The Hindu : Opinion / News Analysis : China and SAARC

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Jul 19, 2004

Opinion

Opinion - News Analysis

China and SAARC

By C. Raja Mohan

NEW DELHI, JULY 18. As the South Asian Foreign Ministers meet this week in Islamabad, the idea of associating China with the plans for economic integration in the subcontinent should get some serious attention.

Any proposal to bring China into the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC) would bring strong protests from the traditionalists of the Indian security establishment. After all, preventing China from expanding its influence in the subcontinent has long been a major strategic objective of India.

It is precisely for this reason that sections of SAARC believe they can needle India by proposing collective cooperation with China. If India turns the conventional wisdom on its head, it could in fact say "yes" and derive huge benefits from an association between SAARC and China.

There already is some diplomatic engagement between China and SAARC. In the last few years, Beijing has begun to communicate its interest — through formal channels — in joining hands with South Asia.

At the Twelfth SAARC Summit in Islamabad last January, the Chinese Premier, Wen Jiabao, sent a formal message of greetings. The Pakistan Prime Minister, Mir Zafurallah Khan Jamali, did not read out the message but referred to it in his opening address at the summit.

In their Islamabad Declaration, the South Asian leaders agreed to "establish dialogue partnership with other regional bodies and with states outside the region, interested in SAARC activities." In other words, India has already accepted, in principle, a potential engagement between SAARC and other states such as China.

The Secretary-General of SAARC, Q.A.M.A. Rahim, visited Beijing in April at the invitation of the Chinese Government. During his visit, the Chinese leaders expressed their desire for a productive engagement with SAARC. The question no longer is whether China should be associated with SAARC but how and in what form.

The SAARC Foreign Ministers could indeed begin by authorising a study by the Secretariat on how the association with China could be developed on the basis of experience from other regional organisations such as the Association of South East Asian Nations and the Gulf Cooperation Council.

* * *

Sino-Indian economic relations are in a phase of explosive growth. From a few hundred million dollars of bilateral trade in the mid-1990s, Sino-Indian total trade is likely to touch $10 billion this year. In a few years, Sino-Indian trade will soon be larger than the total trade turnover in most of the South Asian countries.

India is now negotiating a comprehensive economic cooperation agreement with China. New Delhi and Beijing are also working out separate free trade arrangements with ASEAN. There is no reason then for India to oppose, for example, a free trade treaty between China and SAARC. Such an association will be another building block in the construction of a larger Asian economic community.

India's outward push and the inviting pull of the Chinese market could reinforce each other and drag the rest of the region into ever tighter economic embrace.

In fact, promoting China's participation in the economic development of South Asia could be one way of overcoming the political inhibitions in the region towards economic integration.

* * *

Would China's association with SAARC encourage other countries to raise contentious bilateral political issues? Unlikely. In fact, India and China today have similar attitudes to the question of the relationship between economic and politics. Unlike some of India's neighbours, Beijing is with New Delhi's argument that economic cooperation should take precedence over the focus on political disputes.

Some in India will fear that letting China into SAARC will result in its rising economic profile south of the Himalayas. But can the world's third largest economy be kept out of the subcontinent, particularly when it neighbours the region?

The fear of a rising Chinese profile must be balanced by the prospect of India gaining economic access to parts of China — Tibet, Xinjiang and Yunnan — with which it had historic contacts.

* * *

Formal cooperation between SAARC and China will also result in ending an important political anomaly. Bhutan is the only country in South Asia that does not have diplomatic relations with China.

India denies it is preventing Bhutan from having regular state-to-state relations with China and it is up to reclusive Thimpu to decide which countries to have ties with. In any case, every year officials from China and Bhutan meet to discuss their boundary dispute.

And those occasions have become the vehicle for a substantive engagement between Beijing and Thimpu. It should be far simpler for the two sides to have more formal and open relations.

* * *

China has a crucial role in dealing with an important question that affects the lives of people in the subcontinent — the frequent flooding of its eastern parts.

The Chief Minister of Assam, Tarun Gogoi, has touched the heart of the matter when he wrote to the Ministry of External Affairs recently, suggesting talks with China on the subject.

Most of the major rivers in the subcontinent start their journey in Tibet.

China holds the key to a more efficient management of Brahmaputra's waters that devastate eastern India and Bangladesh every year. India and China already exchange hydrological data on the Brahmaputra every year. Now is the time to think more boldly about bringing China into the consultations on river management in South Asia.

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