Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Chinese publications about Indian threats to China's security, and why any
discussion of Indian-perceived Chinese threats to India is invariably cast in terms
of the unreasonableness and inaccuracy of those Indian perceptions.
A second level of explanation of the asymmetry of Indian and Chinese threat
perceptions is in terms of the outcome of decades-long application of Indian and
Chinese national power to shape the correlation of forces in the Sino-Indian
relationship. By and large China seems to have been more effective in shaping
the broad contours of that correlation than was India. China mobilized and used
its national capabilities in this regard with considerably more vigor and success
than India.
The outcome of this is that the existing correlation of forces is far more
satisfactory and less threatening to China than it is to India. In 1962 India was
taught to fear Chinese military power. The Sino-Pakistan strategic partnership is
still strong. Thick security relations have developed between China and Myanmar
and China and Bangladesh. The development of China's military links to various
South Asian countries has only occasionally met with major setbacks. There is
little reason for Beijing to find the status quo threatening. The view is rather
different from the Indian perspective.
The adoption of a far more hard-headed and realistic Indian foreign policy
after the watershed election of March 1998 may lead to somewhat more
symmetrical Chinese and Indian threat perceptions. Under the leadership of
Vajpayee and Jaswant Singh, India launched a campaign to collect points of
pressure against China. Elements of this new strategy included: overt
nuclearization and weaponization; the expansion of military ties with China's
eastern and southeastern neighbors via India's 'Look East' policy; a drive to
develop and deploy missiles able to reach deep inside China; the forging of a new
strategic partnership with the United States; and last but by no means least,
stepped-up pressure on Beijing to disengage from missile and nuclear
cooperation with Pakistan. The operative assumption underlying this new Indian
policy seems to be that if Beijing is more fearful of India, it will become more
sensitive to Indian concerns about China's activities in South Asia and the Indian
Ocean region.
NOTES
1.
The author would like to thank Mr Chunfang Li of the University of Michigan Asia
Library, Mr Ron Dial of the Air University Library, and Dr Swaran Singh of
Jawaharal Nehru University for their assistance in compiling a complete set of
journal table of contents for content analysis.
2.
Charles Hutzler, 'China's Quiet, Crucial Role in the War',
Wall Street Journal,
18
Dec. 2001, p.10.
3.
Annual Report, 1992-93,
Ministry of Defence, Government of India, pp.5, 7.
