Sunanda K Datta Ray: Port of contention

WHERE MONEY TALKS/ Why are the Chinese so interested in Pakistan's Gwadar port?

It was again Hindi-Chini bhai-bhai last week. But Kunwar Natwar Singh and Pranab Mukherjee should both have considered during the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Panchsheel treaty how busily the Chinese are building up Pakistan's strategically located Gwadar port into a major deep sea harbour.

It cannot be for love of the Pakistanis alone that China will foot 80 per cent of the project's $250 million bill.

The undertaking makes sense from the point of Sino-Pakistani aims. But what I find curious is the subtle propaganda offensive against India that the Chinese launched even before India has responded to Gwadar's long-term implications.

A Chinese analyst argues that a recent car bomb that killed three Chinese engineers and wounded nine others in Gwadar might be the handiwork of Indians and Americans.

Officially, the explosion is blamed on Islamic fundamentalists or disgruntled locals who want a slice of the construction cake.

Gwadar provoked controversy even at the time of independence. It was an outpost of Muscat and Oman, and Jawaharlal Nehru objected vehemently, if irrationally, in 1947 when the British coerced the Sultan of that Arab state to transfer the port to Pakistan.

I say irrationally because if India expected France to return Pondicherry, Chandernagore, Karaikal and Mahe, and Portugal to hand over Goa, Daman and Diu, it had no business objecting to Pakistan expecting a similar gesture in respect of Gwadar.

But politicians are seldom rational, and diplomacy is all about self-interest. I doubt if 57 years ago Nehru foresaw Gwadar's future importance for all shipping from the Persian Gulf to the Indian Ocean. He just didn't want Pakistan to gain an advantage.

Now, thanks to Chinese money and expertise, Gwadar is all set to emerge as Pakistan's third largest port. It is located on the Mekran coast of Baluchistan, about 500 km west of Karachi, and 700 km east of the Strait of Hormuz, the gateway to the Persian Gulf.

When it becomes operational by next year, it is expected to handle transit trade for landlocked states in Central Asia, Afghanistan and the troubled far western Chinese province of Xinjiang.

The Chinese long ago linked Xinjiang, whose restive Uighur tribes demand independence, with the rest of the country by the 1,200-km highway that they built through Ladakh's Aksai Chin plateau..

The Chinese advance two reasons for their interest in Gwadar. Like the Russians of old probing in Afghanistan in search of warm waters (remember Rudyard Kipling's Great Game?) they want a shortcut to the sea for China's vast interior. Second, given its rapid industrialisation and rising fuel consumption, China needs to secure supply lines from the Persian Gulf region.

It's all a matter of strategic economics. Gwadar will cut the distance from southern Xinjiang to the sea by nearly 2,500 km compared with the traditional route by way of Shanghai in the east.

The Chinese are following a similar tactic in the south-east where they are developing Myanmar's railway hubs at Myitkina and Lashio, dredging the Irrawaddy river, and expanding Yangon port. All this will provide China's own landlocked south-western provinces (Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan) with a shortcut to the sea.

China also wants to safeguard its oil supply route. The long-term plan is to download oil from the Persian Gulf states at Gwadar and ship it to Kashi, the capital city of south Xinjiang, through overland pipelines. The survey for such a pipeline started as early as 1986. This route may appear to have little economic value because overland shipment costs more.

Moreover, demand is not highest in Xinjiang with its sparse industrial development. It's the coastal areas in the east that are booming, thanks to Deng Xiaoping's socialism with Chinese characteristics, and are ever more hungry for oil.

But investment in Xinjiang is a political necessity. The Gwadar-Kashi route also makes sense because the Chinese navy is not thought to be strong enough to protect the long economic lifeline from West Asia. This is especially true now that the Malacca Straits, through which the bulk of West Asian oil has to pass, is increasingly threatened by pirates.

However, Gwadar's geo-strategic value in a disturbed part of the world cannot be ignored. Nor is China's demonstrable ambition to be a presence, if not a player, in the Indian Ocean region to be overlooked.

Just as China has leased the Cocos Island in the Andaman Sea, an extension of the Bay of Bengal, from Myanmar, and set up a surveillance station in the east, it could have its first overseas naval base at Gwadar in the west. Between the two, China would be able to oversee and influence events in the Indian Ocean.

It could extend naval support to Pakistan, a long-time ally and protégé. It would be able to hold India in a pincer grip. The Chinese would be in a position to watch all traffic to and from the Persian Gulf, as well as monitor American military movements from Diego Garcia, which played a pivotal role in the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq.

With his deep roots in Nehruvian foreign policy, Kunwar Natwar Singh should be well aware that all this bears directly on India's security. The Panchsheel junket was arranged not by him but by Yashwant Sinha during Atal Behari Vajpayee's visit to Beijing last June.

Most Indians will feel that the 1954 treaty that formalised Panchsheel gives little cause for rejoicing. But a party may do no harm providing Indian diplomacy is not again carried away on a tide of empty but exhilarating rhetoric.