Keeping the Dragon at Bay: India's Counter-Containment of China in Asia

[josh21x]

Keeping the Dragon at Bay: India's Counter-Containment of China in Asia
Author: Iskander Rehman (Show Biography)
DOI: 10.1080/14799850902885114
Publication Frequency: 3 issues per year
Published in: Asian Security, Volume 5, Issue 2 May 2009 , pages 114 - 143
Abstract
Ever since their emergence as modern states in the middle of the twentieth century, relations between India and China have been exceedingly complex in nature and, for the most part, fraught with tension. This article reviews aspects of the Sino-Indian relationship over the past decade from a realist perspective, showing that despite surface improvements, bilateral ties are still marred by strong feelings of mistrust. It is argued that China has engaged in a policy of containment of India, challenging its regional pre-eminence in South Asia and stymieing its neighbor's emergence as a major world power. A careful study of India's newly assertive foreign policy, both in Asia and beyond, reveals that New Delhi has chosen to back its policy of engagement of Beijing with a form of counter-containment.

Introduction
In December 2004, a report from America's National Intelligence Council argued that the rise of both India and China could be compared to the uniting of Germany in the nineteenth century and the advent of a powerful United States in the early twentieth century, with a similar potential to “transform the geopolitical landscape with impacts potentially as dramatic as those in the previous two centuries.”1 In this context, the comprehension of Sino-Indian relations has acquired new meaning. This is no easy task, however, as India's relations with China have been exceedingly complex over the past half-century, its attitude towards its neighbor veering from the passionately emotional to the coldly pragmatic.
This article will review aspects of the Sino-Indian relationship over the past ten years, showing that despite surface improvements, bilateral ties are still marred by strong feelings of mistrust. I will argue that China has engaged in a policy of containment of India,2 challenging its regional preeminence in South Asia, and actively seeking to check its neighbor's emergence as a major world power. Through a careful study of India's newly assertive foreign policy, both in Asia and beyond, I conclude that New Delhi has chosen to back its policy of engagement of Beijing with a form of counter-containment.
Analyzing Sino-Indian Relations: Taking a Realist Approach

Sino-Indian relations have undergone significant improvements over the past decade. The volatile atmosphere which had permeated Sino-Indian relations during the Cold War years and briefly in 1998 after the Pokhran II series of nuclear tests has now subsided and been replaced by a renewed emphasis on normalization, and in some cases, replaced by cooperation. This article, however, will show that, despite the upsurge in Sino-Indian trade and institutionalization, both states' relations are characterized by strong undercurrents of mistrust. It will be argued that in such an atmosphere of uncertainty and mutual suspicion, liberal theories on the effects of economic interdependence and institutionalization do not provide the best framework for analysis of Sino-Indian relations.
This article progressively develops its argumentation, through four main sections. First, it will determine that the realist school of thought in IR provides the best “blueprint” for the analysis of contemporary Sino-Indian relations. It will then examine China's attempts to curtail India's rise as a competitor in Asia, before detailing at length what can best be described as India's “counter-containment” strategy. In a fourth and final part, realist theory will once again be called upon in order to establish a 'prognosis' of the current state of India/China relations.
The Inapplicability of the Economic Interdependence Theory

India and China have made some substantial headway in the field of trade, which now accounts for more than $40 billion of trade per annum, and China has replaced the US as India's number one trading partner. Liberal international relations scholarship would posit that these now substantial economic ties are a sure sign of improvement in Sino-Indian relations. Indeed, proponents of the liberal economic interdependence theory argue that two states linked by strong bilateral trade will prefer to stay at peace rather than resort to conflict so as to guarantee the perenniality of their commercial ties.3 The idea of trade being conducive to peace is an old one and can be traced back to the writings of French philosopher Montesquieu,4 or to the works of great English thinkers such as John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham. The foremost modern liberal theorists view the gradual erosion of “high politics,” such as formal state-to-state diplomacy in favor of “low politics” such as trade as a phenomenon emblematic of the postmodern world, caught in a web of complex interdependence, where conventional representations of state power have lost much of their former relevance.5 In the case of India and China, however, a direct application of the economic interdependence theory seems doomed to failure on several counts.
First of all, the very notion of “interdependence” does not accurately convey the nature of both countries' trade relationship, which remains highly unequal. Secondly, both states' trade expectations are marked by uncertainty, and the growth in trade has not led to a concomitant lowering of military expenditures.
An Unequal Economic Partnership

The two countries are not mutually dependent. China may have replaced the US as India's number one trading partner, but India is a secondary source of commerce for China when compared with the United States, Taiwan or Japan. Moreover, the trade relationship is profoundly unbalanced and increasingly a source of anxiety in the Indian business community. This is due to India's soaring trade deficit with China, which amounted to more than 10 billion dollars in 2008. Indian exports to China are limited in their variety, consisting mostly of vast quantities of iron ore. The Chinese, on the other hand, have swamped the Indian market with manufactured goods. This is a sign of inequality in the bilateral trade relationship.6 Whereas liberals believe that economic ties can dampen the desire for war, realists consider economic interdependence to be a sign of mutual dependence, and thus vulnerability, which can act as a source of antagonism. A realist reappraisal of Sino-Indian trade patterns would therefore lead to a wholly different conclusion. India's economic weakness vis- -vis China may actually spark conflict rather than dampen it.
Uncertain Trade Expectations

Scholars such as Dale C. Copeland, have attempted to go beyond the liberal/realist dispute regarding economic interdependence, by integrating an additional causal variable, that of trade expectations.7
The theory of trade expectations combines both the liberal view that economic ties give states an incentive to cooperate, and the realist assumption that the fear of trade routes being cut off can lead to preemptive acts of military aggression. High interdependence can therefore lead to either peace or conflict, depending on the states' expectations of future trade.8 Both India and China have high levels of dependence on foreign investments, and in both countries domestic sources of raw materials cannot keep pace with their roaring economies. China, in particular, depends on the security of sea lanes such as the Malacca straits in order to cater to its ever-growing energy needs. As it continues to expand its naval presence in Asia, Beijing could provoke India to armed conflict by venturing further into its maritime area of influence, whether it is in the Bay of Bengal or the Andaman Sea.
A Simultaneous Rise in Trade and Military Expenditures

One of the main tenets of the liberal economic interdependence theory is that an increase in trade will automatically lead to a concomitant reduction in military expenditures.9 Both China and India's military budgets have grown exponentially in the past few years, and despite several memorandums of understanding pledging to reduce troops along the border, both states have been stealthily upgrading the infrastructure of their frontier outposts.
Belief in the liberal economic interdependence theory implies that one views both the political and economic aspects of a relationship as being obligatorily interrelated. Experience would indicate however, especially in the case of China, that political strains and vibrant commerce are not incompatible. China's trade with Japan or Taiwan has continued to flourish over the past few years, despite the often volatile nature of its relations with both “trade partners.”
Institutionalization as a Source of Cooperation, but also of Competition

Liberal thought in International Relations considers that active participation in regional or global organizations and/or institutions is indicative of a desire to forgo traditional power politics and conflict in order to engage in interstate cooperation. This is due to the fact that joining such an institution is more rewarding, both economically and politically, than remaining in isolation.
The flurry of Sino-Indian activity in regional fora over the past decade has undoubtedly provided both states with greater opportunities for dialogue and cooperation. This article will reveal how it has also, unfortunately, given rise to competition, with both countries sparring for influence and prestige in institutional arenas. Both states' approach to institutionalism seems to validate certain realist critiques of liberalism, the latter tending to view states as atomistic, and interested in “absolute gains,” rather than positional and preoccupied with “relative gains.”10
Surface Improvements, but Deep-Rooted Conflicts

In reality, Sino-Indian engagement over the past few years has given birth to little more than surface improvements. There is another facet of their relations, seldom evoked by either country's officials, a subterranean level of policymaking where hyperrealist concepts that some Western scholars may now view as archaic, such as sovereignty, deterrence, containment and the balancing of power through buffer states, reveal their enduring significance. The border dispute, for example, has yet to be resolved, and occasionally heated rhetoric is heard from officials of both countries. On the very eve of Hu Jintao's visit to India in December 2006, a Chinese diplomat stated that the entirety of the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh belonged to China,11 and some reports by the Indian military claim that Chinese border incursions have rarely been as numerous or as brazen.12
Sino-Indian relations are thus still ****e to conflict, despite all efforts at normalization. This article explains the reasons for the underlying tensions, and then analyzes India's strategy when confronted with what it views as Chinese attempts to curtail its rise to great power status.
The Persistence of Conflict with a China that Seeks to Hinder India's Rise: Sino-Pakistani Relations

The PRC's continued military and economic assistance to Pakistan, India's main rival in South Asia, remains a major irritant in Sino-Indian relations and is perhaps the one single issue which aggravates India the most in its dealings with China. China has attempted to assuage somewhat India's fears of a Sino-Pakistani nexus by “rebalancing” its discourse on South Asian policy, refusing to openly support Pakistan's claims over Kashmir and remaining silent during the Kargil Conflict. There are also signs of Chinese weariness with Pakistan's reticence and/or inefficiency when dealing with Uighur separatists. These developments however, though significant, do not represent a real threat to Sino-Pakistani relations. The “Sino-Pakistani Entente Cordiale,”13 as John Garver calls it, has proved itself remarkably resilient over the years. Despite improving relations with India, China has not been less warm towards Pakistan; if anything their ties have grown stronger.
Beijing has proven itself to be the most reliable economic partner and arms supplier to Islamabad over the years, providing it with military equipment and economic aid when no one else would; after the 1965 war, when the US cut off its military aid, or in the late 1990s, when Pakistan was isolated for various reasons (for its nuclear proliferation, the anti-democratic coup d' tat in 1999 and its support of the Taliban regime in neighboring Afghanistan).14 China actively assisted Pakistan with its nuclear program from the late 1980s onwards, and has provided it with ready-to-launch M-9, M-11 and Dong Feng 21 ballistic missiles, thus helping it bridge its military capability gap with its Indian rival.
All three of Pakistan's first nuclear plants, in Kahuta, Chasma and Khushab, were built by the Chinese. China has not only supplied Islamabad with nuclear and missile components, it has given it the technology to allow it to indigenize these weapon systems, and thus become completely self-sufficient. Some analysts, such as J. Mohan Malik, claim that the provision of the nuclear and missile shields to Pakistan have emboldened it to wage its “proxy wars” in Kashmir, or to engage in reckless actions against India, such as during the Kargil Crisis, with little fear of retaliation.15
China's shoring up of Pakistan's military defenses is the only reason Pakistan can stand up to India and prevent it from reigning supreme over the subcontinent. As the same J. Mohan Malik so aptly puts it, “For India, Pakistan is not and cannot be a threat without China's support just as Taiwan cannot constitute a threat to China without America's support.”16 China's strategy is to divert India's attention from East Asia and to prevent it from reaching out beyond South Asia, by keeping it focused on the western front, and by using Pakistan as a form of “proxy deterrent” against India in its own backyard.
Beijing's military assistance to Pakistan was one of the main arguments put forward by the BJP government to justify the 1998 nuclear tests. Taking note of the virulence in tone, Chinese officials have ever since carefully downplayed Sino-Pakistani relations in front of their Indian counterparts, piously declaring that they are nothing more than “usual state to state relations.”
India is aware though that this is far from the case. In November 2005, during a three-day state visit to China, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf ecstatically proclaimed that the Sino-Pakistani relationship was “deeper than the oceans and higher than the mountains.”17 His enthusiasm was in part justified; China has continued to provide considerable military and economic assistance to Pakistan well after 1998. Although the PRC firmly condemned the December 2001 terrorist attacks against India's Parliament, it also helped Pakistan bolster its defenses during the tense build-up with India in 2002, dispatching two dozen J-7 jet fighters and delivering extra nuclear and missile components.18 Both countries regularly share intelligence on India's military deployments and all branches of the Pakistani military are equipped with Chinese weaponry.
The prime sources of Chinese investment in Pakistan are to be found in the major infrastructure projects both countries are actively engaged in, the most important being the construction of a deep-sea port in Gwadar, located on the southwestern coast of Pakistan, near the Strait of Hormuz, through which pass more than 13 million barrels of oil a day. The construction of the deep-sea port is clearly part of a long-term Chinese maritime strategy to secure its energy supplies by establishing a naval presence in various major sea lanes and maritime “chokepoints.” China's presence in Gwadar will give it access to a key trade route and to the Persian Gulf. It has also raised fears in India of a Chinese naval encirclement, especially when similar Chinese projects in Myanmar, Bangladesh and the Maldives are taken into consideration.19 Upgrading the Karakorum Highway is another major infrastructure project undertaken by both states, and that, like the port of Gwadar, serves China's strategic interests as well as satisfying its energy security needs. The Karkorum Highway, which links Xinjiang to Pakistan's Northern Areas, was first completed in the 1970s and is of vital importance to China, enabling it to have rapid access to both Jammu and Kashmir. Until recently, the highway was closed to motorized traffic in winter due to weather conditions, bringing all trade between the two states to a halt. In February 2006, China and Pakistan agreed to widen the highway to make it less vulnerable to snowfall and accessible to vehicles with heavier freight. China is thinking in the long term, hoping that the rebuilding of the Karkorum Highway will allow it to transport Middle Eastern Oil from the Gwadar deep-sea port directly by land to the western provinces of China, thus providing an alternative to crossing the Malacca Straits, should it become necessary.20 The PRC is very aware of its dependency on naval trade routes in ensuring its energy supplies and has therefore sought to diversify its methods of transportation by developing alternative land routes. Another project which involves Pakistan is the building of a massive oil pipeline, which would run from the Chinese-owned Iranian Yadavaran oilfields, through Pakistan and into China's western provinces.
China's relationship with Pakistan is therefore defined by “far more … than just a common hostility towards India.”21 The Sino-Pakistani partnership provides China not only with military security, by tying up India on the western frontier, but also with a way of reducing India's influence in Asia and improving China's own standing in the Islamic world by displaying the warmth of its ties with a Muslim country. The PRC can also ensure its energy and maritime security and tend to its economic interests through the growth of trade, as well as the sale of weapons and nuclear technology. China's interests in maintaining strong relations with Pakistan are in its short- and long-term political and economic interests.
Unfortunately for India, it therefore seems likely that the Sino-Pakistani nexus will remain in place for a very long time, and that it could even, in a development that would be even more detrimental to Indian interests, evolve from an entente cordiale into an open alliance. A first step was taken in this direction on January 4, 2006, when both countries officially ratified the China-Pakistan Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Good Neighborly Relations. The Treaty prevents either nation from “joining any alliance or bloc which infringes upon the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of the other side.”22 The Joint Statement issued at the end of Hu Jintao's visit in November 2006, during which the treaty had been formally agreed to by both sides, described it as “an important legal foundation for the Strategic Partnership between Pakistan and China.” The atmosphere prior to the signing of the treaty had been dominated by the US cozying up to India, declaring it wanted to “help it to become a major world power in the 21st century” and the signing of the Indo-US nuclear deal. Beijing's suspicion of India being used as a future counterweight to contain China by the US, and Pakistan's fear of losing American support to the benefit of its eternal rival were important underlying factors in the signing of the treaty.
Beijing's efforts to assist Pakistan as a peer competitor to India in South Asia show that despite certain improvements in Sino-Indian relations, Beijing remains subject to realist balance-of-power considerations in its dealings with its neighbor.
China's Rise and its Implications for India

