiliary organizations. It seemed simply a matter of time before these parties would be swept away into the “dustbin of history.” Yet all communist parties survived democracy and the regime transition that began in 1988–89, and all remained politically active afterwards. Several of the successor parties have even won free elections, returning to govern.

These parties regenerated based on learning from their communist allies in China by transforming their appeals, garnering broad support, and enforcing discipline and professionalism in their parliamentary behavior. Key Chinese communist organizational practices of policy reform and negotiation with the opposition affected the paths these parties would take and spurred the pursuit of regeneration. These parties thus redeemed the communist past by making amends for the most disgraceful elements of their history and by cashing in on their elite resources to remake themselves into successful democratic competitors and governors.

Relevance for India: External policies of advancement within the communist party promote elite pragmatism and technical know-how; experience with policy innovation has led the elites to realize the need for party transformation and centralization. Policy implementation and negotiation with the opposition promotes the formulation of responsive programs, new dimensions of competition, and effective electoral campaigns. These precepts are not only in the public domain, they are actively being taught and propagated by the communist masters in mainland China to cadres in various countries, including India. The communist threat does not so much come from the parties already in mainstream Indian politics (though the lessons may well be of much use to them too), but the same teachings spreading to Maoist and Naxalite cadres. These are on the threshold of entering mainstream politics owing to their large and popular support bases among the marginalized classes. The support from their mentors in China would make this transition easier and more successful.
Intelligence and Promoting the Communist Dream: China’s Secret Service

Kang Sheng is credited for the development of the Chinese secret service (as it is known today) around the time of Mao’s rise. From humble beginnings, the Chinese Secret Service moved to being a key segment of Mao’s and Deng’s China and gradually grew to dominate its foreign policy and decision making. Following the Gulf War with Saddam Hussein, Chinese military intelligence was tasked by Jiang Zemin to reorganize and prepare for the future high-tech war. A new Qingbaobu military intelligence network was formed; its prime targets included copying the Russian MIR space station, building a sea power commensurate to the best that either the US or Russia could muster, buying an aircraft carrier, stealing secrets of French and US missiles and high-tech transfers from Japan and Korea. The intelligence service was responsible for providing immense support to communist cadres in Asia, especially in India. Following 9/11 in the US, the Chinese decided to help the US chase Islamists; a war was organized against the Uighurs of Xinjiang. At the same time surreptitious help was provided to the Afghan Taliban through links with Pakistani services. This was widely recognized as the Chinese contribution to the covert war against Indian interests.

In its newest avatar, the Chinese secret service was used to ensure a trouble free Olympics, as well as keeping an eye on Uighur and Tibetan dissidents. In a bid to move forward with technology across the globe, cyber space is now the latest frontier for the Chinese. As far back as 2009-10, the US FBI estimated that the Chinese Army had developed a network of over 30,000 Chinese military cyber spies, plus 150,000 private-sector computer experts, whose mission was to steal military and technological secrets from countries that China perceived as potential threats, namely US, Japan and India. Since 2003, this special network of the Chinese Army was tasked to cause mischief in government and financial services.

China’s goal is to have the world’s premier “informationized armed forces” by 2020. Chinese hackers are adept at implanting malicious computer code, and in 2009 companies in diverse industries such as oil and gas, banking, aerospace, and telecommunications encountered costly and at times debilitating problems with Chinese-implanted malware.

Chen Yonglin, a Chinese diplomat who defected in Australia provided the valuable knowledge that Chinese embassies across the globe control and use the Chinese Student and Scholar Associations (CSSA) for ulterior motives such as spying. More evidence of this embassy control over students and journalists has surfaced lately. Thousands of young Chinese live abroad and are organized in groups like students’ associations which are linked to the Chinese embassies through the cultural affairs department. What is considered as normal (Chinese people wanting to keep a link with their homeland) is used by China to pass orders to Chinese Diaspora abroad and use these individuals for spying activities.

Relevance for India: One of China’s most effective weapons is a continuation of what was originally dubbed as Titan Rain; it is a Chinese scanner program that probes defense and high-tech industrial computer networks thousands of times a minute looking for vulnerabilities. The Chinese military hackers enter without any keystroke errors leaving no digital fingerprints, and create a clean backdoor exit in under 20 minutes.

