China’s stand in the recent India-Pakistan tensions reinforces incremental pro-India tilt in Beijing

1.. How would you assess the Chinese stand in the current round of India-Pakistan tensions?

China has always been a factor in India-Pakistan tensions. During its Cultural Revolution in the 1960s, leaders like Zhou Enlai used to support ideas of ’self-determination’ in Kashmir and there were strong insinuations about China’s intervention during  both 1965 and 1971 India-Pakistan war. In the former it was indirect diplomacy of the US and UK that had ensured China’s restraint and in the latter one it was the Indo-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation that had ensured that China remained silent. China had revived its direct relationship with India from the latter half of the  1970s and from the late 1980s it began to take a neutral stance in India’s problems with its immediate South Asian neighbours. In case of India-Pakistan, Beijing’s neutral stance had gone as far as to rebuff the (then) visiting Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif who had asked Beijing to help  resolve tensions with India. The importance  of India has also been underlined by Chinese leaders undertaking India only visits, instead of clubbing them with multiple South Asian nations. But there is also no denying that the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) has given the Beijing-Islamabad axis a new lease of life.

With this backdrop of incremental pro-India tilt in Beijing, China’s stand in the recent India-Pakistan tensions reinforces that piecemeal movement forward. Beijing urging both India and Pakistan to “exercise restraint” and “de-escalate” seems to go in favour of New Delhi. One has to read between the lines to decipher this imperceptible pro-India tilt that has germinated several new contours since the informal Modi-Xi summit in Wuhan last April. The last one  year since has witnessed acceleration in China-India interactions at various levels. This change can also be seen in the recent surge in China’s investments in India as also in the 18 per cent growth in their bilateral trade during 2017-18. Their trade had been stagnating around $70 billion for decade before this. No doubt, Beijing’s investments and defence cooperation with Pakistan remains much bigger but India’s trade with China remains bigger than that of the  rest of South Asia combined. China’s lower level of investments in India can also be explained by various complexities of China-India relations. But there has been increasing admission in Chinese expressions on how they wish to co-opt India into their ambitious Belt and Road Initiative to ensure commercial viability as also political legitimacy of its projects. This overall engagement promises to make China increasingly more circumscribed in not supporting Pakistan at the cost of its expanding partnership with New Delhi.

2. We know China’s interest in Pakistan, given its importance for China’s BRI? But why the reluctance to call out groups like the Jaish or terrorists like Masood Azhar, whose listing under the UN sanctions list has always been vetoed by China?

There is no doubt that Pakistan’s ‘deep state’ treats terrorist outfits on their soil as their assets against India and China fully understands that predilection of its ‘all weather’ ally Pakistan. China’s Belt and Road Initiatives has been driven by its compulsions to find engagement for its excess of money, materials, and manpower. Its huge foreign exchange reserves need to be invested to save them from eroding, its factories cannot stop churning and its skilled manpower needs employment. Having built enormous infrastructure at home in the last four decades China now has to move outside to ensure profitable per-dollar returns and employment in developing and least developed countries that suffer from huge infrastructure-deficit. In such a situation, its close ally Pakistan presents itself as an ideal destination with least regulatory hurdles or political scrutiny allowing free hand for Chinese enterprises. But to build projects in conflict prone regions of an internally unstable ally has its compromises.

The arrangement is that, on behest of Pakistan,  as long as they do not create disruptions for CPEC projects and inside China’s Muslim majority Xinjiang autonomous region, Beijing will continue to protect these terrorist outfits from any censure from multilateral forums including from the UN Security Council Sanctions Committee set up under UNSC resolution 1267 of 1999 specifically for this purpose. Given that India — along with France, the United Kingdom and the United States — has been trying to get Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar declared as global terrorist, this also has its positive side, which creates  leverages for Beijing.  China sees its veto power to block initiatives to censor Pakistan based terrorists as its leverages against these powers, especially India. Apparently, Beijing has no raison d’être to support New Delhi’s proposal for putting Masood Azhar name on the Sanctions List on UN Security Council. This means that India has to find ways of either incentivising or isolating China that could compel it to stop blocking this initiative.

