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NEIGHBOURS:
CHINA
Trade
Against Terror
INDIA
TODAY Assistant Editor Ashok Malik spent
14 days in a China so sold on the free market that it is even using it
to neutralise Xinjiang's Islamic insurgency
Running
283 km from Dahuangshan coalmine to the city of Turfan is a six-lane expressway
that has, even in the three years it has been around, become crucial to
Xinkiang, the massive western province that occupies one-sixth of China's
land mass. About a third of the route from Dahuangshan, the highway meets
the local capital of Urumqi and begins a breathtaking journey up the foothills
of the Tianshen (Celestial Mountains). This vindicates the pride the Chinese
feel, at any rate should feel, for this $150 million marvel.
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Turfan's
Imin minaret (left) and Urumqi's interplay of the old and new
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It is also
a journey that makes at least this Indian want to cry. How many highways
back home, after all, will allow one to travel 200 km - the Urumqi-Turfan
distance - in just under two hours. Urumqi, it must be emphasised, is
scarcely one of China's leading cities. In a ranking of urban centres,
it would qualify as China's Patna or Guwahati, if not lower.
Only 70-odd
years ago Urumqi's "sordid streets" led to two European missionaries
labelling it a place "no one enjoys life in ... full of people who
are only there because they cannot get permission to leave". Today,
this imagery has given way to a skyscraper-laden downtown Mumbai would
be envious of, a locale where Isuzu and Daewoo plants fight for attention
with De Beers and Yves Saint Laurent stores.
Economics
of History
If the sheer
swank of China's 20 years of economic growth is a humbling experience,
the sense of history is even more overwhelming. Xinjiang, after all, is
Silk Route country, home to a sort of ancient WTO that as early as 2,000
years ago carried silk and much else from the very heart of China to the
Mediterranean coast, to ships waiting to sail for Rome.
Yarkand,
Kashgar, Khotan, Aksu, Yili, and, the most compelling of all, the horrific
desert of Taklamakan (it means "go in and you won't come out"
in Turki)-Xinjiang has more evocative place names per square mile than
almost any other province in the world. India's principal contribution
to this civilisation's oases-cities was culture: Buddhism, Hinduism, Kharoshti,
Sanskrit all thrived here. Sir Aurel Stein, the archaeologist, called
the region Serindia, Seres being an old word for China.
In more
recent centuries, Xinjiang fell within the sphere of three competing influences-"empires",
if you prefer-India, Russia and China. It was a playground for the Great
Game.
Great
Game Replayed
Today, the
New Great Game is afoot. The prize is not access to the passes leading
to India; it is border trade and, more important, boundless founts of
natural gas and petroleum. Of the three old contestants, the latecomer,
China, seems set to walk away with the prize.
It's not
just a diplomatic triumph it could score though. In Xinjiang, China hopes
to defeat its own in-house insurgency, the Uyghur Muslim "splittists",
with the market and free trade. The highways of Urumchi and Turfan will
be its New Silk Route.
With 5,400
km of international frontier, Xinjiang - or the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous
Region to give it its official name - is China's most porous zone. It
shares borders with Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan,
Afghanistan, India, Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir and Tibet.
In the early
1990s, the separatist impulses of the Uyghurs - a Muslim people of Turk
ethnicity - manifested themselves as terrorism. Backed by newly free Central
Asian neighbours and groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the violence
took Beijing by surprise. Forty years of demographic transition did help
though. The state-encouraged westward movement of Han Chinese has now
given them a 40 per cent share of Xinjiang's 17 million population. The
Uyghurs, at 48 per cent, are still ahead.
Pipelines
of Peace
Beijing's
attempt to neutralise its variant of the Kashmir problem was three-phased.
First came the brutal military tactics. The militancy's back was more
or less broken, diplomats in Beijing say, by 1998. Western intelligence
agencies suggest half a million People's Liberation Army troops, including
a special division called Xinjiang Construction Brigade, quelled the rebels.
On his part Ablet Adudureshit, governor of Xinjiang-the governor is always
an Uyghur and the real power centre, the local Communist Party secretary,
is always a Han-refuses to name numbers. "Maybe there is no need
for you to know," he says, not forgetting to smile.
Phase two
required frenetic diplomacy. Pakistan was spoken to. Outlaw regimes were
tapped. As Vice-Foreign Minister Wang Yi admits, "We are in contact
with many factions in Afghanistan, including the Taliban." The Shanghai
Five, a group that includes Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan
was set up to monitor religious fundamentalism.
The final
weapon was trade. China offered its neighbours a deal: our consumer goods
for your energy resources. Ancient border posts were reopened. Today,
of Xinjiang's $1.3 billion exports, half are to neighbouring countries.
The second
largest oil company in Kazakhstan is Chinese-owned, as are the best shopping
malls. A 4,167 km gas pipeline will take Kazakh gas to Shanghai, on China's
eastern edge. The 48-hour Almaty-Urumqi train runs two times a week, ferrying
oil. Soon a rail network will connect Shanghai to Amsterdam.
By giving
them a stake in stability, China holds its neighbours are unlikely to
ever back Uyghur terrorism. Domestically, it hopes benefits will trickle
down to the rural areas, where most Uyghurs stay and where per capita
income, at 1,500 yuan ($187.5), is just under a fifth of the national
figure.
So, as part
of its Western Development Campaign, Beijing is pumping in $50 billion
to develop Xinjiang's infrastructure over 10 years. The province's energy
reserves-30 billion tonnes of oil and 10.3 trillion cubic metres of gas-are
being thrown open to MNCs. Jokes a local: "Almost every American
I meet in Urumqi is a geologist."
Trade
as Foreign Policy
With the
exception of Russia, everybody in the Shanghai Five is into the New Silk
Route. Agrees an academic in Beijing: "Trade is now one of the main
components of China's foreign policy. Leave the border disputes to the
next generation."
That really
is the lesson for India, whose bilateral trade with China is valued at
an abysmal $2 billion. With a by-road leading to Srinagar and then Gujarat,
India had only a peripheral presence on the old Silk Route. Today's geo-economics,
and China's success story, offer it a second chance. In the Great Gameshow
of nations, after all, there may be no third lifeline.
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In
India, youth is marked by impetuosity and prevented from getting ahead.
Elsewhere, of course, the young rule the world, says INDIA TODAY Deputy
Editor Swapan Dasgupta in 
