China is spreading its wings and arms across the world through various policies like One Belt One Road initiative and String of Pearls which is truly difficult for India and threatening its existence in the International Trade platform.
On one hand, the One Belt One Road Initiative is compared to the Silk Road and would take up the North of India while on the other hand, the String of Pearls would take up the south and the coasts of India.
The other project that is encircling India is China Pakistan Economic Corridor. For OBOR 206 cooperation documents have been signed with 140 countries and 32 international organisations. The projects first objective was to enhance local awareness of the scope and nature of Chinese activism in states with
- Weak state institutions
- Fragile civil societies
- Countries where the elite capture is a feature of the political landscape
The rapid rise of the Peoples Republic of China in the last part of the 20th century and early decades of the 21st century represents a paradigm shift in global affairs comparable in magnitude to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
According to the World Bank, India and China had roughly similar GDPs in 1990, but China now has a far larger GDP of $14.5 trillion, compared to Indias $3 trillion GDP; indicating Chinas rise.
China’s Expansion
The China has been pursuing expansionist designs for a long time now. Being a communist country, analysts believe expansionism is crucial to its ideology. To support their view, they cite the instance of the erstwhile Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) overwhelming all its neighbours into submission. Though China claims to have resolved its borders with all its neighbours except two, but in view of its expansionists tendencies, China has border disputes with all its neighbours, be those the land or marine jurisdictions. The only exception is the Islamic Republic of Pakistan which is virtually its vassal state.
China’s Strategic Perspective
China’s primary strategic goal in pursuing a central position in international politics is the accumulation of “comprehensive national strength” defined by global leadership in economics, military, technology and diplomacy. To achieve this goal, the company has long set out four converging strategic paths.
First, ensure the supremacy of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and maintain strict internal political and social norms. Second, achieving high economic growth complemented by a disciplined domestic environment. Third, it follows the concept of ‘quelling the fringes’ by deepening economic ties with its Asian neighbors to ‘reduce regional unrest’. Finally, China intends to consolidate its international position as an important player on the international stage. As a prelude to future global influence, China wants to regain the hegemony of power that the United States currently enjoys in Asia.
The Bid to increase influence in Asia
Besides developing its comprehensive national power, it wants consolidation of its land and maritime boundaries, and to ‘reunify’ and ‘reclaim’ its ‘lost’ territorial and maritime borders, which it calls its ‘core interests’. Here, Tibet, Xinjiang, Taiwan and the South China Sea become relevant.
For eighty per cent of its energy requirements, China is dependent on oil imports from the Middle East. To keepits marine supply lines open is a strategic imperative. This route passes through various choke points, like Straits of Malacca, rendering supplies susceptible to interference. Hence, China has security and economic compulsions to develop its bases in India Ocean Region (IOR) to secure its communication lines. Its eagerness to establish China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is to develop strategic communication alternatives.
While control over IOR is key to China’s economic interests, America’s vital national interests also entail ensuring uninterrupted supply of energy from the Persian Gulf, through the Indian Ocean, to the Pacific. The USA has a declared policy that it would employ any means necessary, including military, to protect this vital national interest. It also wants uninterrupted navigation and unimpeded commerce. Its strategies hinge on alliance-alignment-entente buildings in tandem.
Containment, encirclement, and engagement are the other related strategies. Both the powers are employing all the means at their disposal economic, military, diplomatic, and institution-building in a web-to realise and sustain their vital national interests. Thus, great power rivalry between the USA and China is already on.
Salami-Slice Strategy
Interestingly, China uses ‘Salami-slice’ strategy to expand its boundaries. It is a divide and conquer process through threats and alliances to overcome opposition. The term ‘Salami tactics’ was coined in the 1940s by the Stalinist Communist Mtys Rkosi to explain how the Hungarian Communist Party rose to absolute political power. He claimed to have destroyed the non-Communist parties by ‘cutting them off like slices of salami’. The process eliminates political opposition ‘slice by slice’ until it realises, usually too late, there was nothing left to retrieve.
China has finessed this deception to effective military use to expand its territories quietly. Continuously nibbling at neighbours land, at times even claiming an entire area on some dubious historicity, it successively builds up its military control over areas vital to its overall strategic designs. The annexation of Aksai Chin in the 1950s and repeated Chinese incursions into Indian territory are the executions of the same strategy.
Sino-Indian Rivalry
A mixture of hard and soft policies has characterised China’s relations with India. After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the United States is getting closer to India to the extent of even forging a strategic partnership. In South Asia, India is the power that by its size and overall status does assume a leadership role beyond the orbit of South Asia, into the ‘extended neighbourhood’. China has deliberately kept the boundary dispute unresolved so that the unsettled border issue will keep India off-balance to reduce its maritime military investments.
India and China are locked in geopolitical and geo-economic games in South and Southeast Asia. On the one hand, to counter aggressive Chinese postures in Ladakh, South China and Straits of Taiwan, Australia-India- the USA- Japan Quadrilateral Alliance (QUAD) is being reactivated. On the other hand, China has the backing of Russia to modernise its military arsenal that may fall short of Western technological standards. Interestingly, the battle for power supremacy between India and China is enmeshed in the geopolitical realities of South Asia.
Looking Ahead
Despite a perceived power asymmetry, India must stand up to China’s hegemonistic tendencies. Resolution of the standoff through diplomacy is ideal. If that fails, Indian Armed Forces have adequate capability to inflict a bloody nose to the Chinese in a short duration conflict.
Future of India’s regional standing and Sino Indian relationship depends upon how India resolves the current crisis. A negotiated disengagement must ensure status quo ante as
In April 2020. Any concessions to the Chinese will only lead to more conflicts in future and diminish India’s stature in the region.
Lastly, there are lessons in this crisis for India. Firstly, never link national security narrative to domestic politics. It forecloses strategic options. Secondly, it is time political executive realised that foreign relations are not merely a function of personal equation between leaders, even less of the brilliance of party ideology or functionaries. Latter, to some extent, is responsible for deteriorating relations with our eastern neighbours. Lastly, we must urgently evolve an exhaustive National Security Doctrine. Its absence remains a legacy from the past.