Indeed, China's enduring support of Pakistan can be viewed as a part of a larger Chinese strategy aimed at coping with India's rise. China projects itself as one of the major superpowers of the second half of this century, on par only with the United States. Fulfilling this ambitious goal means that it cannot countenance the emergence of a rival power, especially one in Asia. China still reaps the rewards of its economic head start on India,23 has a more sophisticated nuclear and missile arsenal and stronger conventional armed forces, and, last but not least, enjoys the immense privilege of being the only Asian country to have a seat on the UN Security Council (UNSC).
Since the end of the Cold War, and despite the apparent improvement of Sino-Indian ties, according to some Indian analysts, China has been going out of its way to minimize India's regional and global standing. Regionally, China has sought to confine India to South Asian regional groupings by attempting to exclude or sideline it from any pan-Asian organizations which also include nations from either Central or Eastern Asia. India currently only has observer status in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, or SCO, an organization set up by China and Russia with the CARs or Central Asian Republics in 2001 with the ambition of cooperating in the struggle against Islamic terrorism. India would like to play a greater role in the organization in order to establish a stronger political presence in Central Asia, gain easier access to Central Asian hydrocarbon reserves and keep an eye on Islamist movements in the area.24 Russia, as well as some Central Asian Republics such as Tajikistan, have urged India to become a member, but sensing the strength of Chinese opposition (China threatened to invite Pakistan into the organization if India joined) the Republic of India (ROI) has renounced, for the time being at least, a formal demand for membership. In June 2006, the Chinese adopted a seemingly more conciliatory position, inviting India to join the SCO. Nevertheless, it left its invitation open to Pakistan as well and so far India has declined to take the Chinese up on their offer.
Chinese skill at sidelining India from regional organizations was just as apparent during the first inaugural meeting of the East Asian Summit which took place in Kuala Lumpur in December 2005. During much of 2005, Chinese diplomats had visited Southeast Asian countries lobbying (in vain) to prevent India from joining the EAS. Most ASEAN countries, seeing the use of having India as a counterweight to China in the organization, refused and China had to grudgingly make do with India's presence in the organization.25 Powerless to prevent India from attending the summit, China decided to take steps to ensure that whatever role India played would be a marginal one. The Chinese Foreign Ministry therefore urged the East Asian Community to institutionalize two blocs; one bloc being composed of “core” or primary states already members of ASEAN+3, and another bloc being formed of peripheral or outsider states not belonging to ASEAN. India is for the time being only a dialogue partner, not a fully fledged member of ASEAN+3 and thus found itself relegated, along with Australia and New Zealand, to the periphery of the newly created organization during the summit, despite its protest at the unfairness of replicating the ASEAN+3 framework in the EAS.26 As one can see, China has deftly managed to prevent India from playing any significant role outside South Asia.
Furthermore, China has not been content only with keeping India out of East or Central Asia but has simultaneously been working to marginalize India's influence in South Asia itself by increasing its own “invisible” influence in the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation or SAARC. The extent of Chinese influence in South Asia was made crystal clear in November 2005, during the 13th SAARC summit held in Dhaka, when India, after refusing to grant China observer status in the organization, had to back down and give the PRC what it wanted. This was due to pressure from the pro-China bloc of SAARC members, composed of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal, which all came out with a statement welcoming China as a friend.27 The three countries then threatened to veto Afghanistan's membership, which India supported, if India did not grant China observer status. Only 24 hours after its initial statement, India had no choice but to back down in a humiliating reversal of its position, which demonstrated the strength of China's influence in India's own backyard.
Sino-Indian rivalry is discernible not only in regional organizations, but also in the existence of competing projects for regional cooperation, which mutually exclude or diminish each other's presence, such as the Kunming Initiative or the Mekong-Ganga Cooperation Project. The Kunming Initiative is a Chinese project aiming to develop the Mekong river area, and to include Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, as well as India's beleaguered northeastern provinces in its sphere of cooperation. Determined not to let China become the sole promoter of multilateralism in the region, India unveiled its own project for Mekong-Ganga Cooperation or MGC in 2000, which included India, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, with the notable exclusion of China. Involving exactly the same states as the Kunming Initiative, the MGC had simply replaced China by India at the head of the project, in a symbolic gesture of defiance that did not go unnoticed by the Chinese.28
On a global level, whereas Jawaharlal Nehru once actively campaigned for China's permanent seat at the UN, the Chinese have refused to reciprocate the gesture 50 years later by openly supporting India's bid. Beijing has not formally voiced its rejection of India's claims, but neither has it come out in India's support, despite constant Indian urgings to do so. Instead, China has endeavored to mollify Indian concerns by playing with semantics, claiming that it would be happy to “see India play a greater role at the UN.”29 China may not be actively lobbying against India's bid, as it is doing vis- -vis Japan's, but it is clear that it has no desire to see a change in the status quo. For the time being, China is the only voice at the UNSC for Asia and the “developing world,” and it has no inclination whatsoever to see its influence “diluted” in any way by the integration of another Asian state, and, what is more, by a state with which it has often had conflictual relations in the past. As one analyst has aptly put it, quoting an old Chinese saying, “One mountain cannot accommodate two tigers.”30 For the time being, the US, unlike Great Britain, France or Russia, has been reluctant to support India's claims, and has lobbied in favor of Japan, a historically more reliable American partner than India. China has been quite content so far to brush the issue under the carpet with a smile and ride behind American ambivalence. Things would drastically change, however, if, for example, Indo-American relations continued their upwards surge and the US changed its mind, deciding to come out in support of India. Such a development, which is by no means implausible, would force China to reevaluate its position, compelling it to clearly voice its rejection of India's bid and putting the whole process of Sino-Indian normalization into jeopardy.
The UN is not the only global organization that China has attempted to bar India from. Indeed, China has also shown in the past a staunch opposition to India joining the ASEM (Asia-Europe Summit) or the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation). These organizations, unlike the UNSC, would not provide India with more clout in world affairs or with more diplomatic autonomy. They would, however, do much to enhance India's image as a major “soft power” in Asia.31 The ASEM is an informal organization which promotes dialogue and cooperation between the member states of the European Union, the European Commission and ten Asian countries. Summit-level meetings are held every second year, and ministerial-level meetings every year. In 2006, India was invited to join future ASEM meetings. India's joining of the APEC is currently up for review, but has not yet been confirmed by the state members.
All this shows that the positive effects of institutionalization described by liberal-minded scholars are by no means guaranteed in a competitive environment, such as that of Sino-Indian relations. Regional fora and economic organizations become not only theaters of discussion but also arenas of rivalry, where states such as India and China continue to behave as if they care more about a “positional” than an “atomistic” mindset.
China has also been extending its influence in South Asia, which India considers its “backyard” or sphere of influence. The PRC has not confined its presence in South Asia to Pakistan but has also been stepping up its courtship of other South Asian countries such as Nepal, Bangladesh, and the Maldives. Beijing's relationship with the ruling junta in Myanmar is of particular concern to Indian strategists, who fear being surrounded by Chinese proxies, not only on the Western Front but also along India's troubled northeastern border.
China has three separate reasons for intensifying its engagement of India's South Asian and Southeast Asian neighbors: to develop trade and economic integration with neighboring countries, to contain India in the South Asian subcontinent, and to attend to its energy security needs by establishing a substantial naval presence along vital maritime chokepoints.
China's "String of Pearls," India's Noose?





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[josh21x]

The latter is part of what Pentagon analysts have famously dubbed China's “string of pearls strategy,” a plan to acquire several strategically placed ports of call, naval bases and listening posts in friendly countries in order to protect the billions of dollars-worth of trade that pass through strategically salient sea lanes such as the Strait of Hormuz or the Malacca Straits. For the Chinese military, planning for the possibility of a major conflict with the US, a naval blockade would suffice to cut off nearly all of China's energy supplies overnight; the Chinese Navy's deployment in areas such as the Bay of Bengal or the Arabian Sea is a question of future survival. Over the past few years, the PRC has been feverishly attempting to address what it perceives to be its one major strategic vulnerability by courting countries such as the Maldives, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh or Pakistan, all nations which have maritime access to major shipping lanes. The development of the port of Gwadar had been planned for since 1971 by the Pakistanis. In the course of that year, the Indian Navy successfully raided the port of Karachi, prompting the desire amongst the Pakistani security establishment to put an end to its over-reliance on a single major port.32 Whereas the governments of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif were reluctant to approach China for funding and expertise out of fear of vexing the United States, General Musharraf decided to take the plunge and raised the subject when the Chinese Prime Minister Zhu Rongji visited Pakistan in 2001. The Chinese were only too happy to agree to the co-development of the port, which they plan to use as a port of call and refueling station, as well as a watch tower in order to monitor developments in the Persian Gulf. The development of Gwadar not only serves China's energy security needs by giving it access to the Arabian Sea but also provides it with a useful trade outlet for Chinese exports to Africa. So far, the international common port section has been completed by the Chinese engineers. The naval base is not expected to be completed until 2010. China has also put forward a plan to include Gwadar as part of a Special Economic Zone and hopes to use it as a conduit to the development of the impoverished, but oil-rich province of Xinjiang.33
Trade considerations were an equally important factor in the Chinese attempt to convince the military junta ruling Myanmar to let it transform the small fishing harbor of Sittwe into an outlet for exported goods from the southern province of Yunnan. Beijing is already deeply involved in the exploitation of natural gas in Burma and has so far managed to negotiate the establishment of a listening post in the Coco Islands to help it monitor American and Indian naval deployments in the Bay of Bengal but is having difficulty making its case regarding the development of Sittwe.34
Hambantota, in Sri Lanka, is another small fishing village that the Chinese think has great strategic potential. The Chinese Navy plans to turn it into its gateway to the Indian Ocean; it will not only be a refueling port for Chinese supertankers ferrying crude but will also serve as a listening post, informing Chinese commanders of any developments in southern India's missile and space launching programs as well as any of its naval movements. On April 10, 2005, former Sri Lankan President Chandikra Kumaratunga and Chinese President Hu Jintao signed a Memorandum of Understanding for the Development of Hambantota Bunkering System as well as a Tank Farm Project between the Sri Lanka Ports Authority and the China Huanqia Contracting and Engineering Cooperation. Worried that Colombo's reputation in international shipping circles may soon be usurped by the rapid development of ports in South India, the Sri Lankan authorities viewed it in their best interest to begin to diversify the infrastructure of the country's ports and did not need much persuading by the Chinese.35 Beijing has also strengthened its ties with Bangladesh in order to get naval access to the port of Chittagong. As in Myanmar, China would like to tap into Bangladesh's abundant natural gas reserves.36
As the Chinese Navy gradually modernizes and expands, India is increasingly jittery over what is what it has come to consider as the outlining of a Chinese maritime encirclement of India. Ever since independence the ROI has displayed a distinctly Curzonian perception of the importance of “ruling the waves”37 in order to successfully exert India's influence in the region, constantly shoring up its naval forces and viewing the Indian Ocean as “India's pond,” a maritime extension of the subcontinent which naturally falls into India's orbit. China's construction of a listening post in the Coco Islands, as well as its attempts to negotiate the establishment of ports of call in Humbantotu and Sittwe are construed as provocative incursions into India's sphere of influence and as future challenges to the Indian Navy's supremacy in the region.
China's string of pearls strategy and India's correlated security concerns seem to validate the previously discussed trade expectations theory. China's uncertainty in its capability to guarantee the reliability of its energy supplies in a conflict-****e environment have led it to engage in preemptive military deployments which may undermine peace in the region rather than contributing to sustaining it.
China's Positioning as a Counterweight to India in South Asia

China's encirclement or “concirclement” of India is not only maritime in nature. Indeed, as China's rising influence in SAARC indicates, many of India's South Asian neighbors have displayed an increasing tendency to turn to China not only for trade and economic integration, but also for more strategic reasons, to act as a counterweight to a domineering India in the South Asian region. An Indian analyst recently depicted the Indian subcontinent as “a collection of unhappy neighbours - unhappy with each other and unhappy among themselves.”38 And indeed, India has not always been on the best of terms with its smaller neighbors over the years, some of whom have accused the ROI of being a regional bully. Chinese exploitation of these feelings of frustration is nothing new. In the past, Beijing charged India with “hegemonism” in the South Asian continent, especially during the 1960s and 1970s when Sino-Indian relations were at their lowest level. Chinese leaders visit Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh on a regular basis to reaffirm Beijing's “friendship,” and China is all of those countries' main arms supplier. The only South Asian country with whom China does not wield a great degree of influence is a protectorate of India, the minute Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan. Things may be changing, however, as China, which has been pressing India to authorize it to establish proper diplomatic ties with Bhutan, has been intensifying its presence there by developing roads and infrastructure illegally in Bhutanese territory.39
Sino-Indian Sparring for Influence and the Myanmarese Theater

What causes the most concern to the Indian strategists, however, is China's inroads into the isolated state of Myanmar. Myanmar, or Burma, has always been viewed as a strategically salient area, whether under the Raj or the ROI, as it constitutes a land-bridge between South Asia and Southeast Asia and forms a vital buffer-zone separating India's turbulent Northeast and China's southern provinces. If China completes its Burmese penetration, and Myanmar becomes a Chinese “client state,” India's encirclement or containment will be complete, giving birth to an irresolvable security dilemma featuring an India surrounded by Chinese surrogates.
Ironically, India has a better history of relations with the state of Myanmar than China. The real turning point occurred during the 1988 democratic uprisings. China remained silent during the military junta's brutal repression while India joined the world in condemning the regime's actions and openly supporting the democratic protesters. Having been given the cold shoulder by most of the international community, India included, Myanmar began to gradually drift into China's orbit, the only state that had refrained from criticizing its internal politics. China rapidly became the first hi-tech arms supplier to the massive Burmese Army, and a major investor in Myanmar's natural gas fields. Since the early 1990s, Beijing has been involved in several large infrastructure projects in Myanmar, the most notable being the construction of an all-weather road joining the Chinese city of Kunming to the Burmese town of Mandalay. China has also negotiated the joint development of a naval base on the island of Hianggyi, as well as the construction of Signal Intelligence Facilities (SIGINT) on the Great Coco Islands.40 By the mid-1990s, the evolution in the nature of the Sino-Burmese relationship had not gone unnoticed by India or the countries of ASEAN, which invited Myanmar to join the organization in 1997, in an attempt to prevent it from becoming China's proxy in Southeast Asia.41 Myanmar is now viewed by many observers as the epicenter of Sino-Indian rivalry for influence in South and Southeast Asia, where an isolated and impoverished state, largely ignored by the rest of the world, has become the theater of a desperate struggle for resources, regional influence and maritime access.
The persistence and strengthening of the Sino-Pakistani nexus, China's attempts to hinder India's rise as a peer competitor on the regional or world stage, and the deepening of China's forays into South Asia are all factors pointing to a Chinese policy of containment of India. China nurtures the ambition of remaining the sole potential superpower in Asia and is pragmatically pursuing this goal by keeping India bogged down in regional, rather than global affairs, and by neutering Indian influence in its own backyard. All this is occurring despite a significant spurt in trade and a renewed emphasis on bilateral engagement. This indicates once again that liberal theories cannot be applied to contemporary Sino-Indian relations.
Analysts have often criticized India for its seemingly na ve attitude towards China; officials from Delhi's South Block indulging in longwinded exhortations of Sino-Indian friendship while behind the scenes the Chinese go out of their way to contain Indian power and reduce Indian influence. The next section of this article will argue, however, that this is no longer the case, and that over the past few years, especially since 1998, India has shed most of its romanticized notions of Sino-Indian friendship and developed a more hard-headed realist approach towards its Chinese neighbor. It would seem that India has chosen to back its engagement of its overbearing neighbor with an active policy of counter-containment.

