India-China Relations GS: 2 :EMPOWER IAS

 

India-China Relations

 

In news:

• The Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jingping would be visiting Mamallpuram, Tamil Nadu for the second edition of informal summit between India and China.

 

Important facts:

• Mamallapuram near Chennai, which was a crucial town connecting India with Southeast Asia including China from the Pallava period, is under a security blanket, with armed security personnel present at all three monuments that the two world leaders will visit.
• This is the second edition of the Modi-Xi informal summit. The first one was held at Wuhan, Hubei, in April 2018, which was considered the flashpoint that revived ties between the neighbours after the Dokalam standoff.
• Among the decisions taken at the Wuhan Summit held in April last year was to hold more such summits, aimed at ensuring “higher levels of strategic communications.”
• Four spots have been identified for their visit, including Arjuna Penance, Krishna’s Butter Ball, Five Rathas and Shore Temple. 

 

Significance of the  Mamallapuram Summit:

• The meeting assumes greater significance as the trade war between the US and China has been escalating in the recent times.
• The meeting is also likely to help Mamallapuram become a must visit place for Chinese tourists, who mostly visit Bodhgaya
•  India clearly viewed this ‘informal summit’ as a trust-building exercise, hoping to quietly sort out problems that existed between the two countries, including the vexed border issue.
• It will help in a strong relationship and better communication, between the two countries.
• Such strategic communication will have a positive influence on enhancing mutual understanding and will contribute to regional and global stability.

 

Why need to build good relationship between India and China?

• Peaceful, stable and balanced relations between India and China will be a positive factor for stability amidst current global uncertainties.
• proper management of the bilateral relationship will be conducive for the development and prosperity of the region, and will create the conditions for the Asian Century.
• To this end, they decided to strengthen the Closer Development Partnership in a mutually beneficial and sustainable manner, in pursuit of national modernization and greater prosperity for their peoples.
• To push forward bilateral trade and investment in a balanced and sustainable manner by taking advantage of complementarities between their two economies.
• To promote greater cultural and people-to-people exchanges and agreed to explore establishing new mechanisms in this direction.
• Two major countries India and China have wider and overlapping regional and global interests.  In the last Wuhan summit , both countries, agreed on their need to strengthen strategic communication through greater consultation on all matters of common interest
• Both the nations has  agreed to jointly contribute in a positive and constructive way in facilitating sustainable solutions for global challenges including climate change, sustainable development, food security etc.
•  They underscored the importance of reform of multilateral financial and political institutions to make them representative and responsive to the needs of developing countries.
• India and China have separately made major contributions to global peace and prosperity through their respective growth and economic development, and would continue to act as engines for global growth in the future.
• They reiterated the importance of building an open, multipolar, pluralist and participatory global economic order which will enable all countries to pursue their development and contribute to the elimination of poverty and inequality in all regions of the world. They spoke of their respective efforts to contribute to the regional and global economic development.
• Apart from being two most populous countries of the world, China and India are second and fourth largest economies of the world, are among the fastest growing economies of the world. In recent times, the process of development and diversification of bilateral relations has gathered pace. 
• India China share similarity of view on many fronts like World Trade Organisation (WTO), International Climate Change talks, reforms of World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF).
• Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) of which China is member had granted the observer status to India, while South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) had granted the observer status to China.
• They also participated in the BRIC (Brazil Russia India China) summit and East Asia Summit. Despite of these facts, India China often find each other on the opposite side of the table on many issues for instance UN security Council reforms.

 

