Pleasing China, Insulting India

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

The president of a republic bows to an emperor!  Not a courteous reciprocal nod in lieu of a handshake, but very very deeply!  Didn’t anyone bother to tell Barack Obama that presidents and emperors are equals as heads of state?  Even I, this mere citizen of a republic, would not curtsey to the Queen of England or bow to an emperor any further than he would bow to me.  The U.S. rejected subservience to hereditary rulers long long ago. 

Subsequently Obama’s conduct in China amounted to one kowtow after another.  Hasn’t he got protocol people who can explain the difference, verbal and otherwise, between due respect for others and servility?  Ah well, debtors can’t be choosers, I suppose.

And then!  Did your ears hear this?  Did my eyes see this?  It wasn’t just a matter of overdosing on politeness.  It was a gaffe of monumental—should I say Himalayan?—proportions.  The joint statement by the U.S. and China on Tuesday said:

The two sides are ready to strengthen communication, dialogue and cooperation on issues related to South Asia and work together to promote peace and development in that region.

The Chinese must have chortled over that one! 

But surely Obama’s advisers realize that India and China are bitter competitors who nevertheless sometimes manage to do a little mutually beneficial trading.  Trade aside, they  have an adversarial relationship along the northern border of the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh (see my recent post) and in Kashmir.  Mere weeks before Barack Obama set foot in Beijing, China was once again claiming territory that China had invaded in 1962.  Surely Obama’s advisors also know that Pakistan became an India-threatening nuclear power with the assistance of China.  It worked like this: India needed the bomb because China had the bomb, so China helped Pakistan to the bomb in order to retilt the balance in favor of China.  In fact, China has pursued a relentless policy of isolating and undermining India for decades, as I’ll detail below.  How, then, could  President Barack Obama have invited China to join the U.S. in “promoting peace” in South Asia?  You don’t ask a partisan to mediate.

As for asking China to “promote development” in South Asia, surely India could be expected to take that as an insult, pure and simple.  Should India trade the democratic model for one party rule?  Should India trade freedom of speech and assembly, freedom of religion, a free press, true ethnic and minority rights for Beijing’s totally authoritarian model?   As the old saying went, Hitler and Mussolini made the trains run on time, but were they models for the good society?  Sadly, the U.S. chooses convenience over democracy again and again.  We expected better of Obama.

Now let’s look at China’s India policy.  For decades, China has been contriving, in its usual relentless long term way, to neutralize India, its only real Asian competitor in terms of political and economic power.  Turning a  blind eye to human rights abuses, China gained access to natural resources and influence in Burma aka Myanmar, on India’s Eastern border.  To the North, in Nepal, China supports the Maoist insurgents who have grown strong enough to claim a role in governance. A decade ago China completed an engineering miracle of a road through the mountains between Pakistan and China, resulting in a massive increase in trade via the port of Karachi.  But products from Western China will have an even more efficient trade route in the near future.  The Chinese-funded deep water port of Gwador in Baluchistan will bypass Karachi and connect China to the Arabian Sea near Iran.  Result: India is nearly encircled—north, east and west.  As for the South, China’s growing blue water navy is turning up in the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea.  This does not sit well with India.

All this being the case, how could Obama’s foreign policy advisers (and Obama)  not have realized that the least support for China's inserting itself into South Asian affairs would be provocative in the extreme?  India’s understandably huffy response boils down to this: India’s issues with Pakistan will be resolved bilaterally. Butt out, China.  Butt out, America.  So much for another Obama fantasy: solving the Kashmir standoff.

Meanwhile, I truly love this Indian response: the suggestion by one analyst that India should respond, during the Prime Minister’s upcoming visit to Washington, by demanding an equivalent pledge: “a line in the joint statement on Tibet and the Dalai Lama.”  This, says Alka Acharya, would truly be “meaningful.”  Especially since Obama dodged the Dalai Lama before his visit to China.  Talk about kowtow! 

And now the President’s men and women are falling all over themselves to reinterpret all the bloopers and spin Obama's Asian trip as a success.