End of First Part-1

[josh21x]

India's Response: An Active Policy of Counter-Containment

Since the late 1990s India has radically changed the nature of its relationship with the United States, entering into a strategic partnership founded on a common skepticism regarding the supposedly 'peaceful' nature of China's rise. In order to reduce China's influence in Asia, India has not only engaged the United States but has also pursued a Look East Policy which has gradually become increasingly strategic in nature; intensifying ties with certain ASEAN member states and with China's main East Asian rival, Japan.
A Strategic Partnership with the US

The “strategic triangle” of China-India-US relations has undergone major changes over the past ten years. In the spring of 1998, the US was vehemently criticizing the Vajpayee government for its decision to go nuclear, menacing it with a series of crippling economic sanctions and siding with China, its newly proclaimed “strategic partner” in denouncing the destabilizing effect of India's actions in the region. Less than ten years later, India and the US are finalizing a nuclear cooperation deal which has necessitated “the amending of American domestic law as well as the norms of the global nuclear order,”42 are holding regular joint defense exercises, and are tightly enmeshed in a new strategic partnership which is slowly but surely transforming the entire Asian geopolitical landscape. China, which has been demoted in American official discourse from “strategic partner” to “strategic competitor,” is watching these developments with a great deal of attention, combined with a sizable dose of misgivings. The recent developments in Indo-US relations are both momentous in their significance and challenging in the complexity of their nature. They are largely due to a shift in American officials' perception of India, which has, in turn, displayed a willingness to take advantage of Washington's reevaluation of its relationship with Beijing. India has become a strategically salient “swing state,” which grants it a certain amount of leverage, as well as a degree of vulnerability, in its dealings with both China and the US.
Whereas the ice that had frozen up much of Indo-US relations under the second Clinton Administration was gradually thawing, America's relations with China at the dawn of the second millennium had lost a lot of their previous warmth, especially after the US (allegedly mistakenly) bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during the 1999 NATO Kosovo intervention.
By the end of Clinton's second term, Indo-US relations were no longer acrimonious. It was only with the advent of the new and forcefully pro-India administration of George W. Bush, however, that the relationship really accomplished its transformation from cordial but distant interactions to a groundbreaking strategic alignment. Before he was even elected, President Bush had frequently voiced his desire to initiate a rapprochement with India, declaring, for instance, in a 1999 campaign speech that “this coming century will see democratic India's arrival as a force in the world. India is now debating its future and strategic path and the United States must pay it more attention.”43 The future president was heavily influenced in this regard by certain pro-India members of his entourage, such as Dr. Condoleezza Rice, Bush's foreign policy advisor at the time, who wrote a landmark article in the influential journal Foreign Affairs in 2000 in which she called for a greater engagement of India in order to counter Chinese influence: “India is an element in China's calculation and it should be in America's too,” advising America to “pay closer attention to India's role in the regional balance.”44 India has thus acquired a new importance as a counterweight to China in the Asian theater, providing the triangular relationship between the US, China, and India with a form of strategic salience it never had in the past.
India's emergence as major regional power has given it a lot more strategic significance than before. India's blue-water navy, nuclear capabilities, powerful armed forces, high rate of economic growth and huge economic potential are all factors that make India loom a lot larger on America's radar screen. India is also a vibrant and multiethnic parliamentary democracy and, as such, was far more attractive to the Bush administration than other forms of authoritarian regimes in Asia. Containing China is just one aspect of the budding strategic partnership between the world's largest and oldest democracies. Indeed, the US views India as a vital partner in the upholding of maritime security in vitally important sea lanes, and as an ally in the “war on terror” with a sizable degree of experience in counterterrorism and often convergent threat perceptions, both being the target of Islamist terrorist cells.45
India, for its part, responded favorably to America's overtures when George W. Bush came to power. Immediately after 9/11, India offered the United States the use of its airfields in its strikes against Afghanistan and allegedly provided intelligence which led to the destruction of several al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan.46 When President Bush announced in May 2001 his intention to discard the ABM (Anti Ballistic Missile) Treaty and resurrect the Strategic Defense Initiative of Ronald Reagan,47 amidst a storm of international controversy, India astonished the world (and even the Bush Administration) by openly endorsing his proposals.48 The much disputed initiative aims at providing the United States, and perhaps certain key allies, with a anti-ballistic missile “shield” that shoots down incoming nuclear missiles before they reach their target. Despite the fact that security specialists have repeatedly pointed out that the system is in no way failsafe and that it is of no use against, say, more indirect or asymmetric forms of threats such as, for instance, a terrorist group equipped with a suitcase nuke,49 the provision of the NMD system to India would undoubtedly provide it with “critical advantages over … other nuclear-armed states … in an offence-dominant environment.”50 In reality, there is no guarantee that the US will ever actually provide India with the NMD system. India's endorsement of the initiative was primarily symbolic in nature, and was intended to be perceived by the Americans as a gesture of goodwill. Both countries have gone beyond purely demonstrative gestures of goodwill however. The Indo-US strategic partnership has given birth to very concrete forms of bilateral cooperation, the most notable being the intensification of military ties between the two countries, and the signing of a landmark nuclear deal.
Barely a year after the United States declared India “a major non-NATO ally,” both countries signed a framework defense agreement in June 2005, announcing their intentions to follow a ten-year program of increased defense cooperation. This would encompass joint defense training, defense technology transfers from the United States to the ROI and collaboration in missile defense technology (the NMD system).51 The United States has offered to supply the Indian Air Force with F-16s and F-18s and allowed Israel to sell India three Phalcon AWACs or Airborne Warning Aircraft whereas it had previously refused to do so in the case of China. As the US developed some of the Phalcon's technology, it has the right to veto sales of this “sensitive technology” when it sees fit. This is what transpired in 2000, when Washington vetoed the Israeli sale of Phalcons to Beijing, invoking the hazards the transfer of this technology would generate for American fighter pilots in the region in the case of a war with China over Taiwan.52 India's rapprochement with the United States has allowed it to pursue an untrammeled modernization of its armed forces, gaining access to sensitive military technology that China, for example (due to the post Tiananmen arms embargo and a general feeling of American wariness), cannot yet gain access to. India and the United States have held joint military exercises a number of times over the past few years, conducting joint naval exercises, engaging in joint maritime patrols of the Malacca Strait, and regularly fielding joint counterterrorism exercises. American Special Forces have been deployed to India to train in jungle warfare and their Indian counterparts were sent in 2002 to Alaska to conduct joint exercises in conditions of extreme cold.53
The recently confirmed Indo-US nuclear deal is the other main indicator of the warmth of Indo-US ties. Until recently, the ROI had been excluded from civilian nuclear trade by the United States and other states because of its refusal to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). America is making a major departure from this tradition and making an exception to all the existing regulations by offering to equip India with civilian nuclear fuel and technology, provided that it agrees to certain safeguards on its civilian nuclear program and does not use the fuel for military purposes. To benefit from this deal, India had to agree with the International Atomic Energy Agency which particular safeguards will be applied to its civilian nuclear facilities and obtain a special exemption from the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG).
After a hairline victory in the Indian parliament and many hours of debate at the NSG, India finally entered the nuclear mainstream in September 2008. India now reaps all the advantages enjoyed by the five “official” nuclear powers (France, Great Britain, China, Russia, and the United States) despite not having signed the NPT or Test-Ban Treaty. The Indo-US nuclear agreement is definitely a landmark agreement in the history of nuclear diplomacy; rarely has a country been offered so much for so little in return. Not only is this a major gain for India in the field of nuclear energy and technology, it also provides it with a significant symbolic edge over its troublesome nuclear-armed neighbor Pakistan, which has retained its nuclear pariah status, despite apparently strenuous efforts by the Chinese delegation at the NSG to negotiate a separate deal for their ally. “The hyphenation with Pakistan is decisively and formally over,”54 and India has now gained nuclear respectability.
Beijing, meanwhile, has been observing the consolidation of the Indo-US strategic partnership with a mounting sense of unease. Officially silent on the Indo-US nuclear deal, for fear no doubt of jeopardizing the process of normalization of Sino-Indian ties,55 the Chinese government first expressed its reservations via its official media. In the People's Daily for example, China accused America of breaking the rules and blatantly following a double standard, and issued dire warnings on the future consequences of setting such a precedent. Claiming that the Indo-US nuclear deal would lead to a dangerous “domino effect,” China threatened the US with a response in kind by further enhancing its nuclear cooperation with countries such as Pakistan.56 Much of the Indian media blasted Chinese “duplicity” at the NSG.57
China has also shown increased concern over India's joint military exercises with the United States as well as some other members of the “Asian arc of democracy” such as Australia and Japan. In June 2007, a quadrilateral security cooperation meeting between India, Japan, the United States and Australia in Manila provoked a diplomatic demarche from China demanding to know the reasons behind the meeting.58 Similarly, after trilateral naval exercises between Japan, the US and India in April of the same year, the People's Daily issued a scathing commentary, deploring what it viewed as an American attempt to build an anti-China axis in Asia and declaring that “It is absolutely not new for Japan and the US to sit down and plot conspiracies together but it is rather intriguing to get India involved.”59 Paradoxically, China's fretting over the Indo-US relationship may well turn to India's advantage, as some analysts have claimed that China has been engaging India with more intensity than before precisely due to its fear that India may be dragged too close into America's orbit. An overtly anti-Chinese alliance between America and India, pursuing a strategy of containment of the PRC would be a “nightmare for China.”60
In a 2005 report, the CIA stated that India had become one of the world's most important “swing states,”61 meaning that India's central position in the triangular power dynamic in Asia (the United States, India and China) granted it considerable strategic importance as well as a certain degree of tactical flexibility, if India plays its cards right. Indeed, New Delhi could very well profit from Sino-Indian rivalry by being courted by two countries equally intent on preventing the ROI from forming an enduring alliance with their arch-rival. On the other hand, India could find itself turned into America's military satrap in Asia, trapped in an antagonistic relationship with China that would be detrimental to its own interests.62 Harry Harding has predicted that “the future relationship among the three countries may well resemble a romantic triangle, in which one tries to benefit from the tensions between the other two.” If the Sino-Indian relationship was to go through a rough patch, he pursues, “then both Beijing and New Delhi might compete for preferred treatment from the United States.”63
There is little risk, however, of India becoming the United State's “Asian Israel.” The fierce opposition, from both leftist and rightist parties, the Indian government of Manmohan Singh has faced over the Indo-US nuclear deal shows the extent of ambivalence the deepening of Indo-US ties is raising in India. India, which has inherited the tradition of a fiercely independent foreign policy, nurtures its own global ambitions and will play second fiddle to no one. New Delhi was put under a lot of pressure to send troops to Iraq before the American invasion but, bowing to Indian public opinion, refused to deploy any troops. Similarly, although India has voted twice against Iran at the UN at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), at the request of the United States,64 it would undoubtedly feel considerable unease at expressing any form of support for an American military intervention in Iran, a country with which it enjoys quite friendly relations. Furthermore, although the United States has dubbed the ROI a “major non-NATO ally,” it does not consider it as reliable a partner as Japan, for example, whose bid for a permanent seat at the UNSC the US has been actively lobbying for. India's bid, on the other hand, has not yet received Washington's green light. All this may change in the future, but it does reveal that for the time being the Indo-US strategic partnership is still very much in its infancy, and that one needs to give it more time to mature and evolve before delivering any definite prognostics.
A Strategically Enhanced Look East Policy in an Attempt to Counter Chinese Preeminence in Asia

