Dealing with the dragon

It’s a border stand-off that’s lasted three weeks and the difference this time is the rhetoric is heating up rather than cooling down. China’s Communist Party-run Global Times has stepped up the war of words, saying: “This time we must teach New Delhi a bitter lesson... (Defence Minister Arun) Jaitley is right that the India of 2017 is different from 1962 — India will suffer greater losses if it incites military conflicts.” Meanwhile, China’s ambassador Lhuo Zhaohui has fuelled the fire, declaring India has no right to speak on Bhutan’s behalf. The Global Times has even warned investors they may have to reduce investments in India, though most analysts believe this is unlikely to happen.

Key to note is that the nuclear neighbours have been relatively successful at maintaining peace along their 3,500km border stretching from Ladakh in the west to Uttarakhand, Himachal and Arunachal Pradesh in the east. The last time troops fired at each other was in 1975 and, since then, the stand-offs have gone little beyond scuffles and destroying frontline bunkers — though there have been many such skirmishes. This time, though, the slanging matches have been amped up to unusually high decibels and the Chinese have heightened pressure by closing the Nathu La pass to Kailash Mansarovar pilgrims. Complicating the situation is the fact the confrontation is on the China-Bhutan border and the Indian Army regards the Doklam plain as strategically crucial because it opens a path to the Siliguri Corridor which links the northeast to the rest of India. Over the past decade, the Chinese have upped their strength in Tibet while India has raised two mountain divisions in reply.

The prolonged nature of this stand-off indicates the Chinese are using it to send various political messages. Beijing’s miffed India boycotted the Belt and Road Initiative jamboree in Shanghai in May. It’s unclear if its $50-billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) will be viable if India doesn’t join. Secondly, China’s riled at India’s growing US tilt in what Beijing sees as an anti-China alliance that includes Japan and Australia. Most importantly, the Chinese are signalling that India can’t expect to be a pre-eminent power in its own part of the world and that China has consolidated its position on the global stage and will be calling the shots — even in south Asia. Despite the bonhomie shown during Modi’s visit to Washington, Donald Trump has shown little interest in our part of the world and India’s diplomatic leverage is limited. We can’t afford to abandon Bhutan and we need to resolve the crisis without loss of face. One suggestion has been to make some kind of economic concessions and that while we stay out of CPEC, we should offer to join one of China’s other grand economic schemes. What’s clear is that in the coming days in our negotiations with China, we need to display the utmost finesse to ensure we aren’t squeezed onto a smaller stage by the global giant next door.

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