Missed opportunities: 25 Years after Deng Xiaoping & Rajiv Gandhi

It was 10.30am in the morning of 22 December 1988.  China’s ‘Paramount Leader’ Deng Xiaoping appeared at the Great Hall of China wearing a grey Mao coat. “I welcome you to China, my young friend,” Deng said clutching Rajiv Gandhi’s hand. “This is your first visit to China?” “Yes”, replied Gandhi. The handshake lasted quite a while, says then Minister of State for External Affairs, Natwar Singh, in his book. The visit laid the basis for ‘peace and tranquility’ on the border, the phrase written into an agreement during a successor Prime Minister’s visit to China five years later. There have been tense incidents since then, but no flare-ups; the last person to die on the border was in 1977. Gandhi was the first Indian Prime Minister to visit China since 1954. Ambassadorial ties had been restored in 1976, 14 years after the war. Eight rounds of talks had been held since Chinese Foreign Minister Huang Hua’s visit to India in 1981, but without much progress. Gandhi did not expect a breakthrough. But he did not want rude surprises either, of the sort that Foreign Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee had to face when China invaded Vietnam in 1979, literally moments after Vajpayee’s arrival in Beijing. [caption id=“attachment_1314059” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  The historic meeting between the two leaders. AFP[/caption] But in 1988, China was dealing with a different India.  It had appreciated the new leadership’s pragmatism on the economy and in international relations. India had declared statehood for Arunachal Pradesh (which China claims as South Tibet) in February 1987. And it had confronted the Chinese when they had intruded at Sumdorongchu. A lot has happened since then. Successive Prime Ministers have built on that visit. Peace has held on the border. Trade has boomed, though it is highly in China’s favour. The boundary issue has not been resolved; the line has not been delineated. But broad principles were agreed during Premier Wen Jiabao’s visit in 2005. The framework for resolution is in progress, though critical differences remain. India-China ties have remained a ‘leadership-led relationship,’ to use National Security Adviser Shiv Shankar Menon’s phrase. They require a push at multiple levels.  We need a better understanding of China at the popular level. We must make the study of China a national objective, as Chinese scholar Alka Acharya says. The Americans are teaching mandarin in schools. China is setting up Confucius Institutes there. Why do we make it difficult for the Chinese to set them up in India?  We have been denying visas to Chinese teachers. So I was happy to read a news report in November that the Central Board for Secondary Education will get 25 Chinese teachers for Delhi schools. The business community could have been a champion of better relations, but the huge trade deficit makes it less enthusiastic.  We cannot blame China entirely for this. Over the last few years we have let our economy falter. China’s GDP per person, at $6,091 in 2012, is four times that of India’s at $1,489. The gap has widened since the UPA took over. China’s per capita was a little more than double at that time. We will continue to carp if we do not take energetic steps to revive high growth. The trade deficit is also an opportunity to attract Chinese investment in Indian infrastructure. This will improve our export competitiveness, while giving the Chinese better returns on their dollar reserves which are otherwise invested in low-yield US treasury bonds. The unresolved boundary dispute remains a chill factor.  Apart from the usual irritations like stapled visas, China has put its neighbours on guard about its intentions by recently declaring the air space over the disputed islands with South Korea and Japan as air defence identification zones.  China needs to re-think its policy of assimilating minorities, which is the cause of unrest in Tibet and Xinjiang, and its view of the Dalai Lama as a ‘splittist.’ But we also need to turn the mirror inwards. We would be less worried about China improving transport and communications linkages with the border areas, if we took similar measures. We have not invested enough in Arunachal’s economic and infrastructure development. Officials of the forest and administrative services spend short stints - so there is a governance deficit. We also need to prepare the Indian public for a give and take of border territory.  There is a widespread perception that the Chinese have no valid claims. That notion must be disabused.  Indian scholarship on the boundary issue is quite inadequate, partly because the government denies access to archives, and also because officials open up to Westerners than to Indians. The liberalisation of trade through the World Trade Organization has benefited both countries. But while China is raring to go, India is stuck in defensive postures as at Bali. Even on climate change, China is positioning itself as a supplier of green technologies, while India is losing the edge it had in solar and wind energy. The world is in flux after the financial crisis of 2008.  We need to build on our three advantages over China – democracy, demography and diplomacy. A closer alliance with the rich democracies will provide a counter-weight to the economic and military disparity with China. It is only after India has become strong that it will find it easy to rewind the waqt ka sitam, and re-embark on Rajiv Gandhi’s brave realism.