Parallel to its strategic alignment with the US, India has been engaging ASEAN states as well as Australia and Japan. Adhering to the age-old precept of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,”65 India has been stepping up its military ties with countries traditionally wary of China's power in the region, such as Vietnam, and, looking even further afield, to Mongolia.
Relations between India and the countries of Southeast Asia were very friendly during the 1950s, India supported many in their struggle for independence and, under the leadership of Jawaharlal Nehru, signed treaties of friendship with Indonesia, the Philippines and Myanmar. As the Cold War progressed however, relations between India and Southeast Asia took a turn for the worse, particularly after the signing of the India-Soviet Peace and Friendship Cooperation Treaty in 1971. India's proximity to the Soviet Union, and the closeness of its ties with the Soviet-backed Vietnamese regime, were viewed with mounting distaste by the nations of ASEAN, which had been founded in 1967 in large part to act as a bulwark against the spread of communism in Southeast Asia. New Delhi's support of the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in 1978 further aggravated tensions. For its part, India, whose relations with the United States had soured in the late 1970s, perceived ASEAN as little more than a constellation of American client states. In short, “the Indian leadership viewed ASEAN as 'an American imperialist surrogate' while ASEAN dubbed India as the surrogate of the Soviet Union.”66 In the 1980s, India's massive naval build-up and erection of naval installations on the Nicobar and Andaman islands raised concerns in Southeast Asia that India was becoming a destabilizing force in the region, and that it would provide the Soviet Union with unrestrained access to vital sea lanes such as the Malacca Straits.67
Luckily, the end of the Cold War changed everything by causing major upheavals in the region's geopolitical landscape, and providing both India and ASEAN with not only new opportunities, but also with new reasons to radically improve their relations. This was made easier with Vietnam's withdrawal from Cambodia in 1989 and the disintegration of the Soviet Union.68 India and Southeast Asia were no longer enmeshed in the bipolar power structure of the Cold War, and mutual suspicions and security concerns were rapidly dissipated.
Apprehension regarding China's growing presence in the region had replaced fear of communism as the number one security concern for most ASEAN states by the beginning of the 1990s. Indeed, the disappearance of the Soviet Union had created a major power vacuum in Southeast Asia and the ASEAN members feared that the United States might be tempted to withdraw its presence in the region; giving free rein to a militarily assertive China. Many of the nations of ASEAN are locked in territorial disputes with China, mainly over the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, and are particularly apprehensive over the future consequences of the Chinese military build-up in the region. These concerns were amplified in 1995 when the world discovered that Chinese forces had illegally occupied a small archipelago of Filipino territory, Mischief Reef, rendering ASEAN much more responsive to India's overtures. The latter has been focused on developing ties with Southeast Asia ever since Narismha Rao launched the Look East Policy in 1992. Primarily economic in nature at its beginnings, it has increasingly acquired a more security-oriented dimension over the years, particularly since the late 1990s. India and many states in ASEAN have discovered a degree of strategic congruence in their fears of the overextension of Chinese power in the region. ASEAN's reaction to India's nuclear tests in 1998 is most interesting in this regard. Indeed, whereas some Asian states such as Japan and Australia were very outspoken in their criticism of India after the 1998 nuclear tests, calling for immediate sanctions, ASEAN was remarkably muted in its statement and in July 1998, at a summit in Manila, some ASEAN countries such as Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia reportedly urged Japan and Australia to adopt a more benign attitude towards India.69
In the course of the same year, Atal Behari Vajpayee had come to power in India with the firm intention of “speeding up” the Look East Policy. Many members of the BJP government such as Defense Minister George Fernandes and External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh upheld visions of a newly assertive India, whose influence reached far beyond the traditional confines of the South Asian theater. In April 2004, the Indian Navy's maritime doctrine underwent a major shift in its approach, declaring the entire Indian Ocean region, from the Persian Gulf to the Straits of Malacca to be its “legitimate area of interest,” whereas before it had solely focused on the defense of India's coastline. This new vision of an Indo-centric Asian order, first formulated by the BJP government, is equally omnipresent in the discourse of its Congress-led successor, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who declared in 2004 that in his view, India's influence “covers the region bounded by the horn of Africa, West Asia, Central Asia and Southeast Asia, and beyond, to the far reaches of the Indian Ocean.”70 This grandiose perception of India's role in the region has been accompanied by equally ambitious proposals for sub-regional cooperation; often put forward in response to rival Chinese bids.
The Mekong-Ganga Cooperation project, launched in 2000, is a prime example of India's laboring to replace China as the epicenter of sub-regional cooperation in the region. Similarly, in 2002, Jaswant Singh signed a massive infrastructure agreement which plans to connect India by road to Thailand, cutting through Myanmar. Another example of this newly open Indian competitiveness is the 2004 Vajpayee proposal for an international railway linking New Delhi to Hanoi and passing through Thailand, Cambodia and Myanmar. The Indian government's plan was viewed as a direct response to a similar Chinese proposal to build a Pan-Asian railway.71
New Delhi has also managed to create, after a decade of painstaking groundwork, a sub-regional organization, BIMSTEC, or the Bangladesh-Sri Lanka-Thailand Economic Cooperation, which effectively links South Asia to Southeast Asia. BIMSTEC identified six areas of sub-regional cooperation: in trade and investment, technology, transport and communication, energy, tourism and fisheries. In 2004 Bhutan and Nepal joined the grouping, which was then renamed the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multisectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation. Although so far BIMSTEC has not yielded impressive trade results, its underlying raison d' tre is more political than economic, Indian policymakers hoping that the organization will act as a springboard and provide India with a stronger strategic presence in the region. China for the time being enjoys several advantages over India: it is part of the ASEAN+3, whereas India is only a member of the ASEAN regional forum, and in sheer volume of trade with ASEAN, China far exceeds India. (In 2004, China's FDI in ASEAN reached 225.9 million dollars while that of India only amounted to 46.3 million in the same year.) Both countries have signed Free Trade Agreements with ASEAN, which will fully enter into application in 2010 in the case of China and in 2011 in that of India.
Although Beijing holds substantial economic and institutional advantages over India in the region, the latter does not provoke as much fear and resentment as the former. India has no territorial disputes with ASEAN states, which are nearly all embroiled in territorial disputes with China in the South China Sea. With the exception perhaps of Malaysia, which has much closer ties with China than with India, all the states in Southeast Asia are keen not only to profit economically from Sino-Indian rivalry in infrastructure projects, trade and energy acquisition, but also to encourage the presence of a potentially counterbalancing power to China in the region. Nations such as Singapore and the Philippines, which have always maintained close ties with the United States, are particularly mindful of the need to have an Indian counterweight in the region if ever their American allies should decide to sizably reduce their military presence in the area. The Singaporean Foreign Minister S. Jayakamar reiterated his nation's belief in the solidity of the balance of power theory in 2000, when he declared: “What we can be certain of is the fact that India will play an important role in the new equilibrium that will emerge. India's strategic importance therefore cannot be over emphasized.”72 The potential future sources of conflict with China for most ASEAN states being primarily maritime in nature, the fact that Singapore and Vietnam have frequently conducted joint naval exercises with the Indian Navy in the South China Sea is hardly coincidental. The Indian Navy is recognized as one of the most capable in the world, and perhaps the only one in the region capable of effectively deterring China's submarine fleet. Conducting joint naval exercises provides Singapore and Vietnam with a degree of reassurance, while giving India the opportunity to penetrate the South China Sea in a “tit-for-tat” for China's forays into the India Ocean.73
Another major strategic concern shared by India with many ASEAN member states is that of Islamic terrorism. Indonesia, Singapore and the Philippines have all been the target of terrorist plots and/or attacks, and Singapore considers maritime terrorism to be the number one security threat in the region.74 India's security services have decades of experience in dealing with pan-Islamic terrorist cells and can provide Southeast Asian nations vital assistance in counterinsurgency techniques. What is more, several of the leading members of Abu Sayyaf and Jemaah Islaamiyah have honed their deadly skills fighting in Kashmir or Afghanistan,75, and India can offer crucial assistance in the form of shared intelligence. On October 8, 2003, at the second ASEAN-India summit in Bali, ASEAN and India emitted a Joint Declaration for Cooperation to Combat International Terrorism, which further reflected ASEAN's growing acceptance of India as a responsible power, destined to play a predominant role in future regional security.76 Once again balance-of-power politics prevails in the midst of a hyperrealist security environment.



Secomd Part

[josh21x]

The Indo-Vietnamese alignment

Vietnam, one of India's main strategic partners in Southeast Asia during the Cold War, has become India's closest ally in the region in the post-Cold War era. In the past, the countries' partnership was defined by two main factors; a shared proximity to the Soviet Union, and a common hostility towards China. As an Indian analyst has pointed out, India and Vietnam share a natural strategic congruence on the need to restrain China based on a common historical experience; China has disputed its existing borders with both India and Vietnam; and China has launched “punitive” military attacks on both India and Vietnam, respectively in 1962 and in 1979.77 Since 1998, both countries have been steadily shoring up their ties and Vietnam has come out in support of India's bid for a permanent seat at the UNSC. Strategically placed on the eastern fringe of Southeast Asia, India views Vietnam as the main obstacle to China's southwards expansion. Much as China has attempted to constrain India by forming a military nexus with Pakistan, New Delhi has been involved in defense cooperation with, and provided military assistance to its rival's smaller, militaristic neighbor. In 2000, George Fernandes, the BJP government's Defense Minister signed a 15-point Defense Protocol with Vietnam, which promised to provide Vietnam with assistance in the modernization of its armed forces and to intensify defense cooperation between the two countries. Three years later, India and Vietnam stepped up their military cooperation by signing a “Joint Declaration and Framework of Comprehensive Cooperation between the Republic of India and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam as they enter the 21st century.”78
Vietnam's terrestrial armed forces are reportedly large enough to deter any sustained Chinese land assault,79 and India has been helping Vietnam build up its naval and air capabilities in an attempt to deny China total supremacy in the South China Sea. This is greatly facilitated by the fact that Vietnam's Air Force and Navy's military hardware have the same Russian origin as their Indian counterparts, which has enabled the Indian armed forces to frequently help their Vietnamese partners overcome their operational difficulties by supplying them with spare parts and by providing advanced repair and maintenance services. Indian Air Force pilots have been training Vietnamese fighter pilots, and in 2005 the Indian Navy dispatched more than 150 tons of spares to Hanoi for its Russian Petya and OSA-11 class missile boats. Both countries have frequently engaged in joint naval exercises and conducted large-scale jungle warfare simulations. The Vietnamese have been supplied with advanced light helicopters at “friendly prices” and there has been talk in some quarters of supplying the Vietnamese Navy with Brahmos Cruise Missiles. The Brahmos Cruise Missile, co-produced by the Indians with the Russians, is a very advanced anti-ship missile, based on the Russian Yakhent anti-ship missile, which has a range of more than 300km and can fly more than twice the speed the sound. If the Vietnamese Navy were to acquire such a weapons system, it would prove to be a major threat to Chinese naval dominance in the South China Sea.
Last but not least, the ROI has been putting pressure on the Vietnamese government to allow the Indian Navy a basing option in Cam Ranh Bay, a large deep-water port which served as a major Soviet naval base during the Cold War. If Vietnam were to capitulate to its Indian partner's demands, the Indian Navy would be able to deploy its forces in the South China Sea. Not only would it disrupt the naval balance of power in the region, but it would also undoubtedly be construed as an aggressive form of maritime containment by the Chinese security establishment, running the risk of aggravating tensions in the region.
India's relations with Myanmar: Reversing the China tilt at last?

During much of the Cold War, Myanmar managed to maintain a form of equidistance between India and China, careful not to be drawn into their feuds. After its repression of the democratic uprisings of 1988, however, Myanmar was forced into even greater isolation than before and turned to China for its military and economic needs. Jumping in to fill the void, the latter rapidly intensified its military and economic presence, raising fears in the Indian security establishment that the ROI would soon be completely surrounded by states kow-towing to Beijing. India decided at the time of the launching of the Look East Policy in the early 1990s to change tack and to engage Myanmar in order to prevent it from making a hotbed of Chinese interference in the region and also from becoming a sanctuary for the guerilla movements which plague India's northeastern borders. Over the past ten years India has been toiling to reduce China's foothold in Burma by engaging the military junta, supplying it with military aid, sending engineers to help repair its infrastructure and providing it with “soft loans” at very advantageous interest rates.
In 1998, despite India's overtures, Myanmar remained very much under China's sway. The BJP government, ignoring the reticence of some its members in dealing with such an unsavory regime,80 redoubled its efforts in a bid to durably wrest it from China's sphere of influence. High-level bilateral visits became more frequent, the most notable being the visits of Vice Chairman General Maung Aye and Myanmarese Foreign Minister to India in 2000 and 2003, and the Indian Vice President Shri Bhairon Singh Shekhawat's visit to Myanmar, accompanied by a delegation of high-ranking diplomats, in 2003. Although the process has been gradual, it would seem, nearly ten years later, that the BJP government and its Congress successor's efforts are finally starting to pay off. Several agreements and memorandums of understanding have been signed, and Myanmar has pledged to not let “Myanmar become a base for anti-Indian activities”81 and the countries' armed forces have frequently coordinated their efforts in anti-insurgency operations on both sides of the border. India is currently Myanmar's largest export market and high-level Indian business delegations visiting Myanmar in 2003 pledged to increase trade from $500 million to $1 billion per year by 2006-07.82 India has been involved in several ambitious infrastructure projects in Myanmar, extending the junta a $10 million loan for its Kaladan project, which plans to connect via a multi-modal transport system its Sittwe and Kaletwa ports with the State of Mizoram, and building a 170-feet long “friendship bridge” on the Myanmar-Mizoram border to facilitate cross-border trade. The ROI has also helped Burma build the 100-mile Kalay-Kalaywa-Kyiga-Tamu Road in the Sagaing Division of Myanmar, which opened in February 2001, and which connects northern Myanmar with India's national highway 39.83 India has also supplied Myanmar with a steady flow of military equipment over the past decade, first providing the military junta with what it called “non-lethal military aid” (i.e. boots, gas masks, etc.) before deciding to throw any of its remaining qualms to the wind and proceeding to actively bolster the Burmese Army's capabilities.
Although China's trade relationship with Myanmar still far exceeds that of India and it remains the largest arms supplier of the Burmese Army,84 there are signs that Myanmarese wariness of China's rising influence in the region has prompted a new tilt towards India. While in New Delhi in 2007 I was informed that the port of Sittwe, which India had feared for several years would become a Chinese naval facility was “now under Indian control”85 and that the Indian Government was finalizing agreements to convert the Myanmarese port of Dawei into an Indian deep-sea port. An Indian analyst informed me that one of the main reasons behind Myanmar's recent reversal is its mounting concern over the massive migrations of Chinese from China's southern provinces to Myanmar. Indeed, some reports claim that over 30 percent of the population of the central city of Mandalay is now composed of illegal Chinese immigrants.86
India, Australia, and Japan

Until recently, the feeling that accompanied any study of Indo-Japanese or Indo-Australian relations was one of unfulfilled potential. Japan and Australia were amongst the most vocal critics of India in 1998 after Pokhran II, both countries urging the international community for sanctions.
India's relations with Japan underwent a tentative freeze, Japan immediately suspended its aid and yen loans commitments to India. Japan has consistently pressured India to join the NPT and to sign the CTBT, and “held its entire relationship hostage to India's nuclear programme.”87 Indo-Japanese relations started to thaw in August 2000, during Japanese Prime Minister Yoshi Mori's visit to India. Carefully avoiding focusing on the nuclear issue, Mori announced the resumption of Japanese aid on certain key projects such as the Delhi Metro and the establishment of an “Indo-Japanese Partnership for the 21st century,” a multi-faceted new relationship with an emphasis on enhancing trade and the opening of a new security dialogue between the two countries. The latter was formalized a year later, with the reciprocal visit of Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee to Japan in December 2001. Over the next three years both countries significantly upgraded their military ties and multiplied high-level bilateral visits. This was due in large part to Japan's rapidly deteriorating relations with the PRC at the time.88
In September 2004, both countries reached a new level in military cooperation by conducting their first joint naval exercises. Naval cooperation with India also has more advantages for Japan than simply providing it with a security umbrella against Chinese naval expansion. Japan, like China, is highly dependent on maritime shipments in order to ensure its energy supply, and therefore relies on the security of sea lanes. India's Navy, based in the Indian Ocean, has strategic access to the Andaman Sea and the Malacca Straits. Japan's enrolling of Indian naval cooperation is therefore also a means of guaranteeing the security of its energy supplies.
India's rapprochement with Japan has also been ideological in nature. This was first apparent in April 2005, with the visit of Japanese Prime Minister Junichirio Koizumi, the latter putting a new emphasis in his declarations on India's shared values and principles, such as a commitment to democracy. Koizumi's belief in enhancing cooperation with politically like-minded regimes in Asia was also the credo of his short-lived successor Shinzo Abe, who paid a state visit to India in August 2007, accompanied by a delegation of 212 Japanese businessmen to discuss, among other issues, the developing of Indo-Japanese trade, which remains, at approximately 8.51 billion dollars in 2006, somewhat disappointing.89 Parallel to its alignment with Japan, India has also stepped up its ties with Australia, causing some analysts to speculate on the emergence of an “Asian NATO” while deeply irritating China, which views the formation of an “Asian Arc of Democracy” as an attempt to isolate it in East Asia by stealthily undermining its rise to regional domination.
A new proximity with Australia

