Alka Acharya is the director of the Institute of Chinese Studies, Delhi. In an e-mailed interview with Aditi Phadnis, Acharya says that neither India nor China can afford to go wrong now, as a conflictual Sino-Indian relationship will fracture Asia. Edited excerpts:
How do you assess the India visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping? Where does it stand when compared to visits by previous Chinese presidents? And how does it compare to the record of Sino-Indian relations by the previous National Democratic Alliance government?
The regional and global implications of a positive and constructive India-China relationship are now self-evident. This has not only been amplified by successive leaders at the highest levels on both sides since the turn of the century, but much effort has gone into expanding and diversifying bilateral relations as also the scope of their dialogues - political, economic and strategic. Both Li Keqiang's maiden foreign visit to India last year and now Xi Jinping's visit, underscore the stakes that each side has in keeping this vital relationship stable and moving in a mutually beneficial direction. Neither can afford to go wrong on this one - a conflictual Sino-Indian relationship will fracture Asia; the prospective Asian century and the eventual transformation of the international political and economic architecture hang in balance.
While the expectation was that India would get $100 billion in investment, what materialised was just $ 20 billion. How should we view this?
It is important that we evaluate the emerging economic interactions from an economic/commercial standpoint as also costs/benefit perspective. There may be a degree of political symbolism attached to some big-ticket projects and certainly political mileage is drawn from the magnitude and scale of the proposed and actual investments. But it has to be assessed in the light of the preparatory work that must be done before the investments are actually ploughed into the identified sectors. The regulatory framework, credit lines, nature of the contracts, identification of the agencies, land-acquisition process and so on, have all to be in place. In India, additionally, political consensus on all the above issues can often be a stumbling block. Twenty billion dollars is not an insignificant amount and we need to demonstrate our capacity to absorb that - and then more - with speed and dispatch. The flow of funds will not be the stumbling block - our credibility and ability to implement the projects will be under the scanner.
All visits take place under a border dispute overhang. But this time, the perception is that things were really fraught. Is this an accurate perception? Ordinary Indians ask why, when China has resolved all its land border disputes barring with Bhutan, resolving the dispute with India is such a problem?
This will not be the first time that questions regarding the significance and impact of the boundary dispute on the relationship and the projection of this problem by the media are being questioned. There is little doubt that the official position (which includes the statements made by the Indian Army officials) regarding the inevitability of transgressions, given an undefined Line of Actual Control and the difference in the claim lines on both sides (which would naturally imply that there are two different versions and, therefore, a dispute), does not seem to make any difference to the public discourse on the matter.
The critical need of the hour is a serious and concerted effort by the governments on both sides to educate the general public about the nature of the dispute, the different claims and the need to resolve it in a spirit of "give and take". It could be instructive if the question were to be posed as to why India has not been able to persuade the Chinese to settle the boundary dispute, when other countries have been successful. Possibly, India is a rather tough nut to crack.
What are Xi's own domestic compulsions and has he demonstrated in dealings with other countries that he has the ability to think out of the box?
It has been widely written that Xi Jinping is one of the strongest leaders to have emerged in contemporary China, given the three hats that he wears - general secretary of the Communist Party of China, chairman of the Military Affairs Commission and the president of the People's Republic of China. However, it will not be accurate to overstate the case. The China of today is not the China of the Maoist era or even the Deng era. Never has the image of the monolithic authoritarian state appeared so out of sync with the realities shaping Chinese polity and society today. Market reforms have transformed the nature of Chinese society. There is the multiplication of interest groups, the increasing emergence of the complications stemming from the "growth"-oriented developmental strategy, the extreme inequalities, rising social protests, continuing pockets of poverty and environmental issues; increasingly now corruption within the party, disobedient provincial leaderships and the political demands from increasingly vocal civil society groups, including the youth. China is also poised on the brink of its fourth generation economic reforms, which will involve some serious economic restructuring. Add to that the larger challenges from unrest and violence in Tibet and Xinjiang - and you have a leader who has his fair share of domestic headaches. But he would not be a Chinese leader if he did not project a big picture and a vision for Asia.
There is certainly some very interesting and innovative thinking that has gone into the recasting of the historical silk roads, which seek to weave a comprehensive framework for engagement with Asia. India has to work out its response and position here.
The name of India' western neighbour was not taken in public but it must have come up in private. What is the current state of play in Sino-Pakistan relations, given that Xi cancelled the Pakistan leg of his visit to come to India?
There have been several indications that Pakistan as also the Af-Pak region is now part of the India-China strategic dialogue. For quite some time now - and Chinese scholars have also been writing about this - the dissonances in the Sino-Pak relationship have been evident, yet it has always amazed me that our strategic analysts have remained closed to the options that can be exploited. Our unidimensional frame of seeing the Sino-Pak alliance as only directed at India (or for that matter that China is encircling us with its "pearls"), has kept us from recognising that India has clearly emerged as a swing state in this triangular scenario. China's energy security requires access to the Arabian Sea and this has been a major aspect of its Pakistan strategy. Can we think out of the box here? Maybe give the Chinese access ourselves? But we are just not ready for such radical transformation in our thinking.
India's Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj said if Beijing wanted India to recognise a one China policy, it must endorse a one India policy, referring to stapled visas. How much of an impediment in relations today is the Tibet issue?
It certainly has an evocative touch, foregrounds the nationalist dimension and makes a great political point. There are, however, more complex dimensions and it is doubtful whether it could constitute a strong tactical or bargaining ploy. Tibet, and the ramifications from the Dalai Lama's presence in India, unquestionably constitutes the core of the strategic complexities regarding the boundary dispute. Even as the official Indian position acknowledges China's sovereignty over Tibet, a parallel could be made between the Chinese suspicions regarding Indian intentions vis-a-vis Tibet and Indian suspicions regarding the Sino-Pakistan alliance. A Sino-Indian dialogue on addressing some of the issues here could be useful - but then China is not ready for such radical thinking yet.