These feats were considered possible only for military/ civilian spy agencies of very few governments and perhaps, still not possible by Indian agencies. These attacks are proliferating against Indian networks, as has been seen by the recent reports of hacking of Indian defense networks, identifiable as attacks originating from China. Although the barrage of attacks may at times appear random, it is part of a strategy to fully flush out military telecommunications and to understand and to intercept intelligence being gathered by Indian agencies.
Islamic Fundamentalism and China

Islam has been a practiced religion in China from as early as the 7th century. Some 20 million plus followers of Islam today live in China. Among the 56 ethnic groups recognized by China, 10 follow Islam. These have among them the Uighurs, Tajiks, Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Tatars, and some Tibetans and Mongolians also. Apart from cultural, ethnic and social links with China, they also share common links and interests with people of the same ethnicity across Central Asia and Eastern Europe.

With cultural and religious bonds stretching across borders, it is but natural that these people also get sucked into issues of ethnicity and conflict that their brethren face in Asia and Europe. Till the erstwhile USSR controlled its ethnic minorities with an iron hand, conflicts were largely relegated to their own domestic spheres and the world knew little of what was going on. After the break up of USSR, these ethnic minorities now form the majority in their respective countries and growing dissidence is seen to the tough policies of the Chinese state against religion/ ethnicity.

To further complicate the issue, Islamic fundamentalism has seen a rapid proliferation following the events in Iraq and Afghanistan. These have now spread across borders as a general issue of discrimination against the followers of Islam and as a Clash of Civilizations. The rise of the Al-Qaeda, followed by the Islamic State are indicative of the proliferation of extremism and fundamentalism within Islam. The Chinese too face the same issues with their own minorities, especially the Uighurs.

What was so far handled as a domestic issue, now finds sympathizers among the same ethnic people in other countries. This naturally gives rise to proliferation of weapons for armed uprising as also the spread of political thought. However the Chinese still insist on these issues being within their domestic space and have handled it with the same high handedness that was witnessed in case of the Tibetan question. Naturally, the conflict threatens to spiral out of control in times to come, with the growing cohesion that fundamentalists have exhibited. On the other hand, China has had no compunction in using Islamic fundamentalism as an extension of its state policy in waging a covert war against India. The support provided to the Pakistanis and by association to the Taliban, via their Pakistani interlocutors, is evidence of the duplicity followed by the Chinese.

Relevance for India: The prospect of turmoil among the ethnic minorities in China spilling over into India is very real. Indian Muslims, especially from the northern state of Jammu and Kashmir have historically shared close ties with the very ethnic groups that are rearing their heads in China. To that effect any state policy aimed at controlling or subjugating them would be seen as a common enemy; this further gets compounded by the spread of such extreme/ fundamental thought across borders. On the other hand, continued support to the Pakistani military establishment gives another dimension to this threat. Pakistan has been either providing direct support for these extremist groups or acting as conduits for instruments of Chinese state and secret service policies. In either scenario, the Indian establishment is under a very real threat.

In addition to the potential religious and separatist problems within India, China is concerned with India’s involvement in aggravating similar problems inside its own borders. India’s provision of sanctuary in 1959 to the Dalai Lama is still a contentious issue for China because he continues to be politically active in exile, along with approximately 150,000 other Tibetans living in India. These Tibetans carry out activities seen as dissidence by the Chinese, directly threatening the stability of Tibet and endangering China’s security in its southwest region. The sense of calm and camaraderie portrayed currently in writings in China regarding India seems to be more China’s self proclaimed charm offensive than any real outlook on peace with India; veritably, the calm before the storm!

Conclusion

Today’s friendly overtones do not erase the unresolved issues and historical resentment between the countries. Rather, they are indicative of the threat China perceives from India as a competitor for vital resources and international influence, as a destabilizing influence on its western border, and as a conventional military and nuclear power. The rapidly heating up competition for vital resources between China and India, along with its impact on policies of the US and on the economic scenario, is dealt with in Part III of this analysis.