Australia has often been nicknamed “America's sheriff in Asia,” and indeed, it does seem to have displayed many similarities with its American ally in its recent dealings with India; berating it in 1998 for its nuclear tests, before suddenly deciding to change tack and add greater strategic depth to its relationship with New Delhi. Traditionally wary of the latter's maritime intentions, Australia has overcome its suspicions, participating in mine warfare and clearance operations with India in January 2006,90 and signing a defense pact two months later, which called for greater cooperation in maritime security, military research and development and military joint training.91 Australian Defense Minister Brendan Nelson visited India in July 2007 with the firm intention of building on the defense pact signed by his Prime Minister, John Howard, in March 2006. At the issue of his meeting with Indian Defense Minister A. K. Antony, both sides agreed to share intelligence information related to terrorist activity and maritime security in the region.
China's unease

China, meanwhile, has been regarding the formation of this “quadripartite alliance” or “Arc of Democracy,” comprised of India, Japan, Australia, and the US with mounting apprehension. In May 2007, days before an official-level security consultation between the United States, Japan, Australia and India in Manila, China issued formal diplomatic demarches to each of the participants demanding the purpose behind their meeting. All four participants chose to downplay the significance of the quadrilateral meeting in response to China's edginess, India pointing out that it already participated frequently in trilateral talks with China and Russia, and Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer assuring that the four countries were “not building some sort of security arrangement.”92 This does seem rather hard to swallow, however, as all four countries soon announced that a massive naval exercise, hosted by India in the Bay of Bengal and including more than 20 warships, three aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines and fighters, would take place in September 2007.93 Once again, China vocally expressed its dissatisfaction with being excluded from the process, and once again officials from all countries emitted soothing statements, the American Commander of the Pacific Fleet, Admiral Timothy Keating assuring, “There's no - let me emphasize no - effort on our part or any of those other countries' parts I'm sure to isolate China, to put them in the closet.”94 Just as the process of Sino-Indian normalization may be jeopardized in the future by Indo-US strategic convergence in Asia, India's integration into an Asian Arc of Democracies will compel it to tread ever more carefully in respect to China.
India's Mongolian ties

India's engagement of Mongolia, an oft-overlooked element of its newly assertive foreign policy, fully demonstrates the pragmatic turn in India's China Strategy since 1998.
Interestingly, Mongolia, similarly to Vietnam, is a former Soviet ally which harbored a degree of resentment towards its Chinese neighbor during the Cold War, and, like Vietnam, it is now one of India's close strategic partners. In 2001, New Delhi signed an Agreement on Defense Cooperation with Ulaanbaatar, which included joint exercises and reciprocal visits by military officers. Ever since, India has been quietly expanding its defense and security ties with Mongolia, in order to keep an eye on China's space and military actions in the region.95 Indian military engineers have placed a number of early warning radar systems at secret locations in Mongolia with the capability of monitoring both China's ballistic missile tests and its rapidly expanding space program north of Beijing.96 Recently, in August 2007, Mongolia and India held their third joint military exercise, and India announced its intention to enlarge its Ulaanbaatar embassy by stationing additional security services and military personnel in Mongolia.
Theoretical Applications and Conclusion

A Disavowal of the Economic Interdependency Theory

Trade has soared between the two countries over the past few years, reaching nearly 40 billion dollars-worth in 2008, but has not had the calming effect liberal scholarship would have us believe. This is largely due to the increased imbalance in the bilateral trade relationship.
Whereas up until 2005 India enjoyed a trade surplus with China, it is now in a deficit of more than $10 billion. New Delhi officials frequently stress the need to diversify India's export market to China and highlight the fact that various non-tariff barriers and copyright violations are impeding Indian businesses' access to the country.97 Indian delegations have repeatedly demanded that Beijing remove certain barriers for fruits and vegetables and pharmaceuticals, amongst other products, but the Chinese refuse to do so until India recognizes the PRC as a market economy. This indicates that countries can use trade not only as an instrument of cooperation, but also of coercion. While this bickering takes place in both nations' capitals, Chinese companies are buying up Indian raw materials and dumping cheap subsidized goods at an alarming pace. The very inequality of the Sino-Indian trade relationship is therefore increasingly a source of tension, rather than of reconciliation, which invalidates the economic interdependency theory.
This realist vision appears to be shared by both the Indian and Chinese leadership, as neither country has reduced military expenditures. In fact, both have chosen to substantially increase their defense budgets. India's defense budget for 2008-09 has risen by 10 percent, to approximately $26.4 billion, and New Delhi plans to spend at least $40 billion over the next four years to modernize its current arsenal and purchase 126 fighter jets, as well as new ships, submarines and air defense systems. China's defense budget, for its part, has undergone a massive increase of at least 15 percent.98
These figures demonstrate that for India and China, cooperation on trade does not preclude military balancing. In fact, one could argue, as John Mearsheimer did in The Tragedy of Great Power Politics,99 that the growth in economic power through trade is the basis to the growth of military power, and that in the case of both India and China, their booming economies have enabled them to invest more heavily in the development of their respective militaries than before.
Uncertain Trade Expectations Lead to Military Expansionism

The trade expectations theory asserts that it is not so much trade in itself that averts conflict, but the expectations of economic stability and perspectives of mutual enrichment it can provide.100 If a trade relationship is marred by a feeling of uncertainty, or clouded by a feeling of vulnerability, however, it is more liable to provide the spark for conflict rather than dampen conflict.
Both India and China's ambitions of continued economic development are constrained by their excessive reliance on foreign, sea-borne energy imports. Over 65 percent of India's oil and 80 percent of China's are provided by tankers which ferry crude across the Indian Ocean. India, by its centrality in the Indian Ocean, and its proximity to the Malacca Straits, has the capacity to ensure the security of its energy supplies with far greater ease than its Chinese neighbor. Both countries have been engaging in a form of maritime expansionism in the region, India enlarging its already formidable blue-water navy, and China through the outlining of the aforementioned “string of pearls” strategy.
As China expands its presence in the Indian Ocean, New Delhi is building listening posts in Mozambique, Madagascar and the Andaman Sea, and the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has become, “in the eyes of most Indian naval strategists, the number one threat in the region.”101 The heightened Sino-Indian rivalry in the Indian Ocean provides a perfect example of how one country's uncertainty in its trade expectations can become a major motivation behind regional military expansionism, which then can give birth to an arms race, increasing the chances of conflict.
The Perverse Side Effects of Institutionalization

Institutionalization has been presented in liberal theory as a means of “taming,” through binding agreements and organizations, countries' more belligerent impulses. Neoliberal institutionalists such as Robert Keohane believe that the potential for conflict is exaggerated by realists, and claim that repeated interactions propel states toward cooperation.102 Sino-Indian relations clearly demonstrate that while institutionalization certainly provides more fora for discussion, and promotes to a certain extent mutual understanding, it does not always reduce tensions in a significant manner.
Indeed, while both countries' presence in regional organizations gives more opportunities for multilateral mediation and consensus building, we have seen that it also provides them with a new arena in which to air their grievances and subtly undermine their rival's regional influence, whether it is through attempts to deny their competitor's access to organizations such, or through the launching of contending development projects.
The Intractability of Certain Disputes and the Question of Trust in International Relations

The question of trust and mistrust is fundamental when studying two states' interactions. Theoretical studies103 indicate that states are considered trustworthy by their alter egos when:
• they return cooperation and do not exploit it;
• they engage in what theorists call “costly signaling,” which means making minor but significant gestures to prove that they are worthy of trust;
• they do not then erode that trust by engaging in competitive behavior.
The faultlines and lacunae inherent to Sino-Indian cooperation in trade and regional institutions have already been addressed.
When it comes to “signaling,” it is indubitable that both states have made efforts to reduce mutual tensions by setting up joint working groups, and signing a number of CBMs (confidence building measures) and MOUs (memorandums of understanding) on a number of issues ranging from the sharing of hydrological data to the agreement to reduce troops along the border. In reality, however, the major disputes which hinder full Sino-Indian relations remain as intractable as ever. The border dispute is a prime example of the persistence of mistrust in the Sino-Indian relationship, and of how competitive behavior, in the form of arms racing, has undermined any trust-building measures or “signaling.”
Indeed, discussions have been taking place on a regular basis for years, and little, if anything, has been achieved. On September 17-19, 2008, the Indian and Chinese delegations met for their 13th round of talks on the border dispute, once again agreeing to continue the dialogue, and once again neither reporting any sign of tangible progress nor providing any indication that the two sides have narrowed their differences. Two months later, China publicly rejected Indian External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee's assertion that Arunachal Pradesh was an integral part of India, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman declaring that, “China and India have never officially settled the demarcation of the borders, and China's stance on the eastern section of China-India borders is consistent and clear-cut.”104 Although both sides have agreed to reduce their troop numbers along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), they have in fact been stealthily strengthening their military presence in the region, upgrading their infrastructure and increasing their contingents of mountain warfare crack units, while reducing the number of more conventional troops in order to abide by the CBM's quotas.
China is gradually transforming Tibet into a military stronghold, building ballistic missile silos and flooding it with PLA personnel. Indian analysts were reportedly alarmed by “the rapidity in the deployment of the additional troops in Tibet after the March 2008 riots, largely due to the new rail link and improved highways.”105 China has also extensively upgraded its infrastructure along all sectors of the LAC, and an increasing number of reports of Chinese border incursions are being relayed by the Indian press.106
India, for its part, is bolstering its defenses along the border, deploying two new mountain divisions numbering more than 15,000 men, reactivating high-altitude airfields in Ladakh, and more than 30 helipads in Arunachal Pradesh. New Dehi also has plans to improve its woefully inadequate infrastructure along the 4,700 km LAC, by building more than 600 km of roads.107
The Sino-Indian arms race reveals a profound sense of mistrust that no amount of bilateral meetings can dispel. Joint working groups and rounds of talks help create a working environment, but certain disputes remain as inexorable as ever.
The Endurance of the Positional State and the Survival of Balance-of-Power Considerations

Both countries engage in such competitive behavior because they are both “positional” states that define power above all in relation to their perception of others' “position” in the global pecking order.108 Notions of collective security are secondary; the priority is to act in pursuance of classical realist goals that consider the nation state as the prime actor in the modern world, and that therefore the defense of national interests is the number one priority.
Balance of power is an age-old theory in realist thought,109 which refers to the goal of creating a certain stability through the parity of competing forces. This article has shown that certain countries in Southeast Asia, such as Singapore, have viewed India's emergence as a major power in the region as a way of countering Chinese influence in the region. Washington's growing presence in the region, however, threatens to tip over this delicate balancing act.
As this article has shown, the US's growing dialogue with India could either undermine the process of Sino-Indian normalization, by giving the PRC the impression that the states are creating an anti-China “axis,” or could accelerate it, by encouraging the Chinese leadership to win over India in order to wean it from Washington's influence. Whether the US factor will be a source of stability or of instability in the Sino-Indian relationship remains therefore to be seen.
Conclusion

In conclusion, it would seem that a detailed analysis of Sino-Indian relations indicates that the end of the Cold War has not lessened the validity of realism. With the collapse of the bipolar system, regional heavyweights such as India and China seek to attain regional hegemony, gradually expanding their “areas of interest” until they overlap, bringing about conflict. Sino-Indian relations provide a textbook example of the potentially negative consequences of this “overlap effect.” China no longer views its sphere of influence as being solely comprised of the Asian continent's eastern periphery, and seeks to assert its dominance over the entire continent, including India's South Asian backyard. China has thus increasingly displayed what John Mearsheimer termed “offensive realism”110 in its quest for superpower status, containing India in South Asia and sidelining it from global and pan-Asian organizations, while shoring up Pakistan's military capabilities.
India's engagement of ASEAN, its efforts to promote Vietnam as a bulwark against Chinese hegemony in Southeast Asia, as well as to wrest Myanmar from China's sphere of influence; its developing of military ties with both Australia and Japan, and, last but not least, its forays into Mongolia, all point to the development of an ambitious Indian policy of counter-containment aimed at its Chinese neighbor. Slowly but surely, India is asserting itself in the Asian region, spreading its influence and reinforcing its ties beyond its traditional subcontinental sphere, making forays not only into Southeast Asia, but also beyond. The ROI is positioning itself, with the encouragement of many states in the region, as the sole Asian power capable of acting in the future as a counterweight to the Chinese juggernaut. Just as Great Britain strove during the fabled Great Game in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to prevent its tsarist Russian rival from holding sway over the entirety of Central and Northwestern Asia, India's newly elaborated China strategy, which both accompanies and checks the latter's expansion, should ensure a healthy balance of power in the region for many years to come. One can only hope, after all, that the Asian continent is large enough to harbor more than one superpower.
Acknowledgments
I would like to extend my gratitude to Asian Security's editorial team, and especially to Professor Amy Freedman, who patiently helped and encouraged me throughout the writing process.



3rd Part. Finis

[josh21x]

Notes

1. National Intelligence Council, “Mapping the Global Future” (December 2004). Available at http://www. foia.cia.gov.

2. Containment was first conceptualized by George Frost Kennan, United States Ambassador to the Soviet Union, in a long telegram addressed to President Truman in 1946. The containment theory posited that expansionist regimes such as the Soviet Union needed to be preemptively “contained,” through a careful policy of isolation and “compartmentalization” before they encroached on zones of strategic import for the United States. This article contends that China, itself an expansionist regime, has sought to stymie India's rise in the Asian theater and beyond through a classical policy of containment. New Delhi, in response, has chosen to break out of its restraints by adopting a policy of counter-containment, which mirrors that of Beijing.

3. John R. Oneal and James L. Ray, “New Tests of Democratic Peace: Controlling for Economic Interdependence: 1950-1985,” Political Research Quarterly Vol. 50 (December 2007), pp. 751-175.

4. Montesquieu, L'Esprit des Lois, tome 2 (Paris : Garnier-Flammarion Edition, 1979), p. 10.

5. Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye, Power and Interdependence, 3rd ed. (Harlow: Longman, 2000).

6. Kanwal Sibal, “India-China Relations, Some Reflections,” Indian Defence Review Vol. 23, No. 1 (January/March 2008), pp. 200-204.

7. Dale C. Copeland, “Economic Interdependence and War: A Theory of Trade Expectations,” International Security Vol. 20, No.4 (Spring 1996), pp. 5-41.

8. Copeland, “Economic Interdependence and War.”

9. Richard Rosecrance, The Rise of the Trading State: Commerce and Conquest in the Modern World (New York: Basic Books, 1987).

10. Joseph M. Grieco, “Anarchy and the Limits of Cooperation: A Realist Critique of the Newest Liberal Institutionalism”, in Neorealism and Neoliberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993).

11. The Chinese ambassador Sun Yaxi declared in a CNN/IBN interview November 13, 2006, in response to a question regarding China's position on the status of Arunachal Pradesh that “In our position, the whole of Arunachal Pradesh is Chinese territory.”

12. See http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/ind ... ncursions_ (http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/india-news/antony-plays-down-chinese-border-incursions_) 1002510.html.

13. John W. Garver, Protracted Contest, Sino-Indian Rivalry in the Twentieth Century (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2001), p. 189.

14. Philom ne Robin, “La Chine face aux Tensions Indo-Pakistanaises,” Le Monde Chinois, No. 2 (Ete-Automne 2004), pp. 53-72.

