Unfounded paranoia

When China's sovereignty is at issue Global Times, a Beijing newspaper, does not mince words. In September it growled that a contract between Vietnam and an Indian state-owned oil-and-gas company, ONGC, to explore in Chinese-claimed waters in the South China Sea would "push China to the limit". Yet this month India and Vietnam have reached an agreement on "energy co-operation". Global Times is incensed that this was signed just a day after Vietnam, during a visit to Beijing by the head of its communist party, Nguyen Phu Trong, had agreed with China on "ground rules" for solving maritime squabbles.

The more sober China Energy News, a publication of the Communist Party's People's Daily, has weighed in, warning India that its "energy strategy is slipping into an extremely dangerous whirlpool". Behind such fulminations lie two Chinese fears. One is that India's involvement complicates its efforts to have its way in the tangled territorial disputes in the South China Sea. The second is that India and Vietnam are seeking closer relations as part of a US-led strategy to contain China.

As Trong was in China, however, Vietnam's president, Truong Tan Sang, was in India, to pursue a "strategic partnership".

Paranoid Chinese nationalists could be forgiven for feeling ganged up on. After all, ignoring the border clashes with the former Soviet Union in 1969, these were the countries on the other side of China's two most recent wars. In both Delhi and Hanoi the experience of brief "punitive" invasion by China respectively still colours attitudes. India was humiliated by China's foray into what is now Arunachal Pradesh in 1962. Vietnam's fierce response to the Chinese invasion of 1979 has become part of national legend of perpetual resistance to Chinese domination.

Vietnam still claims the Paracel islands in the South China Sea, from which China evicted it in 1974, as well as the much-contested Spratlys to the south, where over 70 Vietnamese sailors died in clashes with China in 1988.

China's assertiveness

Vietnam welcomes India's support, just as it was buoyed last year by America's declaration, aimed at China's perceived assertiveness, of a "national interest" in freedom of navigation in the South China Sea. Of Vietnam's partners in the Association of South-East Asian Nations, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines also have partial claims in the sea. Vietnam naturally would like to present as united a front as possible against China's claims.

It is against this background that some Indian strategists see an opportunity: Vietnam could be "India's Pakistan", a loyal ally, as Pakistan is for China, that exerts indirect, debilitating pressure on its strategic rival. Harsh Pant, a professor of defence studies at King's College, London, argues that Vietnam offers India an entry-point, through which it can "penetrate China's periphery".

India also wants to push back against what it sees as Chinese provocations. Among these is the apparent Chinese stoking of the unresolved territorial disputes that led to the 1962 war. In recent years it has revived its claim to most of Arunachal Pradesh. No wonder backing Vietnamese claims in the South China Sea appeals to some Indian hawks. In July, an Indian naval ship off Vietnam ignored a radio warning, apparently from the Chinese navy, that it was entering Chinese waters.

China resents anything that smacks of efforts to thwart its rise as a global power. Talk of India's selling Vietnam the BrahMos missiles it has developed jointly with Russia is still speculative. But Chinese strategists will fret about the purpose of the regular "security dialogue" agreed on during Sang's visit. It comes as Indian press reports suggest India has decided to deploy BrahMos missiles in Arunachal, pointed at Chinese-controlled Tibet. Behind India's assertiveness and its closer ties with Vietnam, China detects America's hand.

But to see India and Vietnam as compliant partners in an American-orchestrated anti-China front is off the mark for three reasons. Both countries are fiercely independent. Neither is going to do America's bidding. Second, their relations are about far more than China. They go back centuries and have been improving for decades.

Third, both insist that they want good relations with China. And after all, Trong was in China even as Sang was in India. Hu Jintao, China's president, was reported as counselling Vietnam to "stick to using dialogue and consultations to handle properly problems in bilateral relations".