Superpower rivalry, Sino-Indian style

The idea of China's "peaceful rise" has always represented the triumph of imagination over reality. But over the last several months, Beijing has done enough to shatter every hope of peace in Asia.

It began with an unprecedented attempt by Beijing in March this year to block a $2.9 billion (Dh10.64 billion) Asian Development Bank loan to India on the grounds that some of the cash was intended for use in the eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, a region China claims as its own.

This was followed by a gratuitous broadside against India in the People's Daily, the Communist party's mouthpiece.

Military incursions into India by Chinese forces were backed up by Beijing's diplomatic assault on India's territorial integrity and pluralistic nationalism: the Chinese embassy in New Delhi began issuing irregular visas to Kashmiri Indians in an effort to legitimise separatism. And recently, Beijing officially condemned prime minister Manmohan Singh's visit to Arunachal Pradesh.

Officially, India maintains that it is on good terms with Beijing. On Saturday, Dr Singh also met with his Chinese counterpart, Wen Jiabao, on the sidelines of the Asean summit in Thailand.

But using a combination of aid and ammunition, Beijing has drawn a hostile circle of influence around India: beginning in Pakistan (to which Beijing supplied nuclear technology) in the north-west, it runs through Nepal (to which it exported Maoism) and Myanmar (where it shields a dictatorship) in the east, ending in Sri Lanka (where it armed the state) in the south.

Two reasons account for China's obsession with India. The first is historical: China came on to the world stage on India's back. India not only became the second non-communist country in the world to bestow recognition on Mao's state; it was also, in Nehru's words, the most passionate pleader of China's "cause in the councils of the world".

When President Dwight Eisenhower offered India the UN security council seat held by Taiwan, Nehru, ever the idealist, turned it down, urging the US to offer it to China instead.

Inconvenient competition

But soon, Beijing developed the arriviste's disdain for its most forceful supporter. New Delhi's decision to grant asylum to the Dalai Lama in defiance of Beijing's bullying confirmed India as a contender. China initiated a surprise multi-pronged attack on India in 1962, occupying a substantial portion of contested territory on the Tibetan plateau.

Beijing retreated just as American jumbo jets, flown to aid India's assault, began landing in West Bengal. Today, Beijing actively aligns itself with India where its interests are involved on climate change, for instance but on a bilateral level, it views India as inconvenient competition.

The second reason goes to the heart of China's current condition. Western observers of Beijing, enraptured by the glitz of China, have long stopped examining the decay of the party that runs it. Many in the west still argue that China's economic prosperity is a precursor to political freedom for its people.

But this theory, as Minxin Pei has argued, ignores the important fact that an authoritarian state is less likely to loosen its grip on a wealthy country than it would be to forego the control of an impoverished one.

Chinese nationalism is a genie that serves the state. With such a fragile hold on the country, the Communist party has to invoke monsters in order to rally support. Japan has been the traditional target, but today's India vexes Beijing even more. If India can guarantee fundamental rights to its diverse citizens while managing a growth rate not far from China's and more than make up for the low numbers with a free press, regular elections and independent institutions why, someone is bound to ask, can China not do the same?

New Delhi must now discard the myth of China's invincibility that has led it into appeasement, and devise a definitive China policy featuring at least three elements.

First, India should continue fortifying its side of the border with China by upgrading infrastructure, deploying troops, setting up air bases; New Delhi must yield to the overwhelming patriotic sentiment in Arunachal Pradesh and allow the formation of a local military regiment.

Second, India must deepen its engagement with Australia and Japan, broaden its military exercises with the US, and build active alliances with south-east Asian countries wary of China.

Finally, India must allow the ‘Dalai clique' to engage in political activity. It makes no sense for New Delhi to suppress Tibetan protesters in order to mollify an expansionist power that has sponsored anti-India insurgencies for at least 50 years. Tibet's restive population is a time bomb whose detonator, the Dalai Lama, is with India. New Delhi must stop gagging him.

The Sino-Indian conflict will define the 21st century in a more complicated manner than the Soviet-American conflict characterised the second half of the 20th.

So far, this clash has received very little attention in the west. In the not-too-distant future, people everywhere are going to have to pick sides. The troubled peace of today is necessarily a prelude to the impending war.

Kapil Komireddi is a freelance writer who writes principally about foreign affairs, particularly Indian foreign policy.