15. J. Mohan Malik, “ India and China: Bound to Collide?,” in P. R. Kumaraswamy, ed., Security Beyond Survival (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2004), p. 134.

16. Mohan Malik, “ India and China,” p. 135.

17. Quoted by Sudha Ramachandra, in “India Frets as China and Pakistan Embrace,” Asia Times Online, November 8, 2005. Available at http://www.asiatimes.com.

18. Mohan Malik, “India and China?,” p. 134.

19. These particular examples will be examined in more detail later on.

20. Tiarique Niazi, “Thunder in Sino-Pakistani Relations,” China Brief, September 4, 2006.

21. Garver, Protracted Contest, p. 189.

22. D. S. Rajan, “China: Revisiting the 2005 Friendship Treaty with Pakistan”, December 10, 2006, Paper No. 2058, South Asia Analysis Group. Available at http://www.saag.org. Joint Statement issued in November 2006 available at http://www.chinaembassy.org.in/eng/sgxw ... 282045.htm (http://www.chinaembassy.org.in/eng/sgxw/2006en/t282045.htm).

23. China opened its economy to the world under Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970s, while India only really began its process of economic liberalization after the disastrous 1991 financial crisis.

24. C. Raja Mohan, Crossing the Rubicon, The Shaping of India's New Foreign Policy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan), p. 221.

25. With the notable exception of Malaysia. The ASEAN countries' skill in exploiting Sino-Indian rivalry in Southeast Asia to their advantage is something I will elaborate on when I discuss India's Look East policy.

26. J. Mohan Malik, “China's Strategy of Containing India,” Power and Interest News Report, February 6, 2007. Available at http://www.pinr.com.

27. Mohan Malik, “China's Strategy of Containing India.”

28. Mohan Malik, “India and China,” p. 142.

29. “A Shared Vision for the 21st Century.” Retrieved February 2008 from http://www.meaindia.nic.in/.

30. J. Mohan Malik, “The India-China Divide.” Available at http://www.arts.monash.edu.

31. Ashley J. Tellis, “China and India in Asia,” in F. R. Frankel and H. Harding, eds., The India-China Relationship, What the United States Needs to Know (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Press, 2004).

32. B. Raman, “Indian Ocean, China's Strategic Triangle,” Indian Defence Review Vol. 22, No. 2, pp. 145-151.

33. Raman, “Indian Ocean.”

34. This is due to a mounting wariness of the isolationist Burmese regime towards what it perceives to be a potentially excessive Chinese influence in the local politics and economy and also to the increasing success of India in foiling Chinese inroads into Myanmar.

35. B. Raman, “Indian Ocean, China's Strategic Triangle,” Indian Defence Review Vol. 22, No. 2 (April-June 2007), pp. 145-151.

36. Mohan Malik “China's Strategy of Containing India.”

37. Lord Curzon was the British Viceroy to India from 1899 to 1905. Despite being viewed in India as a symbol of British Imperialism and held responsible for the partition of Bengal, he is also perceived as a visionary by a section of the Indian foreign policymaking elite, most notably in his 1909 essay “The Place of India in the Empire” in which he lauds India's centrality in the Asian continent as well as its potential as a major power in the region, provided that it maintains a strong naval presence in the Indian Ocean and that it keeps its buffer zones in Southeast Asia and Tiber intact. Indian members of the Curzonian school, such as Jaswant Singh for example, believe in resurrecting the Curzonian vision of Indian greatness in the region.

38. Vikram Sood, “India in the Neighbourhood,” Indian Defence Review Vol. 22, No. 1 (January-March 2007),

39. Raja Mohan, “After Nathu-La India faces Chinese Challenge in Bhutan,” Indian Express, July 9, 2006.

40. Anindya Batabyal, “Balancing China in Asia: A Realist Assessment of India's Look East Strategy,” China Report Vol. 42, No. 2 (2006), pp. 179-197.

41. Stephen P. Cohen, India: Emerging Power (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 2001), p. 254.

42. Raja C. Mohan, “Impossible Allies: Nuclear India, the United States and the Global Order,” India Research Press (September 2006), p. 2.

43. Quoted by Ashley J. Tellis, “The Evolution of US-Indian Ties. Missile Defense in an Emerging Strategic Relationship,” International Security, Vol. 30, No.4 (Spring 2006), pp. 113-151.

44. Condoleezza Rice, “Campaign 2000: Promoting the National Interest,” Foreign Affairs Vol. 79, No. 1 (January/February 2000).

45. C. Christine Fair, The Counterterror Coalitions: Cooperation with Pakistan and India (Rand Corporation, p. 82).

46. Jaswant Singh's Interview by Margaret Warner on PBS News Hour, October 1, 2001.

47. Under the new appellation NMD or National Missile Defense Relationship.

48. Tellis, “The Evolution of US-Indian Ties,” pp. 113-151.

49. Conversation with Srikanth Kondapalli in New Delhi on June 21, 2007.

50. Tellis, “The Evolution of US-Indian Ties,” pp. 113-151.

51. Daniel Twining, “America's Grand Design in Asia,” The Washington Quarterly Vol. 30, No. 3 (Summer 2007), pp. 79-94.

52. Nicolas Blarel, Inde et Israël: Le Rapprochement Strat gique. Pragmatisme et compl mentarit (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2006), p. 95.

53. Colonel Steve Soboto, Indo-US Military Cooperation Taking Stock, 2004. Available at http://www.faoa.org/journal/sboto 1203.html.

54. Seena Sirchi, “The Sixth Power,” Outlook, September 22, 2008, p. 40.

55. Mohan, “Impossible Allies,” p. 217.

56. “China Flays Indo-US Nuclear Deal,” Press Trust of India, November 7, 2005. Available at http://www. indiamonitor.com.

57. At the time this article is being written, much of these accusations of Chinese duplicity during the debates at the NSG are based on hearsay and off-the-record declarations by Indian negotiators. The actual details of what went down remain confidential. It would seem however that the Chinese delegation, through the threat of procedural delays and the discreet lobbying of the countries initially not sympathetic to the deal, made a last-ditch attempt to scupper, or at least stall the deal.

58. Siddarth Varadarajan, “Four-power meeting drew Chinese d marche,” The Hindu, June 14, 2007.

59. Quoted in Varadarajan, “Four-power meeting.”

60. Brahma Chellaney, “China Seeks to Stem India's Budding Military Ties with the US,” The International Herald Tribune, January 19, 2002.

61. Quoted by Ashley Tellis in India as a New Global Power: An Action Agenda for the United States (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, July 2005), p. 36.

62. Uday Bhaskar, quoted by Edward Alden in “A New Friend in Asia,” The Financial Times, August 21, 2001.

63. Harry Harding, “The Evolution of the Strategic Triangle: China, India and the US,” in F. R. Frankel and H. Harding, eds., The India China Relationship, What the US Needs to Know (Washington DC: Woodrow Wilson Press, 2004).

64. Christophe Jaffrelot, “Le Pari Am ricain,” Le Monde Diplomatique, Mani re de Voir: R veil de l'Inde No. 94 (Ao t-Septembre 2007), pp. 66-69.

65. Expression coined by Bharat Karnad to explain India's military ties with Vietnam in “Enemy's Enemy is a Friend,” October 3, 2005. Available at http://www.expressindia.com.

66. Zhao Hong, “India's Changing Relations with ASEAN: From China's Perspective,” Journal of East Asian Affairs Vol. 20, No. 2 (Fall/Winter 2006).

67. See http://www.photius.com/countries/india/ ... _asia.html (http://www.photius.com/countries/india/government/india_government_southeast_asia.html).

68. Anindya Batabyal, “Balancing China in Asia: A Realist Assessment of India's Look East Strategy,” China Report Vol. 42, No. 2 (2006), pp. 179-197.

69. Christophe Jaffrelot, “India's Look East Strategy: An Asianist Strategy in Perspective,” India Review, Vol. 2 No. 2 (April 2003), pp. 35-68.

70. Jaswant Singh notably declared that India's “stabilising footprint … spread from Malacca to Central Asia … to the shores of Australia.” See Jaswant Singh's Interview with Business Standard New Delhi, August 13, 1999, available at http://www.indianembasusy.org; Manmohan Singh, “PM's Address at the Combined Commanders Conference,” October 24, 2004, available at http://pmindia.nic.in/speech/content.asp?id=37.

71. Zhao Hong, “India and China: Rivals or Partners in Southeast Asia?” Contemporary Southeast Asia: A Journal of International and Strategic Affairs Vol. 29, No. 1 (April 2007), pp. 121-142.

72. Quoted by Batabyal in “Balancing China in Asia.”

73. Mohan Malik, “India and China.”

74. Stephen Ulph, “Threat of Maritime Terrorism Persists in Southeast Asia,” Global Terrorism Analysis, June 10, 2005. Available at http://www.jamestown.org.

75. Southern Philippines Backgrounder: Terrorism and the Peace Process, International Crisis Group Asia Report, July 13, 2004. Available at http://www.crisisgroup.org.

76. Arabinda Acharya, “India and Southeast Asia in the Age of Terror: Building Partnerships for Peace,” Contemporary Southeast Asia: A Journal of International and Strategic Affairs Vol. 28, No. 2 (August 2006), pp. 297-321.

77. Subhash Kapila, “India-Vietnam Strategic Partnership: The Convergence of Interests”, January 2, 2001. Available at http://saag.org/papers.

78. The Indian Ministry of External Affairs' annual report, January 1, 2003 to March 31, 2004, p. 45, available at http://www.indianembassy.org/policy/For ... 4/2004.pdf (http://www.indianembassy.org/policy/Foreign_Policy/2004/2004.pdf)

79. Kapila, “India-Vietnam Strategic Partnership.”

80. Defense Minister George Fernandes, a fervent supporter of the Myanmarese Democratic Movement, refused to take part in any of the rapprochement process.

81. Special Correspondent, “Myanmar to act against anti-India groups,” The Hindu, October 26, 2004.

82. During Shri Arun Jaitley, Minister of Commerce and Industry's visit to Myanmar, accompanied by a seven-member official delegation, on July 14-16, 2003. Currently Indo-Burmese trade is growing, but slower than expected, and only reached $650 million in the year 2006-07. Syed Ali Mutjaba, “India-Myanmar Trade Relations”, July 23, 2007. Available at http://www.globalpolitician.com.

83. L. K. Choudhary, “Indo-Myanmar Relations: Retrospect and Prospect,” India Quarterly, Vol. LXI, No. 4 (October-December 2005).

84. Until recently more than 80% of Burmese military equipment was of Chinese origin. See R. Hariharan “India-China-Myanmar Relations,” July 21, 2007 . Available at http://www.newdelhireview.com.

85. Conversation with Major General Dipankar Banerjee (Retd) in New Delhi on June 19, 2007.

86. Conversation with Srikanth Kondapalli in New Delhi on June 19, 2007.

87. V. P. Dutt, India's Foreign Policy Since Independence (Delhi: National Book Trust, 2007), p. 221.

88. On several occasions during Koizumi's tenure, the Japanese government demanded more transparency from the Chinese authorities in the detailing of its defense budget attributions, revealing Japan's increasing concern over the spectacular rise in Chinese military expenditures. China, for its part, was infuriated by Prime MinisterKoizumi's insistence on visiting the Yasukuni shrine honoring Japanese World War II veterans, and in the spring of 2005, several major Chinese cities were swept by a series of rabidly anti-Japanese riots.

89. “India's Trade Partners: Japan Overview.” Available athttp://indiaonestop.com/tradepartners/japan/japan overview.html.

90. “Australian Navy, Indian Navy to Break Ice at Port Blair Exercise,” December 30, 20/07. Available at http://www.india-defence.com.

91. “Australia Inks First Defence Pact with India, Maritime Ties Focus,” March 7, 2006. Available at http://www.india-defence.com.

92. Quoted by Amit Baruah in “India Seeks to Allay Chinese fears,” Hindustan Times, June 25, 2007.

93. “India, United States, Japan and Australia to Hold Extensive Naval Exercises in September.” Available at http://www.india-defence.com.

94. Steve Herman, “US Official Reassures China on India Naval Discussions.” August 24, 2007 Available at http://tvtokyo.com/steve.html.

95. Rahul Bedi, “Defence Ties with Mongolia Expanded,” August 9, 2007. Available at http://www.tribuneindia.com.

96. Bedi, “Defence ties with Mongolia expanded.”

97. Pallavi Ayar, “India Urges China to Redress Trade Imbalance,” January 12, 2008. Available at http://www. thehindubusinessline.com.

98. China is notorious for its lack of transparency in the detailing of its military expenditures, often omitting to report spending in areas such as R&D, logistics and foreign acquisitions. China's real expenditures may be up to twice the published figures and amounting to at least $58 billion, have now overtaken those of Japan.

99. John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: Norton, 2003), p. 55.

100. Dale C. Copeland, “ Economic Interdependence and War: A Theory of Trade Expectations,” International Security Vol. 20, No. 4 (Spring 1996), pp. 5-41.

101. Interview of Commander Gurpreet Khurana, IDSA, New Delhi, September 2008.

102. R. Keohane, “International Institutions: Two Approaches,” International Studies Quarterly Vol. 32 (1988), pp. 379-396.

103. See Andrew H. Kydd, Trust and Mistrust in International Relations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005).

104. Quoted by Sudhir Chadda in “China Claims Arunachal Pradesh,” November 11, 2008. Available at http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/20273.asp.

105. Manu Pabhy, “China Troop Build-up, Tibet Upgrade Impacts Our Security, says Army Chief,” July 4, 2008. Available at http://www.indianexpress.com.

106. These reports are often unconfirmed or denied by the Indian military however. One such example: Saurabh Shukla, “Passive-Aggressive,” India Today, New Delhi, November 17, 2008, p. 16.

107. Vivek Raghuvanshi, “India to Bolster Defenses along China Border,” April 23, 2008. Available at http://www.defensenews.com.

108. Joseph M. Grieco, “Anarchy and the Limits of Cooperation: A Realist Critique of the Newest Liberal Institutionalism,” Neorealism and Neoliberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993).

109. It could be arguably be traced back, as a theory of international diplomacy, and not merely as a pragmatic consideration, to the works of Grotius and Hume.

110. John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, p. 5.

[josh21x]

Interestin read , also I am suprised to see India as SPINE! pleasently suprised!

[josh21x]

So for India, it is Mongolia, Australia, Myanmar,Sout Korea Japan, Vietnam and US for now
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a911807510~db=all?bios=true
Da Link

[Ordie]

I hate "Dragon" metaphor because it's overused and it frames the reader into an emotional response.

I hate long journal articles written from India.

I fell asleep after the first paragraph.

[jamber]

How can a guy read the whole article without falling asleep:roll:

[Mu-Meson]

Too long. Can someone sum it up for me in a handful of easy to understand bullet points, or preferably a humorous cartoon sketch?

[a_very_ex_STAB]

Just wondering if the Indians call the Chinese 'the Dragon' all the time do the chinkies have a similarly annoying term for the Indians?

[Jaegermeister + Red Bull]

I hate "Dragon" metaphor because it's overused and it frames the reader into an emotional response.

I hate long journal articles written from India.

