India’s presence in East Asia vital to counter China’s increasing clout

Prime minister Manmohan Singh’s three-nation tour of Vietnam, Japan and Malaysia this week is to give a fillip to India’s ‘Look East’ policy by underscoring the need for greater integration and engagement in diverse fields, particularly trade, between India and East Asia. Singh’s bilateral visit to Japan and Malaysia and to Vietnam for the 8th Asean-India summit has made it clear that his government’s foreign policy priority will be East and South East Asia which are poised for a sustained economic growth in the 21st century.

This is a time of great turmoil in the Asian strategic landscape and India should make its relevance felt in the region. A two-week stand-off between Japan and China over a boat collision shows the communist state is adopting a more aggressive stance against rivals and US allies in Asia and there may be more tension to come. The US and its allies have already started re-assessing their regional strategies and it is likely that an anti-China balancing act will soon emerge.

China would not have expected that its arrival as the world’s second-largest economy would evoke a new robustness in US policy towards China and the Asian region. US secretary of state Hillary Clinton used her visit to Asia to signal unequivocally that the US is unwilling to accept China’s push for regional hegemony.

When Beijing claimed that it now considered its ownership of the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea as a “core interest”, Clinton countered by proposing that the US will help establish an international mechanism to mediate the overlapping claims of sovereignty between China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia that are littoral states in the South China Sea.

Both Tokyo and New Delhi have made an effort in recent years to put India-Japan ties in high gear. The rise of China in Asia-Pacific and beyond has fundamentally altered the strategic calculus of India and Japan, forcing them to rethink their attitudes towards each other. India’s booming economy is making it an attractive trading and business partner for Japan as it tries to get out of its long years of economic stagnation. Japan is also re-assessing its role as a security provider in the region and beyond. India seems willing to acknowledge Japan’s centrality in shaping the evolving Asia-Pacific security architecture.

India’s ties with Japan have come a long way since May 1998 when a chill had set in after India’s nuclear tests with Japan imposing sanctions and suspending its Overseas Development Assistance. Since then, however, the changing strategic milieu in Asia-Pacific has brought the two countries together so much that the last visit of Singh to Japan resulted in the unfolding of a roadmap to transform a low-key relationship into a major strategic partnership. The rise of China is a major factor in the evolution of India-Japan ties as is the US attempt to build India into a major balancer in the region. Both India and Japan are well aware of China’s not so subtle attempts at preventing their rise.

An India-Japan civil nuclear pact would be critical in signalling that they would like to build a partnership to bring stability to the region at a time when China is going all out to reward Pakistan with civilian nuclear reactors, putting the entire non-proliferation regime in jeopardy.

Not surprising, therefore, that civil nuclear cooperation, enhancing trade ties and UN reforms dominated the talks that Singh had with his Japanese counterpart Naoto Kan. After some initial hiccups and with Singh’s personal intervention, the long-awaited Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement was signed.
India will be making a case of its growing presence in the East Asian regional security and economic architecture at the 8th Asean-India Summit in Hanoi where the focus will be on enhancing the integration of the East Asian region with India.

India’s free trade agreement with Asean last year committed New Delhi to bring down import tariffs on 80% of the commodities it traded with Asean. This allows India to challenge China’s growing penetration of East Asia and prevents India’s growing marginalisation in the world’s most economically dynamic region. After signing a free trade pact in goods, India and Asean are now engaged in talks to widen the agreement to include services and investments. India hopes to increase its $44-billion trade with the Asean to $50 billion by the end of 2010.

India is pursuing an ambitious policy in East Asia aimed at increasing its regional profile more significantly than before. There is no time to lose as China’s presence is already changing the regional landscape and smaller states in the region are now looking to India to act as a balancer in view of China’s growing prowess and America’s likely retrenchment from the
region in the near future.