Locations: Mamallapuram : The place is also known as Seven Pagodas or Mahabalipuram. Mamallapuram was one of two major port cities by the 7th century within the Pallava kingdom.  Ancient port town has historical connection with China and Buddhism. Historians said that the ancient port town of Mamallapuram was used effectively by the Pallavas to trade with China. Buddhist monk Bodhidharma, who was an icon in China, was the third prince of a Pallava king who travelled to China from Kancheepuram via Mamallapuram in 527AD. He went on to become the 28th patriarch of Buddhism succeeding Prajnatara. Marco Polo and other Europeans named it Seven Pagodas. It is believed that 6 more temples stood along with the lone standing shore temple. Hence the name Seven Pagodas. The 2004 Tsunami exposed an old collapsed temple built of granite and was a part of Seven Pagodas. It is a historic town and was a seaport in the 1st millennium. It was declared as UNESCO World Heritage site.  The famous monuments in the town include temples in the form of chariots, giant open rock sculpture, cave sanctuaries, Descent of the Ganges and a Shore temple   Shore Temple: The temple overlooks Bay of Bengal. It was built during the Pallava dynasty. It is a cave temple. Lord Vishnu shrine is placed between two shrines of Lord Shiva.  The structures have multi – storied pyramidal superstructures typical of the Dravidian style. The leaders are to meet in the temple. They will have a pradhakshan (a walk around the temple) and hold talks in a bench that is to be installed facing the temple.   Descent of the Ganges: It is a monument at Mamallapuram.  It is an open – air relief carved on two monolithic rocks. The monument depicts the story of descent of the sacred river Ganges to the earth from heavens.  It also portrays Arjuna’s penance. The monument was sculpted in the period of Pallavas.   Wuhan Wuhan is the capital city of Hubei Province in central China. It has been a major industrial city for a long time. The 1911 Republican revolution started there.

 

Wuhan summit:

• The first informal meet between the leaders was held at Wuhan, China in April 2018. The leaders exchanged views on issues of bilateral and global importance.
• The simultaneous emergence of India and China as two large economies has implications in regional and global significance.
• The summit was to address the imbalances created in the process.
• They agree that proper management of the bilateral relationship will be conducive for the development of the region.
• They also discussed about terrorism, disaster risk reduction, combating diseases, addressing climate change, etc.

• Hopes raised at the Wuhan Summit that the two countries would jointly work together on an economic project in Afghanistan have proved to be evanescent.  Instead, even as the political situation in Afghanistan deteriorates, China, along with countries like Pakistan, remains more intent than ever on ensuring that India has no role to play there.

 

Outcomes of the Wuhan Summit:

• The Wuhan summit opened up lines of “strategic communications” between Indian and Chinese establishments.

• The arterial flow of information exchange has meant that India and China can be joint custodians rather than rivals in managing their neighbourhood.
•  “2 plus 1” which has been currently proposed by China to deal with Nepal, can possibly be extend to other international engagements too.
• This would enable Beijing and New Delhi to engage with any third country jointly and thereby eliminate any likely abrasive competition between them.

 

Aftermath of the Wuhan Summit:

• After the Wuhan Summit, many things have changed, altering the circumstances surrounding India-China relations. For instance, relations between China and the U.S. have sharply deteriorated.
• Apart from the U.S., a vast majority of nations in the West have cooled off towards China.
• While in 2018, the China-Russia axis appeared to be carving out an exclusive zone of influence in East Asia, by mid-2019, new alignments, including a further strengthening of India-Russia ties, as also a new triangular relationship of Russia, India and Japan, appear to be altering equations in the East Asian region.
• China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has also come under increasing attack, even from countries which previously viewed China as a munificent nation.

 

Issue areas between India and China

• India’s entry into the UNSC and the NSG: China has been opposing India’s entry into the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) and in the Nuclear Supplier’s Group (NSG)
• India’s opposition to the OBOR: India has been opposing China’s flagship ‘One Belt One Road’ (OBOR) initiative‘, as the ‘China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)‘, a part of OBOR, passes through the Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK) and acceding to OBOR would mean undermining India’s sovereignty.
• Strengthening of India-USA relations:  China is critical of India-USA relations and it is not merely a coincidence that the escalation at the tri-junction coincided with the Indian Prime Minister’s visit to the United States. India supports the US and other countries in reaffirming the freedom of navigation in international waters, which includes the South China Sea. Along with this, the ‘MALABAR Naval exercise’ between India, Japan and USA is also a matter to worry for China.
• Issue of Tibet and Dalai Lama: The fact that Tibet’s spiritual leader Dalai Lama lives in India is a tension area in India-China relations. The recent visit of Dalai Lama to Arunachal Pradesh has been a matter of conflict between the two sides.
• Mistrust: These two countries have been engaged in vibrating trade and business. China is willing to invest heavily in Indian economy. India also wants to establish the lost cultural ties between the two countries.  However, the deep-rooted mistrust, diplomacy and competition to emerge as superpowers have caused the persistence in the strained relationship between India and China.
• Domination of Indian Ocean: China has been accused of pursuing strategic maneuvers on a well-thought out route encircling India in the Indian Ocean.  Beijing has been reaching out to India’s neighbors on the premise of development and trade, allegedly recreating the Silk Route. From Nepal in the south east to Myanmar, Bangladesh to Sri Lanka in the south and Pakistan in the west, China plans to choke India diplomatically.  
• Water issue: The dispute between India and china is mainly regarding the Brahmaputra River flowing through the two countries the search for water resources in China and India has persistently been a source of tension between the two countries.
• Dokham: Doklam and the disputed border between the two countries remains an issue of concern. 
• Pakistan factor:  The longtime friendship between China and Pakistan, rooted in a time when both countries were deeply mistrustful of India, has long made New Delhi nervous.  The relationship has mainly gone one way, with China providing economic assistance and political backing to Pakistan.
• Contradictory outlook: China and India continue to compete and have a contradictory outlook on many strategic and civilisational issues. These include the nature of Asian security, regional stability and the role of the U.S. in the region. The China-Pakistan axis has, if anything, been further cemented — the UN designating Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar as a global terrorist a mere blip in the wider scheme of China-Pakistan relations.
• South China Sea issue and India: China opposes India’s oil exploration in the SCS (which has been undertaken at Vietnam’s request) by calling the area of exploration a ‘disputed’ area and asserting ‘Chinese sovereignty’ over the SCS in the ‘historical’ context.  

