SASF – Blogs

By Mohan Guruswamy. November 3, 2009. The short answer to whether India and China will always be rivals is YES. But rivals need not be enemies and neighbors need not get fratricidal. If there are two large and rising powers in a region, rivalry is inevitable. France and Germany or Brazil and Argentina come readily to mind. A hundred and fifty years ago France and Britain were bitter adversaries. The rise of Teutonic nationalism and of Nazism united the two countries against a common enemy. The “end of history” with the triumph of liberal democracy has largely blunted Franco-German rivalry by entwining them economically, while the advent of the European Union has made the borders seamless. The ratification of the Treaty of Tlatelolco of 1967 by Argentina in 1994, making all of Latin America and the Caribbean a nuclear free zone, has more or less eliminated any vestigial military fears Argentina and Brazil may have had. On the other hand go to a Brazil-Argentina soccer match or to a France-England rugby game and you will wonder if things have changed at all? Rivalries, it seems, are forever!

The situation between India and China is not very different. Nationalism arrived in both countries at about the same time in the early 1900’s with the advent of Sun Yat Sen in China and MK Gandhi in India. This was after centuries of foreign rule over the Han and Hindu ethnic majorities. After decades of turbulence both countries emerged as “free nations” with entirely different systems in the waning 1940’s. Mao Zedong and Jawaharlal Nehru were leaders with entirely different personalities and world views. Mao’s ruthless instincts were honed as the leader of the Communists in a bloody civil war. On the other side Jawaharlal’s were finessed under the tutelage of Mahatma Gandhi into that of a somewhat naïve and dreamy idealist. The isolation of the two countries that the British had so assiduously nurtured by supporting an independent Tibet was rudely shattered by its annexation by China in 1951. This and the handing over of Xinjiang by the then USSR to the new PRC made the Han and the Hindu neighbors for the first time in history.

Since 1954 the legacy of a disputed border has flared up into a bitter row. Both countries are guilty of misinterpreting history to further their claims. India’s claim of the barren and wind swept Aksai Chin plateau rests on an arbitrary extension of the border in 1939 to the present claim line first suggested by WH Johnson in 1865. Johnson was a discontented official of the Survey of India who made his fortune by vastly extending the Kashmir Maharaja’s domain on the map. The 1939 extension was done to create a buffer between Xinjiang, which had turned into a Soviet protectorate, and British India.

On the other side in China the obsequious courtiers of the Qing (Manchu) dynasty were not averse to some cartographic conquests of their own.  Ge Jianxiong, a well respected history professor at China’s prestigious Fudan University, has written that “the notions of Greater China were based entirely on one-sided views of Qing court records that were written for the courts self-aggrandizement.” Ge has also written criticizing those who feel that the more they exaggerate the territory the more “patriotic” they are. The present Dalai Lama lent weight to this by formally staking a claim over Tawang to the newly independent India in 1947. Such is the stuff that wars are made off and the two countries are in a military face-off since 1962.

To be fair to the Chinese they have at several times offered a package deal of settling by foregoing each others un-historic and unsubstantiated claims in Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh. India’s leadership has balked at this lest it be accused by the opposition of the day of selling out. Only in recent days a new wisdom seemed to creeping into South Block, but the Chinese have suddenly turned recalcitrant. They now seem to suggest that the package deal is no longer on offer?

As if this were not enough there are other issues that color each other perceptions. The voracious appetite for Tiger parts in China is one. The rise of China, which was the dominant event of the last two decades, is now being threatened by a slowing down economy, and it is locked into an irretrievable reverse hock to the vastly indebted USA. India on the other hand has begun to experience heady growth rates since the turn of the century, giving rise to a new giddiness about its place in the world. The Chinese don’t care too much for this. This is the stuff of competition. But not war. For both sides, as the song goes, are now endowed with the mushroom shaped cloud! And so we will have to be content playing rivals.

Mohan Guruswamy

Email: mohanguru@gmail.com

November 3, 2009

By Mohan Guruswamy

Ironically enough the downslide in India-China relations began in just days before November 2006 visit of Hu Jintao, supposedly intended to showcase an upswing in the relations. It began when the then Chinese Ambassador to India, Sun Yuxi, made a rather indiscreet and untimely comment to a TV news channel that the status of Arunachal Pradesh was still an unresolved issue between the two countries. Whether Sun Yuxi made this comment as mere restatement of the old Chinese position for the record or to deliberately stir the pot will be debated for a long time. Sun Yuxi himself told me that he did not intend it to stir things up and that the partly American owned TV channel deliberately played it up to blight the improving ties. Sun Yuxi also, quite significantly, added that while he might have been indiscreet, his statement won him a great deal of support from groups in China who favor a hard-line with India, ever since it began to draw closer to the USA. Many in China believe that India is now part of an US attempt to encircle it and even Prakash Karat of our CPM has echoed this view. The result of the Sun Yuxi statement was that what had become a mere border alignment issue was once again transformed into a territorial issue.

