Diplomacy: Sino-Indian Ties: The Big Sulk

China has signalled a reluctant willingness to normalise ties but relations with India remain frosty.

Peaceful Frontiers: the dipomatic chill has not affected the sceduleof border meetings Indian and Chinese military officers.

The story of India's battle against a hostile world reaction to the Pokhran II nuclear tests has so far been running according to the script but for one major departure. Instead of the Americans and the Europeans, two east Asian giants -- China and Japan -- have emerged as the most trenchant critics of India's tests. Even as an Indian detente with its western interlocutors -- the US, UK and France -- moves apace, the wind from east Asia continues to be chilly. Besides leading the UN Security Council attack on India, unleashing an enormous volume of hostile rhetoric, Beijing refused to give dates for the 1998 Joint Working Group (JWG) meeting to resolve the long-standing border dispute. But of late there have been some signals of a shift.

WHY THE CHILL?
The issues that keep them apart are ones that compelled India to conduct tests:

CHINESE STAND

ťIndia must explain its actions unite the knot it has created.

ťIndian nuclear tests are a danger to peace in the region.

ťIndia should stop its nuclear weapons programmes, cease development of ballistic missiles and sign the NPT and CTBT unconditionally.

INDIAN RESPONSE

ťWe owe no explanation, it takes two hands to unite a knot.
ťThis was the least we had to do after Chinese aid to Pakistan.
ťThe shape and size of India's deterrent will be its sovereign decision. There is no question of signing the NPT. Signing the CTBT depends on reciprocal actions.

Last month India took the initiative to send a delegation to Beijing under a 1997 agreement to have annual Foreign Ministry consultations. The three sessions, spanning nearly 12 hours, were not an easy experience. According to Indian officials, the Chinese side appeared to be deliberately difficult. At the end of the talks, a senior Chinese official first declared that the two sides had not achieved much, but later without explanation reversed the stand and said that the sessions had indeed been a success. In response, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesman declared that the approach of both sides had been "positive and forward looking". As a result Indian officials now say that the annual JWG talks, last held in August 1997, are likely to be held soon, "probably before the end of the current session of Parliament". This in turn could set the stage for an exchange of high-level visits, possibly by External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh or his Chinese counterpart Tang Jiaxuan.

Singh says that the official meeting between the two countries that took place in Beijing on February 26-27 should be seen in the context of last year's words and deeds. "Look at it in terms of their starting position," he notes, recalling his own meeting with Tang in Manila last year as well as the exchange of letters that took place after Singh was appointed external affairs minister in December 1998.

The Chinese shift is being seen as a result of India's ability to successfully engage its western interlocutors. "India is yet to conclude its negotiations with the US," says the MEA official. "But the positive atmosphere evident in the last round of the Singh-Strobe Talbott talks have caused rethinking in Beijing." To cap this, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's successful bus journey to Lahore may have added to China's decision to declare the Beijing consultations a "modest success".

But the Chinese position has been so hostile that Indian officials are cautious in accepting that a fundamental change has taken place in their point of view. In January, shortly before the Talbott visit, a top Chinese expert, Sha Zhukang, speaking to an audience in Washington advised the US not to engage itself in discussions with India on what constituted a minimal nuclear deterrence and to stand by the tough Security Council resolution 1172 which demands complete nuclear and missile disarmament from India and Pakistan.

Formally, the Chinese remain committed to the most extreme demands from India. In addition to calling for a signature on the CTBT, it wants India to sign the NPT, which even the Americans are not pressing for at this juncture. "The Chinese appear to be even greater votaries of non-proliferation than the Americans," says an amused Indian official. "They clearly want to divert attention from their own culpability in the developments in South Asia."

Chinese officials and some Indian critics of the Indian Government say the hostile Chinese reaction was a result of Defence Minister George Fernandes' utterances declaring China to be a threat and the ill-considered reference to China in a letter written by Vajpayee to President Bill Clinton on the day of the Pokhran II test. But MEA officials say this does not cut much ice with them since the Chinese reaction to the 1974 Pokhran I test was equally hostile. India then was accused of seeking hegemony, of blackmailing its neighbours and sparking off an arms race.

Some Indian analysts believe that the seemingly inflexible Chinese position has a pragmatic goal of delaying India's nuclear deployment. "The Chinese know that minus Agni, India does not have a means of delivering nuclear weapons to Chinese targets," says one official. "With the extended-range Agni still in the development stage, the Chinese are calculating that they could still prevent an Indian nuclear force's deployment."

If that is the case, continues a senior government official, the Chinese have not grasped the depth of Indian feelings arising out of the aid Beijing gave to Pakistan to make nuclear weapons and the missiles that target India. "The Chinese must accept that there is an Indian point of view on this which they cannot dismiss offhand and must deal with meaningfully," he says.

The Chinese have till now shied away from discussions on this subject. In a speech at a Delhi seminar two weeks ago, Chinese Ambassador Zhou Gang reiterated the official line that the Chinese had not been involved in the Pakistani nuclear and missile programmes. But he claimed that Beijing had made some "readjustments" in its foreign policy in the light of "some concerns" expressed by India. In the recent talks in Beijing, while the Chinese officials claimed that the subject was discussed, it was only touched upon in a tangential fashion. "Till there is a more direct discussion on the subject," says an Indian official, "there is unlikely to be any kind of normalisation."

There's a curious irony in furthering non-proliferation in the subcontinent. Back in east Asia, the Chinese have warned Japanese officials against developing a theatre missile defence system. The Chinese fear such a system built with US help could degrade their own missile-based deterrent.

Formally, Beijing and the other P-5 countries swear by 1172. But the pragmatic Europeans and Americans are clear on what is attainable and what is not. If it persists in its anti-India posture, China risks being left out in the cold as normalisation between the others and India proceeds apace. The visibly apparent bonhomie between Talbott and Singh is now being buttressed by a visit by the British deputy prime minister to Delhi . Relations with the other two declared nuclear powers -- France and Russia -- remained largely unaffected by Pokhran II even though they are party to the UN resolution. With the first anniversary of the Pokhran II blasts a little over two months away, both India and its global critics will be counting their gains and losses. But one thing is certain, no matter how strongly the big powers and China may strive to wish it away, the Indian nuclear deterrent is here to stay.