 

• Maritime Silk Route project: Beijing’s plan for a maritime infrastructure corridor in the broader Indo-Pacific region, has attracted attention because of its potential to establish a Chinese foothold in the Indian Ocean.

• ONE BELT, ONE ROAD (OBOR): The One Belt, One Road (OBOR) initiative is part of China’s major policy framework to boost domestic development and foreign diplomacy. China also wants to ‘reconstruct’ the world order to fulfill its interests and become a dominant world power

• Recent actions taken by India :

• Certain recent actions by India are likely to arouse China’s suspicions about India’s intentions, which could impact the summit outcome.
•  India’s efforts to ‘dumb down’ the Dalai Lama will have appeased China to an extent, other events in Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh, where it takes a keen interest, will be seen as a provocation at this juncture.
• For example, the recent announcement by India of an “all arms integrated” exercise ‘codenamed Changthang Prahar (assault)’ in a “super high altitude” area near Chushul in eastern Ladakh, featuring tanks, artillery guns, drones, helicopters and troops, as well as para-drops, is almost certain to be read suspiciously by China. 
• Simultaneously, the reopening of the Advance Landing Ground at Vijoynagar in Arunachal Pradesh for the use of military aircraft and a proposed major combat exercise, also in Arunachal Pradesh, in which the new Integrated Battle Groups will be seen in operation will add to, and aggravate, China’s concerns.

 

How does the future look?

• The aggressive approach of Trump against Chinese trade and geopolitical practices is likely to have forced China to reach a compromise with India.
• Nonetheless, China’s new approach is likely to benefit India if leveraged properly through consistent diplomatic engagements.
• The ball is now in India’s court to respond to China’s two-plus one formulation and Nepal offers a perfect opening to test the same.
•  The initiative would be a good indicator on whether India and China can dock their collective rise cordially, through coordinated action internationally.
•  Ahead of upcoming at Mamallapuram summit India needs to proceed with utmost caution, lest China reacts in a manner that would undermine the ‘Wuhan spirit’. India must ensure that it does not provoke China to the point where it would be inclined to indulge in ‘adventurism’.
• India can try and seek answers on how to deal with today’s China, from the “wisdom of the orient.” Reading up on treatises such as Sun Tzu’s ‘Art of War’ would help.
• Subduing the enemy without fighting” has been a recurrent theme in Chinese thinking, and while informal summits have their uses, it is imperative not to overlook this aspect.
• If India does not proceed with care and caution, the Mamallapuram summit could well prove to be a step back from Wuhan. With preparations and proper handling, the forthcoming meet could, on the other hand, provide India’s leaders with a realistic estimate as to where India-China relations are headed.

 

Conclusion:

As two major countries and emerging economies, India and China, given their vast developmental experiences and national capacities, should join hands to take lead in offering innovative and sustainable solutions to challenges faced by humankind in the 21st century. These include combating diseases, coordinating action for disaster risk reduction and mitigation, addressing climate change and ushering digital empowerment.

 

 

Source)https://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/in-search-of-the-wuhan-spirit/article29600008.ece