Track record shows that in several such cases Beijing has been fairly pragmatic; it though has usually been the last one to come on board in supporting such initiatives. Beijing does fall in line before costs of blocking a decision begins to outweigh its benefits. Cases of India being given one-time ‘waiver’ in Nuclear Suppliers Group and a similar ‘exemption’ in case of International Atomic Energy Agency during 2008 remain perhaps the most apt examples of such behaviour by China. This creates hope implying that it is not a matter of fate but time when China will relent from its opposition to declaring Azhar Masood as a global terrorist and come on board in addressing terrorist breeding grounds in Pakistan. Since last week, France holds the presidency of UN Security Council and along with the United States and United Kingdom, it has sponsored a fresh discussion in UNSC Sanctions Committee for declaring Masood Azhar as a global terrorist. Though their close-door parleys will not be public yet this will present one more situation where Beijing may begin to see itself as an outlier from the mainstream consensus that sees Pakistan supporting breeding grounds of terrorism that need to be eliminated.

3. What is your assessment of the recent RIC (Russia India China) meeting and China’s position?

This year’s Russia-India-China (RIC) foreign ministers’ trilateral meeting could not have come at a better time for New Delhi. The very next day after  India’s air strikes on terrorist training camps inside Pakistan, foreign minister Sushama Swaraj had the opportunity to sit face-to-face with her Russian and Chinese counterparts, Sergei Lavrov and Wang Yi. Her bilateral meetings with both of them on the sidelines showed their impact in the final communique of RIC that talked of (a) terrorist “breeding grounds” not to be used for political and geopolitical purposes, and (b) enhancing cooperation between their state agencies for eliminating terrorist in all its forms and manifestations. If not directly, this was definitely an indirect endorsement of India’s air action against terrorist facilities inside Pakistan.

Moreover, after such a positive outcome in Beijing — with China being the most allied ally of Pakistan — foreign minister Sushma Swaraj  next day travelled  to Abu Dhabi which was another clincher for India’s diplomacy. For the first time in the last fifty years of its existence, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) — the largest grouping of Muslim countries — had invited Indian foreign minister as a ‘guest of honour’ to address the plenary session of its foreign ministers’ meeting. Thanks to Pakistan, in spite of being home to the world’s second largest population which is all set to become the world’s largest by 2030, India had never till now been  invited or allowed its membership. Indeed, in its first meeting in 1969, the Indian delegation had been invited but  had to turn back from the venue as Yahya Khan had refused to come out of his villa if the Indian delegation was  seen at this meeting. Last week as well Pakistan’s foreign minister issued an ultimatum of similar kind saying Pakistan will not participate if India’s foreign minister was allowed to address this meeting. Result? India’s foreign minister addressed the plenary session while Pakistan was missing from this meeting. Her [Sushma Swaraj] warm reception at the RIC meeting in Beijing had surely added to her stature at OIC. Apparently Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirate along with China are believed to have  played a role in ‘de-escalation’, especially in the return of Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman, who had been captured in Pakistan after his MiG-21 aircraft was shot down inside Pakistan territory.

“Her [Sushma Swaraj] warm reception at the RIC meeting in Beijing had surely added to her stature at OIC.”

4. What would it take India to break the China-Pakistan axis, if at all possible?

It would be unrealistic to pursue a strategy to break China-Pakistan axis. What India can do is to make it less effective and less attractive by building bigger and stronger partnership with Beijing. This seems possible given that both China and India have emerged as world’s second and fifth largest economies that continue to clock highest growth rates thereby rapidly transforming their stature and societies. The last two decades have already witnessed de-hyphenation of India-Pakistan and India being hyphenated increasingly with China making China-India equations worthy of attention worldwide. This clearly is a long drawn strategy involving a whole range of initiatives. But it promises to over the years make Pakistanredundant as China and India begin to work together in addressing several inordinate regional and global challenge.

“The increasing pace of China-India interactions in various multilateral forums during the last two years have already shown its positive spin-off for their bilateral issues and anxieties.”

