INDIA AND ASEAN DISPUTES WITH CHINA

A GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY FOR INDIA TO LEAD

Umesh Pandey

The Bangkok Post, December 24, 2012

The gathering of Asean leaders in New Delhi late last week was unprecedented in the history of India and the 10-member Southeast Asian grouping, and marks a new beginning to a relationship that could be crucial for the development of the two regions.

The heads of government were in the Indian capital to commemorate the 20th anniversary of engagement by once-introverted India with Asean. The timing and location were significant given the backdrop of rising tensions between various Asean members and China and between India and China.

The disputes in the South China Sea have been amply documented. Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia all have claims that overlap those of China, and sometimes those of each other as well.

India and China have had border issues for decades, and lately Delhi has grown extremely wary of the growing might of the world’s second largest economy. The last straw came with the issuance this year of new Chinese passports with maps showing parts of northeastern India as Chinese territory.

In this respect New Delhi was not alone, as the ambitious Chinese mapmakers also managed to anger the Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan and possibly others.

Therefore, the meeting last week took on added significance. Many heads of government held bilateral talks with the Indian leaders, and expectations are that the two sides discussed ways to increase bilateral and multilateral cooperation, apart from raising the issue of the rising power of China.

In fairness, China has seldom been the aggressor and even in the 1962 war with India, which by the way India lost, China withdrew its forces from Indian territory. But that was then — China at the time was still not rich enough to support an all-out campaign of aggression against a large neighbour, while today things are very different.

China has the world’s largest foreign-exchange reserves, estimated at $3.3 trillion. It is the darling of all investors (except perhaps the Japanese lately), and has been spending heavily on upgrading its military power over the past decade. To top this off, nationalist propaganda has been on the rise, something that was very much evident from the protests and boycotts of Japanese products over the disputed Senkaku islands, which China refers to as the Diaoyu chain.

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