Nathu La opening favours China

 

KOLKATA: The Nathu La route, an offshoot of the historic Silk Road which traditionally linked China to Europe through central Asia, was built in 1904 by the British to connect Lhasa and Kolkata. It was shut off 44 years ago.

 

But in 2003, India and China signed a landmark memorandum during former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's Beijing visit to rebuild trading infrastructure on either side and revive the historic trading link.

 

The advantages for China are many. Analysts say that Beijing stands to gain immensely by transporting goods through India. At present, China uses transit facilities offered by Myanmar to service land-locked Tibet by sea. But with Kolkata port merely 550km from Tibet, the revival of cross-border trade at Nathu La will dramatically slash the distance Chinese goods have to travel.

 

Lhasa is 500km from Nathu La  — from the Indian side one can see the road connecting Gangtok, capital of Sikkim, to Lhasa slithering down the mountains into the Tibetan plateau. And Kolkata is 550km south of Nathu La.

 

Initial trade is expected to be much the same as it was in the Silk Road days with Chinese silk, yak tails and raw wool likely to hit the Indian markets. India expects to export farm products, textiles, watches, shoes, canned food, tobacco, rice and dried fruit.

 

But Indian analysts are outraged that even as China eyes the new corridor to Kolkata port, it is building all-weather, tank-capable roads in border regions which India claims belong to it.

 

Last year, Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran was forced to admit that India too was upgrading infrastructure, particularly border roads, helipads and airstrips in Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh in response to the Chinese build-up.

 

In a recent paper entitled Understanding the challenges of nuclear stability in South Asia, US-based strategic analyst Ashley Tellis highlighted the deployment of Chinese CSS-5 missiles in Tibet for what he described as "regional targeting".

 

Mohan Malik, a conflict analyst with the US-based Power and Interest News Report, says that between 2000 and last year, Indian-Chinese trade increased 521 per cent. But fundamental tensions remain over issues such as the unresolved 1962 territorial dispute, the India-US nuclear deal and Beijing's vehement opposition to India joining the United Nation's Security Council.

 

"Clearly, even as trade volumes rise, neither power is comfortable with the rise of the other. Each perceives the other as pursuing regional hegemony and geographical expansion. Each puts forward its own proposals for multilateral cooperation that excludes the other. Both vie for influence in central, south and southeast Asia, and for leadership positions in global and regional organisations."

 

Some experts believe that India has made a tactical mistake by consenting to the reopening of the Nathu La pass in the first place.  Said one of them: "But India can still make amends for its Himalayan blunder by using its growing relationship with the US and Taiwan to counterbalance China. Henceforth, India must act like a nuclear power vis-à-vis China and not the loser of the 1962 war."