The thaw in our ties was initiated when Deng Xiaoping made an offer to Rajiv Gandhi in December 1988 to settle the border dispute on an as is where is basis. The politically beleaguered Rajiv Gandhi felt that he did have the political capital for a deal to essentially forego claims on Aksai Chin in exchange for an alignment generally corresponding McMahon Line. The two leaders then agreed to keep the issue frozen for settlement “at some future time”.

Following this and the agreements consequent to the visits of Narasimha Rao and Atal Behari Vajpayee, it was generally believed in India that the Chinese claim on Arunachal Pradesh was now in the past. While releasing my book “India China Relations: The Border Issue and Beyond” earlier this year, in response to a pointed question from a journalist, the then Foreign Secretary strongly hinted that a settlement along the status quo might now be more acceptable to the Indian leadership.

As if the border row wasn’t enough to heat up relations, other issues too have cropped up. There is the question of the Dalai Lama’s continued residence in India which surfaced even as the waters of distrust began receding. China’s inability to deal with the increasing Tibetan restiveness also makes it angrily point a finger at India. When in India the Dalai Lama is restricted to just performing his ecclesiastical duties which include tending to the spiritual needs of a large Indian flock adhering to the Tibetan school of Mahayana Buddhism. The Chinese have now taken umbrage over his visit to the ancient monastery at Tawang. Let alone the Dalai Lama’s visit, they were even critical of Dr. Manmohan Singh’s visit to the state last month. In the recent days the situation has been further vitiated by stories, many of them false, in the Indian media.

The global economic crisis has exacerbated problems within China’s rapidly growing economy. With US markets’ rapidly shrinking it needs to find markets elsewhere to sustain its export led growth model. The rapidly growing Sino-Indian trade, but increasingly tilted in China’s favor mostly due to an undervalued Yuan, is yet another festering issue. China derives much of its export prowess due to its undervalued Yuan and exploitative labor practices. The economic profligacy of the USA and China’s somewhat naïve hoarding of trillions of dollars as reserves makes it the USA’s co-equal in causing the global economic mayhem. There is no sign that China has derived lessons from this and will revalue the Yuan.

The misuse of business visas by Chinese construction companies to bring in tens of thousands of workers into India is now another issue. On the other hand the issue of visas on a separate sheet of paper to Indian residents of J&K and Arunachal Pradesh in a bid to highlight their disputed status is seen as deliberately provocative by India. Providing a backdrop to all this is the China’s rather duplicitous role at the Vienna conference to ratify the IAEA’s exemption for India from the stringent provisions instituted after our 1974 nuclear test; and its opposition to the expansion of the UN Security Council’s permanent membership and by extension India’s entry into it.

In the recent days several new publications and books have exposed how extensively China assisted in the development of Pakistan’s nuclear program and their delivery systems. Since Pakistan’s nuclear program is entirely India centric, this is in itself is quite revealing about the intensity of Chinese hostility then towards India. The Chinese have been insisting that it was in the past and China is now committed to improving ties with India. But the proof of the pudding is in the eating and China, despite its much vaunted policy culinary abilities, has not yet put it on the table!

(Mohan Guruswamy is a well known commentator and is the author of the recently published “Chasing the Dragon: Will India Catch-up with China?”)

An excellent analysis written by, Nimmi Kurian for the Indian Express 1st August 2009.(The writer is an associate professor at the Centre for Policy Research.)

Questions to be asked (Please add more If you feel like )

1) Where does this leave India?
2) Will China become an Imperial power annexing smaller nations to feed its labor demand ?
3)Will a negative population growth rate in China sustain Chinas Economy ? If not then what ? (Reminder : China and India have been touted as saviors in the context of the current economic crises.)
4)Will aspirations of “super power” status be scuttled by a weakened population base ? If so will China of the future be more belligerent in the international arena to achieve this super power status before its eventual collapse?
5) Is a weakened China good for Asia ? (Personally I think not)

China may be taking its first tentative baby steps to change its landmark one-child policy. In particular, Shanghai has indicated a relaxation in the policy by encouraging couples to have two children. This year marks the 30th year of its implementation: Why could China be having second thoughts?