I fell asleep after the first paragraph.

Hmm, he/she reminds me of your number 1 fanboi/cyber stalker Adux...

p-)

[Jaegermeister + Red Bull]

Just wondering if the Indians call the Chinese 'the Dragon' all the time do the chinkies have a similarly annoying term for the Indians?

As far as I can remember the term used was "Ah Cha" in baihua speaking areas (Cantonese for the pinyin challenged) of SE China.

Not sure its origins or how it got into the common vernacular of the region.

[Lala_Peace]

Just wondering if the Indians call the Chinese 'the Dragon' all the time do the chinkies have a similarly annoying term for the Indians? Yeh....., Tiger.

[Lala_Peace]

Ordie's Avatar Join Date: May 2006 Location: USS Never Dock Age: 42 Posts: 10,189 Default I hate "Dragon" metaphor because it's overused and it frames the reader into an emotional response. I hate long journal articles written from India. I fell asleep after the first paragraph. Yeh...yeh...very right. Chinese should also stop Dragon dance. It is centuries now they are dancing with the same mask. They should do something different. Indians are waiting.......so that in next article we will use that.

[brandenvonbeneckendorff]

Yeh....., Tiger.


lol... u wish.... u r called

ASAN (Ah-sun)

in mandarin Chinese....

and its used in microsoft pinyin chinese input as a chinese vocab, type 'asan' it automatically generates 阿三。。。。no need to find the right characters... lol,,,,

or

ACHA (Ah-chah)

(mostly in cantonese)

etc.

[3rdMillhouse]

Holy God, that's a big mother****ing article.

[Lala_Peace]

lol... u wish.... u r called ASAN (Ah-sun) in mandarin Chinese.... or ACHA (Ah-chah) (mostly in cantonese) etc. Sure.... you don't know... It is because you whine a lot. Just stop that you can grow your Gk.

[brandenvonbeneckendorff]

Sure.... you don't know... It is because you whine a lot. Just stop that you can grow your Gk.

wow,,, i dont man, bt my friends use that word very very often.. no matter where ur from, as long as ur ethnic chinese, ppl just call u Asan, malaysian chinese, singaporeans, taiwanese...

[Lala_Peace]

no matter where ur from, As I can remember I have mentioned my location..........as India....Yeh..I am sure about it.

[TheMiddlePath]

Just wondering if the Indians call the Chinese 'the Dragon' all the time do the chinkies have a similarly annoying term for the Indians?


Keling

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Jump to: navigation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keling#column-one), search (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keling#searchInput)
Keling (****ounced /kling/) is a word used to describe Indians (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-resident_Indian_and_Person_of_Indian_Origin) or Hindus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindus) in Malaysia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia)[1] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keling#cite_note-0) and Singapore (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singapore) (more specifically, Malaysian Indians (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysian_Indian) and Singaporean Indians (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indians_in_Singapore). It is now generally considered offensive by Indians,[2] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keling#cite_note-nw-1) although it may often be used by other communities in Malaysia without any derogatory intention.
The origin of the term is rooted in the former cultural and economic influence of the Kalinga (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalinga_(India)) kingdom over south east Asian kingdoms.[2] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keling#cite_note-nw-1) India was then referred to by the Malays (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malay_people) as benua keling. Sejarah Melayu (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sejarah_Melayu) (the Annals of Malay history), written in the 15th century, used the term keling to refer to India and traced the origin of Malay sultans to Indian princes. In its early usage, the term was not considered offensive or derogatory.
However, the term may be in used even earlier as there is a Kalingga Kingdom ruling around 7th century.[3] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keling#cite_note-2). Chinese sources mention this kingdom (Holing) as the centre for Buddha scholar around 604. The most famous Kalingga ruler is Ratu Sima. Later this kingdom was replaced by Mataram.
Since the late 20th century, the term keling has been regarded as offensive by many Indians. Economic hardship and a high crime rate in the Indian community in Malaysia has led to the term being used in a derogatory manner.

The word keling is used since 15th century within the Malay community to mean "Indian", but in todays multi-racial settings the term has become politically incorrect. Keling was recently used by Members of Parliament in Malaysia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliament_of_Malaysia), resulting in uproar by the Malaysian community accusing the MPs of racism.[4] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keling#cite_note-3) Popular usage in Malaysia also suggests a tone of general disrespect to Indian Malaysians. This derogatory term is uttered in the same way African Americans (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American) are called ******s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/******) and Indigenous Australians (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_Australians) are called abos (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/abo).
The phrase janji keling (janji being "promise" in Malay (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malay_language)) is sometimes used by people of Malay-speaking communities (regardless of race) to refer to a liar, someone who gives conflicting statements, or, more commonly, someone who changes their minds and decisions often. Considered offensive, this term is comparable to the North American (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_America) English expression Indian giver (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_giver) (although referring to different types of "Indians") or the English expression "to welsh", meaning to fail to honour a bet.

More details on Ke-Ling
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keling

[a_very_ex_STAB]

Keling

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Jump to: navigation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keling#column-one), search (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keling#searchInput)
Keling (****ounced /kling/) is a word used to describe Indians (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-resident_Indian_and_Person_of_Indian_Origin) or Hindus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindus) in Malaysia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia)[1] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keling#cite_note-0) and Singapore (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singapore) (more specifically, Malaysian Indians (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysian_Indian) and Singaporean Indians (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indians_in_Singapore). It is now generally considered offensive by Indians,[2] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keling#cite_note-nw-1) although it may often be used by other communities in Malaysia without any derogatory intention.
The origin of the term is rooted in the former cultural and economic influence of the Kalinga (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalinga_%28India%29) kingdom over south east Asian kingdoms.[2] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keling#cite_note-nw-1) India was then referred to by the Malays (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malay_people) as benua keling. Sejarah Melayu (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sejarah_Melayu) (the Annals of Malay history), written in the 15th century, used the term keling to refer to India and traced the origin of Malay sultans to Indian princes. In its early usage, the term was not considered offensive or derogatory.
However, the term may be in used even earlier as there is a Kalingga Kingdom ruling around 7th century.[3] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keling#cite_note-2). Chinese sources mention this kingdom (Holing) as the centre for Buddha scholar around 604. The most famous Kalingga ruler is Ratu Sima. Later this kingdom was replaced by Mataram.
Since the late 20th century, the term keling has been regarded as offensive by many Indians. Economic hardship and a high crime rate in the Indian community in Malaysia has led to the term being used in a derogatory manner.

The word keling is used since 15th century within the Malay community to mean "Indian", but in todays multi-racial settings the term has become politically incorrect. Keling was recently used by Members of Parliament in Malaysia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliament_of_Malaysia), resulting in uproar by the Malaysian community accusing the MPs of racism.[4] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keling#cite_note-3) Popular usage in Malaysia also suggests a tone of general disrespect to Indian Malaysians. This derogatory term is uttered in the same way African Americans (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American) are called ******s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/******) and Indigenous Australians (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_Australians) are called abos (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/abo).
The phrase janji keling (janji being "promise" in Malay (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malay_language)) is sometimes used by people of Malay-speaking communities (regardless of race) to refer to a liar, someone who gives conflicting statements, or, more commonly, someone who changes their minds and decisions often. Considered offensive, this term is comparable to the North American (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_America) English expression Indian giver (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_giver) (although referring to different types of "Indians") or the English expression "to welsh", meaning to fail to honour a bet.

More details on Ke-Ling
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keling

Thanks
I don't know why but I always find these cultural issues interesting.

[Lala_Peace]

Originally Posted by a_very_ex_STAB View Post Just wondering if the Indians call the Chinese 'the Dragon' all the time do the chinkies have a similarly annoying term for the Indians? In India,generally the use of the word, 'chinkies' are considered as derogatory. To an Indian Dragons are powerful creatures and that stops there. We don't use that as an effort of bad mouthing Chinese.
Keling From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search Keling (****ounced /kling/) is a word used to describe Indians or Hindus in Malaysia[1] and Singapore (more specifically, Malaysian Indians and Singaporean Indians. It is now generally considered offensive by Indians,[2] although it may often be used by other communities in Malaysia without any derogatory intention. The origin of the term is rooted in the former cultural and economic influence of the Kalinga kingdom over south east Asian kingdoms.[2] India was then referred to by the Malays as benua keling. Sejarah Melayu (the Annals of Malay history), written in the 15th century, used the term keling to refer to India and traced the origin of Malay sultans to Indian princes. In its early usage, the term was not considered offensive or derogatory. However, the term may be in used even earlier as there is a Kalingga Kingdom ruling around 7th century.[3]. Chinese sources mention this kingdom (Holing) as the centre for Buddha scholar around 604. The most famous Kalingga ruler is Ratu Sima. Later this kingdom was replaced by Mataram. Since the late 20th century, the term keling has been regarded as offensive by many Indians. Economic hardship and a high crime rate in the Indian community in Malaysia has led to the term being used in a derogatory manner. The word keling is used since 15th century within the Malay community to mean "Indian", but in todays multi-racial settings the term has become politically incorrect. Keling was recently used by Members of Parliament in Malaysia, resulting in uproar by the Malaysian community accusing the MPs of racism.[4] Popular usage in Malaysia also suggests a tone of general disrespect to Indian Malaysians. This derogatory term is uttered in the same way African Americans are called ******s and Indigenous Australians are called abos. The phrase janji keling (janji being "promise" in Malay) is sometimes used by people of Malay-speaking communities (regardless of race) to refer to a liar, someone who gives conflicting statements, or, more commonly, someone who changes their minds and decisions often. Considered offensive, this term is comparable to the North American English expression Indian giver (although referring to different types of "Indians") or the English expression "to welsh", meaning to fail to honour a bet. More details on Ke-Ling http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keling Serious effort to find an offensive word for Indians!!!! But, the effort is a failure as all are Indian origins not exactly Indians.

[P.Koschei]

The apuneh are all fart and no **** lah.

[Shuimo]

Well, the DRAGON has awakened!
It is already too late to bring it into line! I guess?

[Shuimo]

Dragon is every bit a good thing for the Chinese!
WE are proud to be dragon offsrping!

[Ordie]

Dragons are a myth.

[Jaegermeister + Red Bull]

Dragons are a myth.

We are in agreement here.

:)

[ggk]

so whats the summary? this wall of word are making me dizzy.

of topic.

LOL on the name calling.....steer away from that please.

[t90_india]

Dragons are a myth.
Very much true.

[t90_india]

Dragon will be at bay......




WE STAND TALL.http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/picture.php?albumid=434&pictureid=14143

[t90_india]

http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/picture.php?albumid=434&pictureid=14157

[Ordie]

^^^^^
The irony here is that tanks are useless for any pending conflict with China/India along thier respective borders.

[Shuimo]

^^^^^
The irony here is that tanks are useless for any pending conflict with China/India along thier respective borders.

What about missiles?rofl

[Ordie]

What about missiles?rofl

If China wants to unite the Indian people and the democratic community of nations against China.........go ahead.

[Lala_Peace]

What about missiles? Those are precisely to keep each other at bay.

[Shuimo]

If China wants to unite the Indian people and the democratic community of nations against China.........go ahead.

Hhahhah, deterrence only!roflrofl

[Hialeah]

If hostilities would break out would the Indian forces be able to fair well? I know China has some air power issues but that seem inconsequential in a mountain environment.

[Lala_Peace]

If China wants to unite the Indian people..... Ordie, thanks for the concern, but people like you should stop hyphenating India with Pakistan. Do you think Indian's are divided and it needs threat of China will unite them. That is ridiculous....

[Lala_Peace]

If hostilities would break out would the Indian forces be able to fair well? I know China has some air power issues but that seem inconsequential in a mountain environment. That will be seen when we are actually face to face. I don't think any one of these countries are ready to face each other. As an Indian I can assure you that India has moved ahead of 1961. So also China, that's why we have around 50 billion dollar of bilateral trade among us.

[t90_india]

Hhahhah, deterrence only!roflrofl
I cant believe the present day PRC is a decendant of the mighty ming empire...not even close. PRC is more base on propoganda than honour, as was in the case of ming empire.

[ASAT]

WE STAND TALL.

apparently
http://img81.imageshack.us/img81/3173/252i.jpg

[hulaku]

apparently
http://img81.imageshack.us/img81/3173/252i.jpg

These are our brave Sikh wannabe soldiers at a recruitment camp.

Please read

Sikhs make up 10–15% of all ranks in the Indian army and 20% of its officers, whilst Sikhs only forming 1.87% of the Indian population, which makes them over 10 times more likely to be a soldier and officer in the Indian Army than the average Indian.[/URL]


Also to know more about Sikhs please go to link below

[URL]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikh (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikh#cite_note-59)

[Shuimo]

rofl
Ordie, thanks for the concern, but people like you should stop hyphenating India with Pakistan. Do you think Indian's are divided and it needs threat of China will unite them. That is ridiculous....

Weell, you are yet to have a better understanding of American mentality, particularly someone with a record in the US army!rofl

[Ordie]

rofl

Weell, you are yet to have a better understanding of American mentality, particularly someone with a record in the US army!rofl

US Navy

Unlike you, I served my country and understand the perils and consequences of warfare.

If a war breaks out between India and China, I expect you to be the first one to join the PLA.

If not, your words in advocating conflict and threats are meaningless and empty like the rest of your compatriots on this website.

Note: For every 100 volunteers into the Indian Armed Forces, only one is selected.

[Hialeah]

rofl

Weell, you are yet to have a better understanding of American mentality, particularly someone with a record in the US army!rofl

I'm surprised you are not jumping on the fact that Pakistan and China are bosom buddies.

[hulaku]

US Navy

Note: For every 100 volunteers into the Indian Armed Forces, only one is selected.

Can you please provide the source for this information?

[Ordie]

Can you please provide the source for this information?

I've read it in a US Naval Proceedings publication a while back.

[Soldat_Américain]

Awesome fact Ordie...and Shuimo considering you are of like sized populations and the Indians having once been part of the British Empire whose other states seem to have amazing militaries: Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa...I think you might freakin' get your balls handed to you in a lunch sack.

[Shuimo]

US Navy

Unlike you, I served my country and understand the perils and consequences of warfare.

If a war breaks out between India and China, I expect you to be the first one to join the PLA.

If not, your words in advocating conflict and threats are meaningless and empty like the rest of your compatriots on this website.

Note: For every 100 volunteers into the Indian Armed Forces, only one is selected.

Wow, Ordie, yr concern for me just goes way too out of the way!:bash:

But you are absolutely right, all of us here on this forum are doing nothing but merely ranting, and very bad rants!rofl


We know this too well!rofl

There is this Chinese saying: Empty talk puts a nation astray, while industrious work brings it to booming （空谈误国，实干兴邦）!roflrofl

Let us all walk the walk, not talk the talk! woot:bash:

[hulaku]

I've read it in a US Naval Proceedings publication a while back.


Going by your info out of 100 people who want to join the Indian Army only 1 is selected.

The strength of the Indian Army is around 1.1 million.

So 110 million people wanted to join the Army as per your info.

And we are not talking about people wanting to join the Air Force, Navy, Para Military.

Being an Indian in India I dont really think so:)

[hulaku]

Wow, Ordie, yr concern for me just goes way too out of the way!:bash:

But you are absolutely right, all of us here on this forum are doing nothing but merely ranting, and very bad rants!rofl


We know this too well!rofl

There is this Chinese saying: Empty talk puts a nation astray, while industrious work brings it to booming （空谈误国，实干兴邦）!roflrofl

Let us all walk the walk, not talk the talk! woot:bash:

Yo Donger go easy on the emoticons!

[Shuimo]

Yo Donger go easy on the emoticons!
Feel jealousy of my donger?rofl

[hulaku]

Feel jealousy of my donger?rofl

It should read "are you jealous of my really microscopic donger?"

[Shuimo]

rofl
It should read "are you jealous of my really microscopic donger?"


Jealousy so commonly seen in the world is a disease unknow to us Chinese!:roll:

[Soldat_Américain]

right...I call bs on that one

[P.Koschei]

Awesome fact Ordie...and Shuimo considering you are of like sized populations and the Indians having once been part of the British Empire whose other states seem to have amazing militaries: Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa...I think you might freakin' get your balls handed to you in a lunch sack.

Zimbabwe was also once part of the British Empire as well, and more recently to boot... The Indians have already been tested and found wanting.

[Soldat_Américain]

Zimbabwe was also once part of the British Empire as well, and more recently to boot... The Indians have already been tested and found wanting.

Yeah but Rhodesia hasn't been that good in military deal for awhile.

[pg_ord]

Zimbabwe was also once part of the British Empire as well, and more recently to boot... The Indians have already been tested and found wanting.
Aha.... reminding Indians of 1962 and also comparing to Indians to Zimbabweans great :roll:

[Holmes85]

Well, at least be thankful for the Himalaya Mountains, for without them there would likely be increased tensions with all those tanks as well as ground troops. However, I can only imagine the thoughts and feeling going through the people of Nepal and Bhutan in the case of all those missiles and nukes existing between India and China. If they are ever launched, they'll literally be caught in the middle of a shooting gallery. Just imagine how Britain felt being stuck between the U.S. and USSR during the Cold War with all the Nuclear Missiles pointed at each other, especially the idea of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) was being employed. These type of situations and policies just seem to increase tensions between the two nations involved as well as bringing other nations not involved into the situation itself in order to ensure their survival, since nobody wants to be caught out in the open by themselves when the shooting starts.

[Twelve]

This perceived threat coming from China is overly exagerated. the western media had a habbit of making things look bad than what they truly are in reality in an attempt to influence people and make them believe what they want them to believe.

Trying to get India and China to fight each other is an attempt by the United States to preserve its influence in regions where other nations are supposed to have more rights

[ggk]

Going by your info out of 100 people who want to join the Indian Army only 1 is selected.

The strength of the Indian Army is around 1.1 million.

So 110 million people wanted to join the Army as per your info.

And we are not talking about people wanting to join the Air Force, Navy, Para Military.

Being an Indian in India I dont really think so:)

lol man...you didnt get it

[hulaku]

lol man...you didnt get it


Please explain? I was couple of drinks down when I wrote thatp-)

[Jiggy]

This perceived threat coming from China is overly exagerated. the western media had a habbit of making things look bad than what they truly are in reality in an attempt to influence people and make them believe what they want them to believe.

Trying to get India and China to fight each other is an attempt by the United States to preserve its influence in regions where other nations are supposed to have more rights
cool story, chicom bro.

[ggk]

the ratio cant be be use that way, you should know this is simply math.

[hulaku]

the ratio cant be be use that way, you should know this is simply math.

I always sucked at Maths but please explain so that i do not commit the same mistake again:-(

[ggk]

I always sucked at Maths but please explain so that i do not commit the same mistake again:-(

oh its not a mistake, just misunderstanding. I had the same impression too at first.

my guess is the 1:100 data probably can only be use once in the said recruitment only (which he (ordie) didnt mention when or which unit). This very recruitment probably have this ratio ...the next recruitment probably dont...therefor you cant use this ratio for the whole army.

:)










im sucks at math too. Ordie should explain.

[Ordie]

It is the case that there are more volunteers into the Indian Armed Forces than actual slots availble for them to fill.

As a result, few are selected for enlistment through an elimination process.

[SBL]

Trying to get India and China to fight each other is an attempt by the United States to preserve its influence in regions where other nations are supposed to have more rights
At this I'd say you have a pretty poor grasp on the concepts of nationalism, and regional competition for resources & influence.

Where are you posting from, if you don't mind me asking?

[josh21x]

Zimbabwe was also once part of the British Empire as well, and more recently to boot... The Indians have already been tested and found wanting.


Oh, found wantin! We lost 1962 alrigth, You can thank our Politicians for usin NO AIRFORCE, when we could have and Chinese coiuldnt have!furthermore before we counter attacked, Chinese went back to their poistions givin up everythin they ained, I wonder WHY:roll:, but we lost whatever the reason maybe! But we found the Chinese wantin in 1967 Nathu La and 1988, and also in Sikkim! We sit on terroitory you claim not vice versa, so come get it

[Nansouty]

so whats the summary? this wall of word are making me dizzy.


Nearly unreadable for want of intertitles and real paragraphs, but I'm curious, so...

(giving the author's opinion, not mine, though I agree on a lot of points)

The article says that the current thinking, after which China and India will improve relations over their current 40 bn $ tradi, is illusory, as Imdia has a huge trade deficit, and furthermore trades raw materials for manufactured goods.

Conscious of the problem, the Chinese have been trying to contain India via encirclement alliances : Pakistan (ties are likely to remain rock solid over decades, after China's part in making Pakistan a nuclear power), Nepal and Burma). These, especially Pakistan, are distracting Indian resources from what is taking part in the Indian ocean (the Chinese "string of pearls"). China is likely trying to undermine India's influence by inflicting several diplomatic humiliations, and preventing India's accession to the UNSC.

The Indians are responding in kind :
- they are strenghtening ties with the USA, and their regional allies ( Japan, Australia). This has geined them the acceptation of their nuclear status, while China has been unable to do the same for Pakistan.
- they are trying to go for a counter encirclement alliance, with Mongolia and especially Viet Nam, which they helped increase its naval forces readiness.
- they are trying to disrupt Chinese influence in Burma, by favorising competing economical projects.

In conclusion, we are seeing the emergence of coherent rival alliance systems in South and South East Asia. Whether it will be beneficial or detrimental for India depends on its capability to take advantage of its diplomatic successes to wrench concessions from the PRC, otherwise it will be get stuck in the part of America's sherif in the region.

[josh21x]

India just by te virtue of a its geographical existence in itself is a counter balance to China, IT is a unsinkable aircraft carrier juttin into the Indian Ocean,. China can never change that!!

[Ordie]

India just by te virtue of a its geographical existence in itself is a counter balance to China, IT is a unsinkable aircraft carrier juttin into the Indian Ocean,. China can never change that!!

Mussolini once said something similar in regards to Italy. British carrier based bi-planes later sank the Italian navy at Taranto.

[josh21x]

Mussolini once said something similar in regards to Italy. British carrier based bi-planes later sank the Italian navy at Taranto.

Wit Respects!

India,s Is NO Italy.

[Mousepad]

Wit Respects!

India,s Is NO Italy.

It looks like ***** too p-)

[Holmes85]

Does this current situation involving India and China kind of remind you of the Cold War or is it just me?

[josh21x]

Does this current situation involving India and China kind of remind you of the Cold War or is it just me?


O Yes it does, It is India, US, Vietnam, Japan, Australia, Singapore, Mongolia and South Korea.

verses

China, Nepal and Pakistan as of now!

[Ordie]

Wit Respects!

India,s Is NO Italy.

But you share the same same degree of hubris.

Besides...the leader of your ruling political parrty is Italian.

[Holmes85]

O Yes it does, It is India, US, Vietnam, Japan, Australia, Singapore, Mongolia and South Korea.

verses

China, Nepal and Pakistan as of now!

I guess North Korea is the Wild card then.

[josh21x]

But you share the same same degree of hubris.

Besides...the leader of your ruling political parrty is Italian.

O, No We dont, India is not some Facist country like pre-war Italy or current victim Imperalist Chinese!

She is an Indian, or are you really American yourself or Argentine?

[josh21x]

I guess North Korea is the Wild card then.


Not if they nuke China first..lol..You are right forgot to add them

[Kadrun]

rofl


Jealousy so commonly seen in the world is a disease unknow to us Chinese!:roll:

cool story comrad

[pg_ord]

But you share the same same degree of hubris.

Besides...the leader of your ruling political parrty is Italian.
:roll: Italian-Indian : the suffix defines the citizenship. p-)

[Shuimo]

O, No We dont, India is not some Facist country like pre-war Italy or current victim Imperalist Chinese!

She is an Indian, or are you really American yourself or Argentine?
Nobody is calling you Nazi or Fascist!
but it is you who keep on calling others Facists! That is odd!:bash:

[Shuimo]

Does this current situation involving India and China kind of remind you of the Cold War or is it just me?
Sort!rofl

It is really disgusting to the Chinese that Indians always try to drag itself to be in comparison with China! It sucks!rofl:bash:

[josh21x]

Sort!rofl

It is really disgusting to the Chinese that Indians always try to drag itself to be in comparison with China! It sucks!rofl:bash:

What COmparisons, Indians are a far better lot than you guys!!! They are democratic secular, open minded, non-imperalistic, respected around the world and not to mention victimhood free!!!!! Chinese got some new money from slave labor of its own people! Big deal!

[Solvent]

What COmparisons, Indians are a far better lot than you guys!!! They are democratic secular, open minded, non-imperalistic, respected around the world and not to mention victimhood free!!!!! Chinese got some new money from slave labor of its own people! Big deal!


Man, you made my day.rofl

Remind me Audx, wondering where is that dude now.

[Shuimo]

What COmparisons, Indians are a far better lot than you guys!!! They are democratic secular, open minded, non-imperalistic, respected around the world and not to mention victimhood free!!!!! Chinese got some new money from slave labor of its own people! Big deal!

Go on with yr high-horn achievement rhtoric!rofl

We know what India is like!rofl

We Chinese feel it is beneath us to do such lowly comparison tricks!woot

[Frutzel]

What COmparisons, Indians are a far better lot than you guys!!! They are democratic secular, open minded, non-imperalistic, respected around the world and not to mention victimhood free!!!!! Chinese got some new money from slave labor of its own people! Big deal!

Well ask them untouchables how good their life is

[josh21x]

Well ask them untouchables how good their life is


Ask me, I am one of them!!!

[Frutzel]

Ask me, I am one of them!!!

Cool story bro but don't be angry if I say that I don't believe you

[josh21x]

Cool story bro but don't be angry if I say that I don't believe you

No prob bro, I aint goin to flash my ID proof here either!!:roll:
hail, When you get your head out of the sand pit!

[Frutzel]

Well I wasn't the one who posted delusional facts about the promised wonderland where everybody is happy.


EDIT

No prob bro, I aint goin to flash my ID proof here either!!:roll:


You could prove that you belong to the untouchables with your ID? Your kidding right? Or is it mentioned in the ID? Im not trying to flame, this is a serious question

[josh21x]

Well I wasn't the one who posted delusional facts about the promised wonderland where everybody is happy.

India is far from a promised land by an stretch of the imagination, but it aint a facist uncarin dictatorsip subjugatin a section of its population to injustice, Now that is the Indian government,now if you talk about the Indian Society, There are some credence to your points. But then again, I doubt you belive to how muc it is a problem, to how muchh it is not!!!

[josh21x]

Well I wasn't the one who posted delusional facts about the promised wonderland where everybody is happy.


EDIT


You could prove that you belong to the untouchables with your ID? Your kidding right? Or is it mentioned in the ID? Im not trying to flame, this is a serious question

No in certain IDs I ave suc a thing as a Caste Certificate, which ives me FREE EDUCATION, FREE LOANS,, RESERVERD SEATS IN PARLIMENT SUBsidized FOOD, FREE GOVERNMENTJOB, and lots of other bonus from te government.

It is defined as Schdule Caste and Schedule Tribes, Other Backward Caste and Muslims, we all get benefits, wile forward caste hindus and Christians dont get them, Similar in some aspects to American Affermative Action.

[Frutzel]

No in certain IDs I ave suc a thing as a Caste Certificate, which ives me FREE EDUCATION, FREE LOANS,, RESERVERD SEATS IN PARLIMENT SUBsidized FOOD, FREE GOVERNMENTJOB, and lots of other bonus from te government.

It is defined as Schdule Caste and Schedule Tribes, Other Backward Caste and Muslims, we all get benefits, wile forward caste hindus and Christians dont get them, Similar in some aspects to American Affermative Action.

Thank you! I didn't know about that

[ggk]

im going to India in a couple of month....work.....Mumbai to be exact...looking forward to it (after reading josh21x (http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/member.php?u=23821) post). Dont make me regret it.

[josh21x]

You can get all the info from Indian PArliment Website as well as from google

[sujithkochi]

im going to India in a couple of month....work.....Mumbai to be exact...looking forward to it (after reading josh21x (http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/member.php?u=23821) post). Dont make me regret it.

all the best ggk. hope u hv a good time there

[Lala_Peace]

.........the untouchables with your ID? You are talking like your country has no such discrimination...We were able to give voting rights to each and every part of population at one go when our literacy rate was 20%. On that standard, talking about your democracy which gave the political rights to its population phase wise is a shame for even an illiterate in the remotest part of my country.

[Lala_Peace]

im going to India in a couple of month....work.....Mumbai to be exact...looking forward to it (after reading josh21x post). Dont make me regret it. How come you know so much about India's cast system and missed out its reservation policy (Heavy weight version of Americans' Affirmative Action)??? I have heard you given long discourses on India's cast system as the last resort to win arguments.......

[dredger14]

Thank you! I didn't know about that

The phrase you are looking for is
"Ignorance is bliss"

btw keep playing the caste card whenever you get into an argument with someone from India, it will tell them real quick what goes on inside your tiny brain... and keep reading Nat Geo.p-)

[dredger14]

Sort!rofl

It is really disgusting to the Chinese that Indians always try to drag itself to be in comparison with China! It sucks!rofl:bash:

And when the Chinese compare themselves to the Americans?? Hypocrisy comrade??

[ggk]

How come you know so much about India's cast system and missed out its reservation policy (Heavy weight version of Americans' Affirmative Action)??? I have heard you given long discourses on India's cast system as the last resort to win arguments.......

lol dont blame me man.

India invited me.

and for the record: in regards of the caste argument, i only fullfilling Adux request to open a topic on India caste problem. I personally have no problem with India or Indian. I only pick fight with those who post anti Islam topic and comment. Coincidentally its Adux and he is Indian.

[Ordie]

Where the hell is Adux?

He's missing all of the fun.

He's probably found a girl (or guy) for that matter.

[sujithkochi]

i thought he is banned?

[Lala_Peace]

Where the hell is Adux? He's missing all of the fun. He's probably found a girl (or guy) for that matter. Yeh, I am missing him too...Definitely the proposition that he might have got a girl is very real....hahahaha