Not just niceties, China and India need to focus on thorny issues

Among a section of Indian leaders and policymakers, there is a discernible tendency to avoid pointed mention of potentially niggling issues with China in the belief that the problem will take care of itself - or at least be overtaken by events and other headlines. When the first signs of incursion by Chinese troops in Ladakh surfaced last month, the first instinct of everyone from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid was to downplay the development, and even hold out alibis to account for China’s behaviour. Some of that failing appears to have been remedied overnight, with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh evidently resorting to some plain-speaking in his interaction with visiting Prime Minister Li Keqiang. Evidently, Manmohan Singh raised many of the more contentious issues that dog the relationship - from the recent Ladakh incursion to China’s damming of the Brahmaputra to the trade balance, which is weighted heavily in China’s favour. This is exactly as it should be, and positions the two countries to have a more mature dialogue that goes beyond mere platitudes or the avoidance of bothersome issues. The earlier failure to address the issue head-on was symptomatic of India’s inability to get the cadence right in its interaction with China. [caption id=“attachment_796493” align=“alignright” width=“380”]  Premier Li Keqiang and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. PTI[/caption] For instance, Even when Khurshid travelled to Beijing earlier this month, to set the stage for Li ’s visit, he made an elaborate show of walking on eggshells to avoid even mentioning the incursion, which was arguably the most serious territorial challenge from China to India since the Sumdorung Chu incident in Arunachal Pradesh in 1987. When he did dwell on it subsequently, it was only to emphasise how quickly the tension had been tamped down. So given to unctuous gushing was Khurshid during his visit earlier this month that he bizarrely suggested that he would “ love to live in Beijing”. Now, as one of the most energetic world cities, Beijing has many charms, and fuses a bounteous economic boom with a vibrant cultural scene and nightlife. All of these are a magnet for talented professionals from all over the world, and to that extent Khurshid’s lip-service tribute to the city has a context. But the reason it reeked of treacly sentiment that borders on feckless pandering is that, as anyone knows, urban living in Beijing in recent times has become the stuff of dystopian nightmares - with off-the-charts pollution forcing a steady stream of global professionals to flee (as these reports - here and here and here - bear out). Khurshid’s avoidance of a discussion on niggling issues even in private talks and, on the other hand, his resorting to gratuitous gushing in public, has its roots in a mollycoddling mindset that stereotypes Chinese sensitivities - by signalling utmost, even excessive, consideration for them. It fails to acknowledge that for all its prickliness, China is today in many ways a player at the high table of global power politics and, commensurate with that profile, can take it on the chin. In fact, India’s historical relationship with China over the decades has been hostage to Jawaharlal Nehru’s initial misreading of the power equation between the two ancient civilizations. For instance, in the years immeditely after the founding in 1949 of the People’s Republic of China, Nehru took it upon himself to end China’s international isolation, even chaperoning Premier Zhou Enlai at international conferences. At the 1955 Bandung Conference to signal Afro-Asian solidarity, for instance, Nehru “deftly played ‘mother hen’” to Zhou, according to Carlos Romulo, the Philippine representative to that conference.  If anything, Zhou was offended by such condescension, “as if a new boy was  being introduced to his classmates.” Even at the conference, Nehru was comprehensively outflanked by Zhou, whose “apparent humility and reasonableness” contrasted sharply with what Romulo described as Nehru’s “pedantry”, and “his pronounced propensity to be dogmatic, impatient, irascible, and unyielding.” Ever since then, India has failed to find the right note in its diplomatic articulations with China. Where once it was trapped in Nehru’s patrician “mother hen” syndrome, it is today a victim of pusillanimity that manifests itself in kowtowing to the Chinese even when no official slight was intended . More recently, however, the terms of diplomatic engagement with a rising China were framed brilliantly by former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. On a visit to Beijing in 2008, when China was hosting the Olympics and showcasing itself to the world, Rudd, a fluent Chinese speaker,  addressed students at China’s iconic Beijing University. Rudd’s speech ( full text here) is remarkable for many things, but at its core, it was a masterly exposition in redefining the nature of the discourse that China must be prepared to have with the world if it wants to be acknowledged as a rising power. Since Mao Zedong’s time, China has typically locked countries into a friend-or-foe relationship. As  this commentator points out, “to be a friend of China…  the foreigner is often expected to stomach unpalatable situations, and keep silent in the face of egregious behaviour.. In the public arena, he or she is expected to have the good sense and courtesy to be ‘objective’, that is to toe the line, whatever that happens to be. The concept of ‘friendship’ thus degenerates into little more than an effective tool for emotional blackmail and enforced complicity.” But Rudd, with utmost sensitivity to China’s cultural and literary heritage, recast the definition of a “friend”. A true friend, Rudd noted, is “one who can be a zhengyou, that is a partner who sees beyond immediate benefit to the broader and firm basis for continuing, profound and sincere friendship.”  A strong relationship and a true friendship, he added, “are built on the ability to engage in a direct, frank and ongoing dialogue about our fundamental interests and future vision.” In other words, the relationship cannot be advanced if we don’t speak honestly to each other. There’s a lesson in that for Indian leaders and policymakers. India’s discourse with China has traditionally been trapped in the Mao-ist maze that defines how “friends” ought to conduct themselves, which is why Khurshid resorts to pointless pandering in the belief that that is what the Chinese expect. But Chinese statecraft has evolved since then. And Premier Li Keqiang, as I noted on Sunday , has a reputation for being an open-minded, pragmatic leader with a rare capacity to charm - something that those who interacted with him on Sunday appear to have experienced. Manmohan Singh appears to have set the tone right for the Sino-Indian dialogue that gets under way today by raising the contentious issues right up - and not restricting himself to customary platitudes. If India and China can build on that, and establish a zhengyou framework, they have the capacity to reboot their relationship.