Good reasons. Child-bearing has always enjoyed a millennia-old political and cultural sanction in China; through the eons-long line of dynasties, child bearing was not only encouraged but also actively promoted by the state through preferential policies. In fact, in the ’50s and ’60s, Mao even gave awards to women for bearing many children. Population control was nothing short of heresy in those days, anyone arguing for such curbs was thrown behind bars.

It is ironic that China is rethinking the policy not because it has failed. It is doing so because it succeeded. In fact its success is China’s biggest problem today. Rigorous implementation has seen China’s average fertility rate falling below replacement levels. As a result, China as a whole may be having around 1.4 to 1.5 births per woman, with Shanghai registering a low of 0.96. Official estimates claim that the policy has prevented more than 400 million births since its inception. But this has brought in its wake several disturbing social and economic challenges. As it braces to wrestle with these, the question is, can China retrofit the demographic architecture of the country?

Easier said than done. There is a growing realisation that the cure was worse than the disease. It has resulted in a skewed sex-ratio of disturbing proportions.China’s gender gap has steadily grown worse from a relatively normal ratio of 108.5 boys to 100 girls in the early ’80s to now stand at 123 boys for every 100 girls. This has also gone on to worsen the deeply-entrenched cultural preference for a male child. The Ancient Chinese Book of Songs reads more like a dirge for girls: “when a son is born, let him sleep on the bed, give him fine clothes” but “when a daughter is born, let her sleep on the ground, wrap her in common wrappings, and give broken tiles to play.” The stringent implementation of the one-child norm has resulted in a sharp spike in “gendercide” through illegal prenatal sex determination and sex-selective abortions.

The policy-induced crisis means that the country will have to grapple with a whole set of social, productivity and fiscal challenges. To begin with, growing gender gaps have set off an intense competition for wives. It is estimated there could be as many as 40 million “surplus” men in China by 2020 unable to find a wife. Hence a highly organised criminal network of trafficking in girls and women: anywhere between 2000 and 3000 girls and women kidnapped a year. Particularly perverse is the rising incidence of baby bride trafficking, where armed gangs are kidnapping baby girls for farmers who want wives for their sons when they grow up.

China is already home to half the elderly in Asia, with those above the age of 65 expected to rise to 320 million by 2040. A fast ageing society will also induce a prolonged period of labour pains. It is estimated that China’s labour force could peak by 2016 and structural shortages of labour could become an endemic feature of the economy. Inter-generational tensions are also on the rise as the one-child policy grapples with what has come to be known as the 4-2-1 problem. This means that there will only be one child left in a family to care for two parents and four grandparents.

As these social costs have mounted, China has mounted a campaign to achieve population control through softer, less coercive means. It is unlikely that course-correction will result in a major reversal in policy. Changing course will prove tricky in a country where population control still remains the primary policy goal. To expect China to walk away from this will be both unrealistic and unfeasible.

Moscow: Russia has completed the first stage of pre-delivery trials of the Akula-II class ‘Nerpa’ nuclear-powered attack submarine, which is likely to be operational with the Indian Navy much before New Delhi’s indigenous ‘INS Arihant’.

The ‘Nerpa’ submarine will join the Navy by the year-end with the first set of sea trials being completed successfully according to schedule, an official of the Amur Shipyard was quoted as saying by the ‘RIA Novosti’ Monday.

But top officials in both Moscow and New Delhi are tight-lipped about the armaments the submarine will carry.

While ‘INS Arihant’ is being armed with 700-km range K-15 nuclear-tipped missiles, it is not known if Nerpa will have Indian or Russian nuclear missiles.
‘Nerpa’, the Akula-II class submarine, has a displacement of 12,000 tonnes and is far bigger than ‘INS Arihant’, which has just 6,000 tonnage capacity.

India joined an elite club of nations, including the US, Russia, China, France and the UK to produce nuclear under-sea vessels with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his wife Gursharan Kaur inaugurating the sub for extensive sea trials on Sunday.

The new trials for Nerpa are taking place as it was hit by a major mishap on November 8 in the Sea of Japan when accidental triggering of the fire suppression system led to release of highly toxic gas, killing 20 crew members and civilian technical staff. It resumed sea trials on July 10 following extensive repairs.

Nerpa is the latest nuclear submarine in the Russian Navy’s armada. Though ‘INS Arihant’ has some features like the Russian sub, but according to NATO sources the Akula-class vessel is one of the most potent undersea weapons in the world, far superior than the Chinese subs.

