Pakistan’s trusted friend, China is seen as an irritant in India, with its latest moves upsetting New Delhi. Iftikhar Gilani reports.
When US President Barack Obama was quoted recently as telling a secret meeting in the Oval Office that “cancer is in Pakistan,” a leading Chinese strategist Li Xinguang said “Pakistan is a pearl” and his country treasures friendship with her. He said contrary to general perception; China was more dependent on Pakistan to maintain stability in its South and West dominated by Muslim communities. Pakistan has proved to be China’s closest friend and the only political and military ally to stay consistent in all weathers.
China owes its opening-up to the outside world to Pakistan. Xinguang argued that as a leader in the Islamic world, Pakistan helped connect China to the Arab countries and the rest of the Islamic world. For example, after the Urumqi riots in 2009, Pakistani government made great efforts in explaining to the rest of the Islamic world the Chinese viewpoint on the riots.
In 1971, Pakistan helped make the arrangements for Henry Kissinger’s secret visit to China and Nixon’s subsequent trip. He further stated that Pakistan’s strong defense science and technology was a guarantee to, peace in China’s frontier regions like Xinjiang and Tibet.
There will be absolutely no stability in Xinjiang and Tibet without the solid brotherhood of Pakistan. “Pakistan is at the crossroads of the legendary Silk Road between China and the West. I understand that Obama has his own agendas in Afghanistan. But I believe that any military policies and actions taking place in this region must serve the interests of the national security, national unity, social stability, economic development and regional cooperation among the three countries: Pakistan, China and Afghanistan,” he wrote.
China has been irritating India for about a year now with its unwillingness to issue normal visas to residents of the Indian state of Jammu & Kashmir (J&K). Coinciding issuing stapled visas for Kashmiir citizens, Beijing denied visa to General Jaiswal for serving in Kashmir.
Speaking on the periphery of External Affairs Minister S M Krishna’s interaction with senior editors, a senior Foreign Ministry official noted with concern “China’s role in Kashmir affairs.”
China, like the United States, the MEA sources said, had long held the position that Kashmir was a dispute between India and Pakistan and China favoured the two South Asian neighbours talking to each to find a resolution to the problem. “We try to reason it out with the Chinese,” one source said, “(We) pointed out that a part of Kashmir is illegally occupied by Pakistan, but we noticed a shift in China’s attitude and their continuing to issue stapled visas.”
Alluding to Selig Harrison’s article in The New York Times in August which said that between 7,000 to 10,000 troops of China’s People Liberation Army are stationed in the Gilgit-Baltistan area of Pakistan administered Kashmir, the source felt that Pakistan had ceded responsibility for those areas to the Chinese.
China is helping Pakistan build high-speed rail and road links in Gilgit-Baltistan that will enable Chinese merchandise to travel from Eastern China to the Gwadar, Pasni and Ormara ports – all built with Chinese help – within two days.
All these developments, the source added, had profound implications for the long-standing boundary dispute between India and China. Protracted discussions in recent years have been unable to make significant progress, let alone resolve the complicated boundary question.
However, the Indian Foreign Office source cautioned the editors present not to draw any “doomsday conclusions” about the India-China relationship from the stapled visas for Kashmir residents or the recent denial of a Chinese visa to Northern Command Commander Lieutenant General B S Jaswal. “It is not as if the India-China relationship has a frost which we have not been able to permeate,” the source noted, “and even though we have not yet built a convergence to find a settlement to the border issue, the border is tranquil and the occasional transgressions have not resulted in any military confrontation.”
The ministry of external affairs, the sources pointed out, closely monitors China’s actions in South Asia, its interactions with India’s neighbours, and indeed across the world.
China’s investments and interactions, one source added, are “high profile, but short term,” contrasting India’s “low profile, but long-term” role.
This source felt that the internal political calculus in China may likely influence recent Chinese actions.
The old Communist system is mutating, the source added, and there is insufficient clarity about the route the current political order will take, especially when President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao transfer their powers to the next generation in 2012. Apart from China’s unquestioned economic strength, the source believed it is possible that the new Chinese assertiveness could also be linked to the People’s Liberation Army’s greater say in matters of statecraft.
