Ashok Parthasarathi: China remains a security threat

Despite the bonhomie between the two countries, the challenge before India is to be fully aware of the Chinese threat while doing business with it.

The Chinese assistance to the Pakistani nuclear weapon programme continues even today and is aimed at constantly miniaturising and improving Pakistani nuclear weapons to become more efficient and effective, especially for enabling Pakistan to make nuclear warheads for a whole range of missiles. Pakistan's weapons grade plutonium-producing reactor Kushab was built with substantial Chinese assistance, including the supply of heavy water for the reactor. In parallel, China set up an allegedly civilian 300 MW power reactor (Chashma) in Pakistan some years ago. Although that reactor is supposed to be under international safeguards, the Indian government has firm information that China has assisted Pakistan in transferring some of the capabilities and so-called "spares" for Chashma to Kushab, thereby violating international safeguards solemnly entered into by China with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Neither the IAEA nor the US have even squeaked!

The same applies to China's massive assistance to Pakistan's missile programme. In fact, the entire missile arsenal of Pakistan is of Chinese origin. China's assistance has been provided in two ways "" directly and through North Korea. The direct assistance has taken the form of the supply of around 100 M-11 nuclear capable missiles of 300 km range, about the same number of the longer 1,000 km range M-9 missiles and the 1,500 km range M-18 missiles. China has also taught Pakistan how to make nuclear warheads for them and it has set up a complete plant in Pakistan for the manufacture of the M-11 and M-9 missiles.

And when China came under pressure from the US to stop missile proliferation to Pakistan, China "introduced" Pakistan to North Korea. The deal was that Pakistan would supply its nuclear weapons technology to the North Koreans and the latter would, in return, do likewise in regard to missiles, most of which were, however, directly of Chinese origin in earlier times. Thus North Korea has transferred complete Nowdong medium-range missiles to Pakistan and also kits of parts of those missiles and trained Pakistan to assemble and test them. The Chinese then came in and taught the Pakistanis how to design, develop, produce and fit appropriate nuclear warheads on the Nowdong. The Government of India not only has full information on all this, but on one occasion even captured an allegedly civilian commercial cargo vessel of North Korea near Mumbai, which, when towed ashore and "emptied out", revealed a large number of kits of parts of the Nowdong missile. The destination? Karachi.

There is then the assistance to the Pakistan Air Force. This includes supplying almost 400 F-7 fighter bombers, which are improved versions of our Mig-21s, and even total overhaul facilities for these aircraft in Pakistan. The most recent supplies of brand new F-7 aircraft was three squadrons (around 45-50 aircrafts) at the time of the outbreak of the Kargil war in 1999. (During that war a number of Chinese military specialists were in Pakistan providing military assistance). The standard Chinese F-7 apart, for over five years now, the two countries have been jointly undertaking the design and development of a vastly improved version of the F-7 called the JF7 Thunder at Chengdu in western China. The new plane's first prototype undertook its first flight trials earlier this year.

To come to the Navy, China has supplied several frigates and even one or two destroyers to Pakistan. More seriously, a joint team has been building a huge naval base in Gwadar on the Arabian coast of Pakistan not far from the Iranian border. Provision has been specifically made in the design and facility provisions of that base to enable Chinese naval surface vessels and submarines to be based and even repaired there. This gives China superb access to the whole of the Arabian Sea and even to come to the aid of Pakistan in any naval war with us. Chinese technical and industrial assistance to the Pakistani army also has been extensive, in particular in the development and production of the Khalid Main Battle Tank. Supplies of army-related hardware of many kinds continues apace all the time.

China has also entered into broad-based military cooperation with Myanmar (Burma) to our east. It has not only made large supplies of a whole range of conventional weapons to the Myanmar military, but built a string of naval bases on the Myanmari coast. China has also obtained a long-term lease from the Myanmar government to use the Cocos island (barely 100 km from the northern tip of the Andaman Islands) and converted it into an electronic eavesdropping and intelligence gathering post and built a missile tracking radar station there directed at us. From Cocos, China collects invaluable data on all our missile tests from the Interim Test Range of the Defense R&D Organisation at Chandipur on the Orissa coast and of the launches of the satellite launch vehicles of the ISRO from the large launch station on Sriharikota island off the Andhra coast.

But the coup de grace perhaps is that there are nearly 200 Chinese medium-range and intermediate-range missiles and several hundred military aircraft located in a string of bases in Tibet targeted at our cities, industrial complexes, and major military installations and formations. When our government confronts the Chinese with all this information, the Chinese government blandly denies them! They even deny the high-resolution pictures taken by our satellites of all these installations in Tibet, Gwadar, Cocos and Myanmar.

All this is not to say that we should not have good relations with China diplomatically, or promote trade, even cooperation in civilian S&T, or even allow Chinese companies to invest here. However, each such project of investment or provision of contracts for setting up telecommunication systems or ports and harbours, has to be carefully evaluated and screened not just in technical and commercial terms, but also from the security angle. The challenge before our government and our nation is to be fully aware of the Chinese threat and yet do business with them with our eyes and ears fully open.

The author is a former Science Adviser to late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi