Chinese Defense Minister Visits India (Dispatch)
Video Transcript:
Video Transcript:
After spending five days in Sri Lanka, Chinese Defense Minister Gen. Liang Guanglie is leading a 23-member defense delegation in India this week. During the visit, Liang will be carrying a message of cooperation amid increased U.S.-Chinese tensions in the Asia-Pacific theater. With a number of distractions already piling up at home, India is looking to calm its uneasy relationship with Beijing but will proceed with caution as underlying tensions are only bound to intensify between the two Asian powers.
It's been eight years since a Chinese defense minister has paid a visit to India. In that time, China and India have experienced tenser than usual relations. In scouring the globe for resources to fuel its economy, China has extended its naval presence to protect its supply lines. As China got to work in developing ports in Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Myanmar, India naturally began to fear that it was being encircled by Beijing.
Naval competition in the Indian Ocean only reinforced longstanding land disputes in China's rough Himalayan borderland with India. China has built up its military presence and infrastructural links to Tibet for more rapid deployment of forces to contain separatism in its far west. Meanwhile, India continues to allow the exiled Tibetan leadership to operate from Indian territory.
India has extended the competition by getting involved in the already hot South China Sea dispute. Indian state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp. is working with Vietnam in joint exploration for natural gas in spite of the project's questionable commercial viability.
Meanwhile, the United States is taking a much more serious interest in balancing against China in the Asian Pacific theater. Along with countries like Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines, Washington expects India to play an important role in this coalition. In trying to undermine this U.S.-backed coalition, China is trying to communicate to these Asian powers the risks of aligning with a distant and powerful country like the United States.
China is sending this message through a blend of threatening gestures, designed to convince neighboring states that the U.S. will not be there to protect them in their time of need, and cooperative gestures to convince them that China's expanded regional presence is a reality that can't be fought. In this vein, China is arguing that India, Vietnam and the Philippines are better off cooperating than competing with Beijing in the end. Indeed, during Liang's visit to Sri Lanka, he continued to stress that China's military moves are what he called "active defense," that were not intended to "offend" China's neighbors.
As expected, the Indian and Chinese defense ministers announced Sept. 4 a resumption of joint counterterrorism military exercises. The last exercises in 2010 were suspended by India when China refused to grant a visa to an Indian general from the disputed Indian territory of Arunachal Pradesh. India and China are apparently trying to reconcile their differences, but the shifting dynamics of the region will continue to fuel tensions between these neighbors.
While India will continue to perceive Chinese moves in its periphery as encirclement, Beijing's bigger concern is its perceived encirclement by the United States in the wider region. India has too many distractions at home to effectively counter Chinese encroachment in its near abroad and will lean on the United States to some degree in dealing with Beijing. At the same time, India has long maintained an independent foreign policy and will resist being branded as a U.S. proxy. As Liang's visit shows us, the web of relationships in this region amid increasing competition still carries a great deal of nuance.
