Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
China's official words in the months after India's nuclear tests made very
clear that, in the view of the Chinese government, India did not constitute a
threat to China, nor did China constitute a threat to India. A PRC (People's
Republic of China) Foreign Ministry statement issued after India's tests and after
disclosure of Vajpayee's letter to Clinton in no way suggested that Indian
nuclear capabilities (or any other capabilities for that matter) might constitute a
threat to China. The central objection to Indian actions expressed in the
Statement was that India's tests violated the 'international' efforts to prevent
nuclear weapons proliferation. Great stress was placed on Indian violation of
'international norms' and 'efforts'; the word 'international' was used five times
in the short foreign ministry statement. The statement also objected that India
had 'even maliciously accused China of posing a nuclear threat to India'. This
was 'utterly groundless' and 'gratuitous' and 'solely for the purpose of finding
excuse for the development of…nuclear weapons'.
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A commentary in
Renmin ribao
issued the same day as the foreign ministry
statement also made no allusion whatever to any sort of Indian actions
constituting a threat to China. The commentary's objections to India's nuclear
tests derived from violation of international nonproliferation efforts and norms.
'Even more depraved', however, 'was India's 'suddenly blaming its immoral
development of nuclear forces on China', and its 'propagation of the China
threat theory'.
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In this author's survey of
Renmin ribao
and
Beijing Review
in the months after
the Indian nuclear tests, there were no references, even indirect, to India
constituting a security threat to China. Again the point was that neither China nor
India constituted a threat to the other, and any assertions to the contrary were
false and malicious in intent.
Chinese academic commentary on India's 1998 tests also gave little indication
of perceived Indian threats to China, much less of possible Chinese threats to India.
While opinion among Chinese analysts was not uniform, the dominant point of
view among Chinese analysts was that India's 1998 tests had little to do with
Indian-Chinese relations at all, but were, in fact, a function of the domestic
political needs of the BJP-led Indian government, and/or an Indian drive for
hegemony in South Asia. The dominant point of view among Chinese analysts was
that an effort to understand Indian-Chinese relations in terms of security was
misguided. There were no legitimate, major, security concerns between the two
countries, and assertions to the contrary were inaccurate and possibly malevolent.
An article by prominent Chinese South Asian specialist Wang Hongwei
typified the mainstream point of view. The BJP government had 'fabricated the
'China threat' as a pretext for their surprise nuclear tests in order, from the
perspective of domestic politics, to stimulate Hindu nationalist passions, thus
diverting internal contradictions and attention in order to strengthen the weak
position of the regime'. From an international perspective, the objective of the