Some of these also begin to appear of lesser significance given that these two now see having opportunity to re-write future of human history. Their working together in various forums like Shanghai Cooperation Organisation or Brazil, Russian, India, China, South Africa (BRICS) etc have already bought to limelight the China-India partnership in addressing emerging challenges from climate change and these have also witnessed their coming closer to building shared counterterrorism strategies though China remains reluctant to naming Pakistan and terrorist outfits that have sanctuaries  on its soil. But evolving trajectories of their cooperation hold promise, especially given that their economies are all set to expand, dwarfing Pakistan with every passing year.

5. Can India leverage its trade volumes with China, to get China onboard its security concerns vis-à-vis Pakistan? If yes, how? If no, why not?

Without doubt, China-India bilateral trade remains their most agreeable as also most reliable pillar in building stronger strategic partnership. Standing at a figure of $85 billion and being all set to any time cross the magical figure of $100 billion, this leaves all other South Asian neighbours of India far behind; not even in the reckoning. But Pakistan has been China’s most important defence partner since the late 1950s and China is believed to have contributed to help Pakistan build its nuclear weapons and missiles. More recently, China-Pakistan Economic Corridor — currently estimated to involve investments worth $62 billion — has provided another boost to their special relationship. Right from the very beginning, China had remained vulnerable to Pakistan for its being the only Muslim country — before independence of the Central Asian republics —  sharing borders with its restive Muslim majority Xinjiang autonomous region.

The fact that, in face of American opposition to its Communist regime, China remained isolated till late 1970s was also the reason why it valued diplomatic recognition by Pakistan. Collapse of Soviet Union in early 1990s brought American presence in China’s backyard in Afghanistan which again made Pakistan critical for Beijing. The fact that Afghanistan continues to be in turmoil would keep Pakistan relevant for Beijing.  So China is not likely to give up its close camaraderie with the Islamic Republic. Therefore the only practical strategy for India is to make itself stronger and more useful for China to minimise possibilities of China supporting Pakistani policies at the cost of its friendship with New Delhi. These costs for Beijing can be raised by using both incentives as also through denial of opportunities or building global consensus in its favour where Beijing will find it necessary to stand on side of New Delhi.

“the only practical strategy for India is to make itself stronger and more useful for China to minimise possibilities of China supporting Pakistani policies at the cost of its friendship with New Delhi.’

6. Who has greater leverage over Pakistan today – China or Saudi Arabia? 

Without doubt both China and Saudi Arabia have had enormous engagement with Pakistan. While China-Pakistan axis has attracted substantial attention of analysts, the Saudi Arabia-Pakistan relationship remains equally deep and wide. Nearly three million Pakistanis live in Saudi Arabia and are a source of remittances. Both also have had long history of defence cooperation including 20,000 troops of Pakistan military being deployed in Saudi Arabia. This explains why when Imran Khan took over as prime minister last August and begin to talk about Pakistan being on verge of bankruptcy, Saudi Arabia was the first country to offer a bailout package of $6 billion followed by UAE making a similar offer of $6.2 billion making Islamabad walk out of its negotiations for a similar bailout with International Monetary Fund. On the eve of India’s air strikes and on the heels of feedayeen attack in Kashmir, Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman visited Pakistan that saw two sides signing contracts for Saudi investments worth $20 billion.

It will be apt to say that both China and Saudi Arabia remain deeply engaged with Pakistan but have distinct nature of their friendship. China and Saudi Arabia remain also very distinct in terms of their global stature and leverages. While China is believed having provided technologies for Pakistan’s development of its nuclear weapons and missiles, Saudi Arabia is believed to having facilitated financial resources. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had once popularised the “Islamic Bomb” thesis for Pakistan’s quest for nuclear weapons. This equation is believed to have germinated during their collaborations in raising Afghan Mujaheedins in the 1980s that had successfully rolled back Soviet forces by 1989. But the last decade has witnessed India’s relationship strengthening with both Riyadh and Beijing. This remains in tune with India pursuing a policy of ‘multi-alignments’ and  ‘strategic autonomy’ trying to build partnerships with as many countries in as many sectors as possible. This is showing promise where India is becoming much better in exercising all its levers in moulding regional and global situations to its benefit.

Aditi Bhaduri

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