Dealing with the dragon

(Before somebody decides to sue me...the facts and figures given here might not be entirely true and I might have got some of them wrong; however, these are my personal views and nothing more.)

I was deeply shocked by the statement that the Chinese government had issued in response to our Prime Minister’s visit to Arunachal Pradesh. They seem to be deeply disturbed by the fact that a senior government official is visiting an area which they claim is theirs. They call it ‘disputed area’.

Arunachal Pradesh has always been an integral part of India. The turnout of 71% during the elections emphasizes the fact that the people living there think so too. China has no business there. They already seem to have some parts of Kashmir, some after Indo-China war and some were apparently gifted by Pakistan. How can somebody gift anything to someone which does not actually belong to them is beyond my comprehension, but for now I am not going to get into the Kashmir issue.

Our skirmishes with China have not been very successful. In fact we have never won a war with China. The key reason to why we lost the 1st war is generally attributed to our lack of readiness and sophistication to fight at such altitudes. Even today, China is far more superior to India militarily both in terms of quantity and quality. Our chief Air Marshal had openly stated that the capability of the Indian Air Force is far less compared to their Chinese counterparts. The Chinese are not only formidable in terms of their military but also made themselves a force to recon with in the world’s economic affairs. They are the holders of the highest amount of US dollars as ForEx reserves. While India seems to be grappling to meet the deadlines of the Common Wealth Games, China hosted the Olympic Games and left the whole world awestruck admiring the opulence they displayed. China now seems to be aggressively encroaching into the IT outsourcing business that we Indians so closely hold to our hearts.

I browsed a little on the logic behind China’s claim on Arunachal Pradesh. During the pre colonization era, the land was primarily a part of the Tibetan kingdom and some of it was with Bhutan. However, it had strong associations with the then fragmented India. This land seems to have been mentioned even in the scriptures of Maha Bharat.
After the British colonized India and united them, Arunachal Pradesh was kept as a part of India. China considers Tibet a part of their country. So as Arunachal Pradesh was pre historically a part to Tibet they do not honor the British boundaries drawn between India and China. China and India went to war over this land briefly during which China had taken over our state, but after negotiations China ceded most part of the occupied land back to India.

Recently I had read this article about the views of a man considered a Chinese Think Tank. He proposed that China should instigate religious violence between Indians and create political instability by funding naxalites and other political extremists to destabilize and fragment the country so as to establish Chinese dominance over India.

China has strong political and economic ties with Pakistan. Now they are expanding their sphere of influence to Srilanka. Most of the weapons Srilanka used to flush out the LTTE were procured from China. Even if China were to make a dramatic move like what the US did when it declared war against Iraq claiming they had WMD, I don’t think the international bodies can do much apart from churning out verbal and written statements deploring the act.

What is happening here is that we Indians are at the brink of being taken over by a nation which is both militarily and economically stronger than us. What can we do to stop this?

The only way I see out of this is ‘If you can’t beat them, join them’. i.e., collaborate instead of compete. We’ll need to increase our diplomatic and political ties with China. Commerce between the two countries needs to increase dramatically. We need to gel ourselves with China such that we are seen as a joint force, however we should maintain our identity as Indians and not allow ourselves to be overshadowed. By becoming a dominant and indispensable political and commercial ally of China, they will not want to destabilize India as it would hurt their own interest. India can also reap rich dividends by getting exclusive entry into the Chinese markets.