Stars and Stripes
Seth Robson
September 24, 2015
Economic, diplomatic moves eyed closely by giant neighbour
A Chinese military plane taxis near a U.S. Air Force jet in Kathmandu during May earthquake-relief operations in Nepal.
SETH ROBSON/STARS AND STRIPES
While flexing its military muscle to the east and the south, China is pursuing a softer approach toward its western neighbors, using humanitarian aid and investments to expand its influence and to pursue natural resources.
In time, that strategy could raise tensions with Asia’s other giant, India.
Since 2013, China has been pushing ahead with a raft of ambitious infrastructure projects known as the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road. A $1 billion hydropower plant in Pakistan will be the first major project paid for by China’s new $40 billion Silk Road Fund. Eventually, China hopes to build a 1,860-mile economic belt and trade corridor linking China’s Xinjiang Uighur autonomous region to the Arabian Sea, according to Britain’s Telegraph newspaper.
The Chinese economic and diplomatic moves — which included a large and very visible aid effort after Nepal was devastated by a magnitude-7.8 earthquake earlier this year — are being watched closely in India.
The rivalry between China and India — the world’s most populous countries, with more than 1 billion people each — hasn’t resulted in armed conflict since a brief border war in 1962. That could change as their needs intensify.
China, for instance, is trying to develop a deep-water port in Bangladesh — a largely Muslim nation that borders India to the east — and it recently negotiated an agreement to manage the Pakistani port at Gwadar, according to Alysa Ayers, a former India hand at the State Department during the Obama administration and now a research fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
India was also deeply concerned when People’s Liberation Army navy submarines started making port calls in Sri Lanka last year. The port calls followed several years of investment by China in roads, ports, roads and railroads in the island nation that also has close economic and historical ties with India, Ayers said.
For its part, India imports about one-fifth of its oil and gas from the Middle East. Like China, as its economy grows, it’s searching for alternative energy sources, including renewable energy, and is growing its nuclear industry with U.S. help. However, most of its neighbors are not energy-rich, Ayers said.
“India definitely has energy issues,” she said.
Bangladesh, which resolved a long-standing border dispute with India in June, has oil and gas but has not sought to export it. Bangladesh, due to its role in garment manufacturing, has a stronger relationship with China, she said.
Nepal, with its vast hydropower resources, could be part of the energy solution for its power-hungry neighbor.
“For decades, Nepal has been regarded as having immense hydro(electric) power that is untapped,” she said. “Nepalese officials are interested in replicating what Bhutan (another Indian neighbor) has done — developing hydropower that they can sell to India.”
The submarine port calls that took place last fall in Sri Lanka alarmed the Indians, Ayers said.
“India is concerned if this crosses the line from economic development to some kind of military presence,” she said.
Both countries have nuclear weapons and growing militaries.
Some have characterized India as a largely pacifist nation following the path of nonviolence set by independence leader Mahatma Gandhi. But that image doesn’t fit well with the increasingly jingoistic tone of some Indians today.
In retaliation for an ambush of Indian soldiers by separatists, Indian special forces destroyed two rebel camps in July after pushing several miles into Myanmar. While the raid happened with Myanmar’s permission, one junior Indian minister announced that India had sent “a message for all countries, including Pakistan.”
Indian Defense Minister Manohar Parrikar suggested the operation “has changed the national security scenario,” Foreign Affairs magazine reported.
Chinese officials have said their military budget will increase 10 percent this year, with defense analysts at IHS Jane’s estimating Chinese annual military spending at $148 billion in 2014. In February, India increased its defense budget by 11 percent to $40 billion and approved the building of six nuclear-powered submarines.
Additionally, China and India are both building aircraft carriers. India, which already operates two foreign-built carriers, plans to build two new ones while China, which in 2012 launched its first carrier — a refitted Soviet ship now known as the Liaoning — is planning to build more.
While the United States has sided with other countries that have territorial disputes with China in the East and South China seas, it hasn’t waded too far into the dispute between Beijing and New Delhi, and experts see little incentive for it to do so.
“People in Washington are watching this, but they are powerfully seized with the notion that we have to be smart and choose sites to engage in competition on terrain which is favorable to us,” said Robert M. Hathaway, a public policy fellow associated with the Asia Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center.
The U.S. does maintain a potent military capability in the Indian Ocean from its base on the island of Diego Garcia, but it’s far less prominent than U.S. forces in the Far East.
Some in the region believe that America and its European allies have adopted a policy of noninterference when it comes to India’s relations with its neighbors.
India, which has armed its military with a large arsenal of Russian-made weapons, is a member of the nonaligned bloc, which was often at odds with America during the Cold War. However, in the past 20 years, U.S. and Indian leaders have realized that their national interests, if not necessarily aligned, run on parallel tracks in most cases, Hathaway said.
“It behooves them to find ways to work together when they can,” he said.