After the sea trials, Indian Navy men would be trained on Nerpa, which can come in handy for personnel posted on board the ‘Arihant’.

“The (Nerpa) sub is back at the in Bolshoi Kamen (port) in the Maritime Territory, and it is getting ready for the second stage of the scheduled trials,” the shipyard official said.

Some special equipment for performance checking and adjustment work will be installed on board the submarine, before it begins the second and final stage of pre-delivery trials.

Source: PTI

The Makings of a Police State-Part II at RevolutionRadio.org.

Sibel Edmonds
123RealChange.com

The Discretion Factor & TSA Black Hole

Around 1:00 p.m. on March 9, 2009 I stood in front of the US Air ticket counter in Ft Myers, Florida, and sighed with relief. I had just checked in two suitcases and had an hour and fifteen minutes before boarding my plane to Washington, DC. I was relieved because it is no simple task to make it this far with a teething seven month old baby, two suitcases, a carry on bag, and a diaper bag. However, I was counting my chickens too early.

I joined a fairly long line at the entrance of the TSA security screening station, and did a quick inventory of preparations needed to make it to the other side: My infant girl was securely nestled against my chest inside her baby carrier; I had no liquids in the diaper bag or elsewhere, and that included the bottled water I would need to fix her formula later while on the plane (I had enough time to purchase the water on the other side); I was wearing fairly easy to remove trainers, knowing the difficulty of removing shoes while carrying my infant and holding my boarding passes and drivers license…Basically, based on the Transportation Security Agency’s (TSA) posted rules, I was all set, or so I thought. continue reading…

http://www.countercurrents.org/maitra060109.htm

By Ramtanu Maitra 06 January, 2009

Countercurrents.org

Following the Mumbai massacre (Nov. 26- 29, 2008), many “important” personnel moved through the Indian Subcontinent, ostensibly with the intent of unearthing the ghastly plot that killed at least 200 people and made a mockery of India’s security. During the visits of these “important” personnel, and subsequently, only one person mentioned the thousands of tons of opium (8,200 tons in 2007, and reportedly, 421 tons of heroin) produced year after year in Afghanistan, as a major cause of the growing terrorism in the region.

In reality, the huge amount of opium is allowed to be produced not only to finance terrorists and illegal gun manufacturers, but also to infuse cash into the bankrupt world financial system, through the offshore banks. That voice of reality was heard from Moscow when, in an interview with the Russian government daily Rossiskaya Gazeta, Russia’s federal anti-narcotics service director Viktor Ivanov said: “The gathered inputs testify that regional drug baron Dawood Ibrahim had provided his logistics network for preparing and carrying out the Mumbai terror attacks.” Ivanov said the Mumbai attacks were a “burning example” of how the illegal drug-trafficking network was used for carrying out terrorism. “The super profits of the narco-mafia through Afghan heroin trafficking have become a powerful source of financing organized crime and terrorist networks, destabilizing the political systems, including in Central Asia and Caucasus,” Ivanov said at the fifth India-Russia meeting of the joint working group on combatting international terrorism, in mid-December. The Indian delegation was led by Vivek Katju, Special Secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs; the Russian delegation was led by Anatoly Safonov, Special Representative of the President.

US soldiers inspecting Afghan opium fields

The Drug-Led Corruption

While Dawood Ibrahim’s involvement has been tossed about in the media, what Ivanov said never gotthrough to the investigators. Or, is it that the drug angle was deliberately ignored, in order to abort the investigation by resorting to blame games, with the purpose of ending up nowhere? continue reading…

http://int-history.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2009-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&updated-max=2010-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&max-results=23

Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2008

MumbaiMassacre Calls For a Probe of British Role

by Ramtanu Maitra

The Nov 26-29 siege by terrorists of two top Mumbai
hotels and the Nariman House, where a Jewish group
had its residence and office, not only resulted in the
deaths of more than 200 individuals, but made clear
that India, like the United States, is one of the prime
targets of Dope, Inc. The questions remain: Who exactly
were the terrorists? What were their objectives?
And, were any of their objectives attained through this
dastardly act?

New Delhi must realize that if the Mumbai attack is
to be the last big one, it must carry out a thorough investigation.
The Mumbai terror had a very strong British
link as is detailed below. On Dec. 1, the London
Daily Mail reported that seven British Muslims were
involved. That number dwindled to two within a couple
of days. The now-deposed chief minister of the state of
Maharashtra (where Mumbai is located), Vilasrao
Deshmukh, announced that no British Muslims were
involved. In other words, whitewashing is fully in
progress.

