The Hindu Business Line : India faces new Asian challenges

Partnerships will have to be forged with Japan and others to meet the challenges an aggressive China poses in India’s neighbourhood, even as New Delhi fashions policies to accelerate economic growth and develop its conventional defences and nuclear capabilities, says G. PARTHASARATHY.

Non-proliferation ‘ayatollahs’ in the US, close to the Democratic Party establishment, have recently been publishing “revelations” of Pakistan constructing two new plutonium reactors at its nuclear nerve centre, Khushab. The timing and contents of these “revelations” are intriguing. They appeared just as a new Government was assuming office in New Delhi.

While claiming that these two new nuclear reactors will substantially increase Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal and voicing fears of a jihadi takeover in Pakistan, the authors are demanding that to prevent such weapons facilities from being taken over by jihadi elements, India should immediately join Pakistan in stopping the production of fissile materials for weapons. This would fit in perfectly with China’s aim of making India’s nuclear weapons development totally Pakistani-centric and depriving India of a credible nuclear deterrent that can safeguard the country against challenges from China, overt and covert.

On April, 23, 2009 the US-based Institute of Science and International Security published satellite imagery taken from Digital Globe, showing two large plutonium reactors being constructed in Khushab, near another plutonium reactor that was built in the 1990s by China. The Americans know that in the 1990s, China supplied Pakistan with not only an unsafeguarded 40 MW plutonium reactor, but also a plutonium reprocessing plant.

Moreover, as such reactors require “heavy water” and Pakistan’s heavy water production facilities (built with Chinese assistance) have limited production, Pakistan’s requirements of heavy water for these reactors are also evidently being met by diverting Chinese heavy water supplies to nuclear power plants built with Chinese assistance, in nearby Chashma. China joined the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1992 and thereafter pledged that it would stop supplies of all unsafeguarded nuclear material and facilities to Pakistan.

Violation of pledge

In 1991-1992, China pledged to abide by the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), thereby ruling out supplies of missiles with a range of over 300 km. China continues to violate all these undertakings. The plutonium reactors in Khushab now under construction are nothing more than a continuation of the assistance China gave Pakistan for its first 40 MW plutonium reactor.

Apart from having supplied Pakistan the designs for its original uranium nuclear warheads, the ongoing Chinese assistance to Pakistan’s plutonium weapons facilities is obviously meant to enable Pakistan to make more potent and miniaturised warheads, which can be fitted to the Chinese designed Shaheen I and Shaheen II missiles, capable of targeting cities across India.

Thus, when America’s non-proliferation advocates start demanding that India should hold negotiations with Pakistan, because of threats arising to international security from China’s unrestrained nuclear and missile proliferation to Pakistan, New Delhi should tell its American friends that they are barking up the wrong tree.

India is not going to allow the size or capabilities of its nuclear and missile arsenals to be limited, because of American unwillingness to check unrestrained Chinese nuclear and missile proliferation.

The view of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that the Sino-American relationship is the “most important bilateral relationship of the 21st century,” has in recent days, fuelled Chinese arrogance and aggressiveness, in its relations with India. Following the recent display of its naval prowess, China has made it clear that it is embarking on a massive naval expansion.

If in the 1990s China asserted that “the Indian Ocean is not India’s Ocean”, a senior Chinese naval officer went even further earlier this month, in suggesting to the Commander of the US Pacific Fleet, Admiral Timothy Keating, that the Western Pacific and Indian oceans should be regarded as spheres of predominant Chinese influence. Keating was told: “You (the US) take Hawaii East and we, (China) will take Hawaii West and the Indian Ocean. Then you need not come to the Western Pacific and Indian Ocean and we will not need to go to the Eastern Pacific”.

Territorial claims

The recent move of the Chinese fleet into the Indian Ocean, ostensibly in the name of dealing with piracy, together with its quest for facilities and bases from Gwadar in Pakistan to Hambantota in Sri Lanka are obviously part of a longer-term plan to dominate the sea-lanes of the Indian Ocean.

Chinese aggressiveness on its territorial claims has also grown. Chinese scholars have spoken of “liberating” Southern Tibet (Arunachal Pradesh) in the event of tensions between India and Pakistan. China has moved to block credits to India amounting to $2.9 billion from the Asian Development Bank, because there is provision for assistance to development projects in Arunachal Pradesh.

In Nepal, the Chinese have fished in troubled waters, attempting to finalise a treaty with the Himalayan Kingdom, which obviously raises Indian security concerns and also by encouraging Maoist plans to undermine democratic functioning of key institutions such as Nepal’s army and judiciary.

In Myanmar, China used the support it gave the military regime in the UN Security Council, to undermine India’s access to offshore gas, from a project in which India had an equity stake.

As Dr Manmohan Singh commences his second term in office, he will have to take note of the serious challenges that an assertive China now poses across India’s land borders and its maritime frontiers. Given the ongoing US-China honeymoon, it would require imaginative diplomacy to persuade the Obama Administration of our concerns on Chinese behaviour.

China has not hesitated to use force to enforce its territorial claims on its disputed maritime boundaries with countries such as Vietnam and Philippines. Under the UN Convention of the Law of the Seas, China was required to intimate where its maritime frontiers lie, earlier this month.

In its presentation, China has laid claim to thousands of square miles of maritime territory in the South China Sea based on its unilateral claims to several offshore islands bordering Taiwan, Vietnam, Indonesia, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines.

India’s response

With India’s Communist Parties, which have tacitly backed China’s global ambitions and policies, no longer pulling the strings of power, New Delhi should not be constrained in responding appropriately to Chinese manoeuvres in India’s neighbourhood.

It is not India alone that is concerned by China’s “rise”. Partnerships will have to be forged with Japan and others to meet the challenges a resurgent and aggressive China poses, even as New Delhi fashions policies to accelerate economic growth and develop its conventional defences and nuclear capabilities.

India now shares membership with China in groupings like the East Asian Summit, the Asean Regional Forum, the G-20 and the proposed linkup between the fast growing and emerging economies Brazil, Russia, China and India. Both share some interest in resisting pressures on issues such as climate change and international trade.

While it is only natural that such complementarities bring the two countries together on a number of issues, we should have no illusions about the impact of Chinese determination to become the unchallenged hegemon on the Asian mainland.

(The author is a former High Commissioner to Pakistan. blfeedback@thehindu.co.in)

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