Forget OBOR, China should first resolve border issue with India
China has invested a lot of time and money on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) forum. Beijing spent a considerable amount of time fulminating against India for its non-participation in the forum, both prior to the May 14-15 meeting and after.
Touted as the biggest thing to happen in human history perhaps after the industrial revolution, China could not swallow the fact that India took a categoric position to officially boycott the meeting.
India issued a rare statement saying there were issues of sovereignty attached to the flagship programme of the BRI, which was earlier named the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).
Closer to the meeting itself, Chinese embassy officials in New Delhi went around speaking of the historical connections between India and China, which had linked both nations through centuries.
There was even a suggestion from one Chinese scholar that if India objected to the name CPEC, China should drop the proposal or even rename the project.
Unfortunately, Pakistan has gone too far into the hands of the Chinese to be able to back off now. Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has staked his political career on the CPEC.
Pertinently, as a recent article in the Dawn newspaper shows, Chinese long-term plans for Pakistan make it clear that the latter is going to become a client state in the near future.
Which brings us to a more recent piece in the Chinese government-run mouth piece, Global Times, titled "India should reassess B&R from a new angle". The arguments adduced are quite ingenious but familiar and use the logic of the colonial past to send a signal that it should be possible to set aside "imposed" borders and boundaries and invest in the CPEC as though nothing has happened.
The article, written by an editor of the People’s Daily, correctly posits that India refused to attend the Beijing forum meeting “citing sovereignty concerns as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) will run through Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, a region that New Delhi believes belongs to it. Therefore, India worries the CPEC project will infringe upon its sovereignty”.
The point being made here is that there is a contradiction between colonially imposed borders and their resolution and India wanting to resolve these by international norms. So in the Chinese mind, all colonial disputes can be resolved bilaterally and without recourse to any international norms of behaviour that are in force today. And therefore it is concluded that “this conundrum shows why the original order cannot be kept and must be readjusted”.
The way forward according to the Chinese is to set these issues aside and pursue a project based on consensus as a first step to establish mutual trust. Interesting out of the box thought, one could well argue.
If this is their idea of win-win cooperation, then it would be useful to first discuss the matter, what India refers to as "meaningful dialogue" and then move forward. Whereas in the present case, the Chinese are presenting India (in fact the rest of the world) with a fait accompli!
Might one suggest as an Indian idea that China first get Pakistan to agree that they would return PoK to India and then it would make perfect sense to continue with the Belt and Road Initiative with the CPEC thrown in? But that's like trying to catch fish in urine, as inane an exercise as the Chinese arguments!
China of course, believes somewhat blithely that if India contributes to the Belt and Road Initiative it will help alleviate tensions between India and Pakistan. So be it friends, get Islamabad to give us Kulbhushan Jadhav and maybe we could consider.
Even more appalling is the suggestion in the Global Times article that “civilians in the Kashmiri area have suffered from poverty and armed conflicts for decades. A responsible government has no reason to keep these innocent civilians enduring such ordeals”.
Are we expected to believe that CPEC will uplift the lives of Kashmiris in Occupied Kashmir? If that is indeed the case, then why were there protests in Gilgit-Baltistan just prior to the Belt and Road Initiative forum?
However, if Beijing is referring to the Kashmiris in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, they better check their facts, for the Indian state has one of the highest development indices in the country. Come on, if “development is the solution to various issues” then why is Xinjiang on fire? Not only that; look at Tibet, where self-immolations continue on a regular basis.
The Chinese position raises a fundamental question; why not have a dialogue precisely on the basis of our colonial past, or would that mean asking for too much of China? If both nations have a shared colonial past, then is it not possible to discuss the border issue on that basis? Outlandish idea the Chinese would say!
Let us remain on CPEC for a moment more for the Chinese have made it into a prestige issue. The Chinese have told Pakistan in no uncertain terms that they should be careful in selecting international partners for projects under the CPEC.
Beijing even went to the extent of telling Islamabad that they should be wary of the UK, who according to the Chinese was an "unreliable" partner. So are the Russians reliable? One can only guess. It is this kind of colonial mindset that the Chinese are asking India to shed and move towards win-win cooperation - difficult to imagine and implement one would say at a time when Pakistan is slowly becoming a colony of China.
The wheel must come a full turn now. It is time for China to work towards resolution of the border dispute with India by first clarifying the Line of Actual Control. That must be the first step towards building mutual trust. If Beijing is agreeable to this step then New Delhi would be willing to work towards this measure. This would be real win-win cooperation, not India participating in the Belt and Road Initiative.