But, it is likely that the evidence of British involvement
in this terrorist act has not yet been wiped out.
That is why, in the early morning of Dec. 14, Britain’s
Prime Minister Gordon Brown came pell-mell to Delhi
to urge the Indian Premier Manmohan Singh to allow
British intelligence, MI6, to interrogate the only surviving
Mumbai terrorist, Mohammed Ajmal Amir Qasab. It
is likely that the purpose of the MI6 interrogation is to
direct Qasab to provide details to confuse the investigators
and keep Britain out of it. The speed with which the
British Embassy in Delhi set up the Brown-Singh meeting
indicates that there is much at stake for Britain.

As far as the attack itself is concerned, in addition to
the three structures mentioned above, the terrorists also
fired random shots at the main Mumbai railway station,
Victoria Terminus, Cama Hospital, and the Metro
cinema. They also killed at least two top Mumbai police
officers, including the head of the Anti-Terrorist Squad
(ATS) of the state of Maharashtra, Hemant Karkare.
The operation surely had a strong input from local
allies of the terrorists. From the outset it was evident
that the former Mumbai mafioso, Dawood Ibrahim,
who now lives under Pakistani ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence)
protection in Karachi, allowed his network to
set up the attack. Ibrahim, a gangster who smuggled
gold from Dubai, U.A.E., a British-controlled area, and
later drugs, lives under threat of extradition to India. continue reading…

Ramtanu Maitra

12/30/07

The gruesome killing of Benazir Bhutto in the evening hours of Dec. 27 in Pakistan’s garrison town of Rawalpindi is yet another step in the process of weakening, and eventual break-up, of Pakistan.

Despite the crocodile tears shed in Washington and London over Bhutto’s assassination, it was a disaster waiting to happen and therefore, was altogether expected. Those who believed, naively, that Bhutto’s mission was to reinstate democracy in Pakistan and put its usurpers, the Pakistani military, in the background, do not realize why she was inserted into the scene, which was already rife with violence. The truth is that the British imperial circles, with their stooges in Washington, set up Bhutto’s execution, to advance their scheme to break up Pakistan, and create chaos throughout this strategic region.

Bhutto, no doubt, was a mass-based political leader, but she was a woman (an excuse used by the puppet Islamic jihadists to commit violence against a person), and she was goaded into the scene by the United States-perhaps now the most hated nation among Muslims in general-to serve Washington’s purpose, which was to put the Pakistani military on the defensive and force it to share power with a democratic politician. According to the master strategists in Washington, that is the best of both worlds-the Pakistani military stays friendly, while the United States shakes off its guilt of backing a military dictator.

It is not known what transpired in the telephone call between U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Benazir Bhutto that led to Bhutto’s decision to return. What promises were made will not be known unless Rice can shake off the national security garb and tell the truth. The one who knew, and could tell others, is gone.

The 9/11 event had enticed a weak-in-the-head Bush Administration to embark on a journey, the path of which was paved by the British colonialists. The vestiges of British colonial aspirations exist not only at Buckingham Palace, but even more so in the power of the intrigue and secrecy-ridden City of London.

Britain and the Muslims

The partition of India, and the formation of Pakistan, a Muslim nation, by the British Raj, was not done because the British liked Muslims. They had slaughtered them by the thousands in 1856, when the Hindus and Muslims joined hands under the last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, to drive out the firenghee (white-skinned foreigners). Those who remember that untold part of the history of the Indian independence movement, talk of the piles of bodies lying in the streets of Delhi slaughtered by British soldiers. Most of them, like Benazir Bhutto and her colleagues who died on Dec. 27, were Muslims.

The Muslims were “traitors” aspiring to reinstate the “despicable” and “corrupt” Mughal dynasty, London screamed.

The key to the British Empire’s financial success was its ability to manipulate Islam. The British Empire-builders eliminated the Islamic Caliphate, created nations out of deserts, eliminated some nations, and partitioned others to create Islamic nations. Britain was aware that the oil fields of Arabia would be a source of great power in the post-World War II decades. The western part of British India bordered Muslim Central Asia, another major source of oil and gas, bordering Russia and Muslim Afghanistan. British India also bordered Islamic Iran and the Persian Gulf-the doorway to the oil fields of Arabia. In order to keep its future options open, Balochistan, bordering northeastern Iran, and the tribal Pushtun-dominated areas bordering Afghanistan, remained as British protectorates. continue reading…