The China challenge

The world is never short of rogue states. Think North Korea. Burma. Sudan. And even Pakistan. Rogue states exist because they have sponsors.

For much of the 20th century, and especially before the fall of the Berlin Wall, the US and USSR backed every possible tinpot dictator in the world. Today, that chief sponsor of rogue states is China.

It backs each one of the four rogue (or near-rogue) states mentioned above. In its cynical pursuit of global hegemony, China provides succour to many unsavoury regimes as long as it can achieve its own strategic goals. These goals include finding cheap energy sources or overawing current and future rivals (Japan, Taiwan, India).

China is close to becoming a global Godzilla of the kind the Nazis had become in the 1930s. It is ultra-nationalist, racist, autocratic, monocultural and militaristic — all vital ingredients of Nazism.

China is not quite Nazi Germany, but there’s no one to hold it in check right now. The US cannot call the shots effectively without courting an economic catastrophe (China is its largest creditor). Russia is a much diminished superpower and leans on China to control the growing Islamist threat to its southern fringe. Japan is wallowing in its own economic misery. India is nowhere as big economically or militarily — as yet — to stand up to China. We don’t even know how to begin.

China has always been the biggest roadblock to India’s rise in the world, but what we know privately we have always sought to deny publicly. It all started with Nehru’s disastrous handling of foreign policy in the 1950s, which culminated in our humiliating defeat in the 1962 border war.

A vain Nehru ignored sane advice from people of the eminence of Sardar Patel and Rajendra Prasad and the Chinese ran circles around him all through the 1950s while they were building up their military might and subjugating Tibet.

In the early 1960s, when China was sure it was militarily stronger, we got hammered. The only good thing to emerge from that war is that Indians have intuitively understood that China is not a friend. While we can be partners in the economic sphere, civilisationally we are rivals.

Unfortunately, this is not something we are willing to acknowledge formally. The only non-hypocritical official statement made by India about China came in 1998 after Pokharan II.

Defence minister George Fernandes said that our nuclear tests were intended to redress the power asymmetry with China. He was roundly criticised for speaking the truth, but he has been proved right.

For the last 18 years, the Chinese have been watching with dismay as India first became a global IT power and then started growing nearly as fast as them. Businessmen may love China’s ability to give them a free run on profits (no labour laws, instant government decisions, etc), but the world gives India’s ragtag democracy a higher degree of respect than China’s centrally-driven capitalism.

Respect, though, is not enough. India’s problem is that Nehru’s ghost still hangs outside the Indian foreign ministry. We are paralysed by fear, hoping against hope that China will see reason and allow us to take our place in the sun.

Well, it won’t happen. China only recognises power, which is why it has pursued military superiority with such doggedness since the 1980s. It has opposed India formally, and behind the scenes, at every forum.

At the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group last year, China tried its best to scuttle the Indo-US deal. At the UN, China was the only country (apart from Pakistan) to steadfastly spike our dreams of permanent membership.

The Middle Kingdom is clearly the rogue state behind the clandestine transfer of nuclear and missile technology between Pakistan and North Korea. A nuclear and terror-supporting Pakistan is critical to Chinese plans to keep India bogged down in local insurgencies. A rogue North Korean state enables China to keep both South Korea and Japan off-balance.

At the Asian Development Bank, China’s was the hand that nearly stopped a loan for Arunachal Pradesh. In fact, the clearance of this loan — facilitated by India’s strong diplomatic pressure on the US, South Korea and Japan — shows that power needs to be projected when it comes to dealing with China. There is only one way to deal with China and that is by building our military, diplomatic and economic strength continuously.

Japan, South Korea and Vietnam could be our silent allies in this game, but even if the world does not want to play, we must be clear in our goals. We have to develop deterrent military and economic power to contain China and earn its respect. We have to dump the Nehruvian mindset of fooling ourselves into believing that China is a benign power. It is not. It is a rogue state under wraps.