Last fortnight's India-China joint naval exercise, however limited, may be a new opening in bilateral relations. Coupled with the politico-economic CBMs of the past years, the Shanghai naval exercise is an indication that both nations are learning to overcome the bitter past. It is particularly difficult on India to trust China after 1962, coming as it did after the 'Indi-Chini bhai, bhai' phase of the Fifties.
Sinologists in this country would say that China had never given up territorial claims, and hence cannot be trusted, with the 'Arunachal Pradesh issue' still pending. They have a point, but China has been changing with the times, unlike Soviet communism, which collapsed under its own weight. This has been becoming increasingly visible from the days of Deng Xiaoping, who was the inevitable link from the past.
This does not mean that India has to down its guard against China. It only means New Delhi need not be myopic, either. In a world that is constantly churning and changing in the post-Cold War era, India has to find its level. There is a lot of testing and trying in bilateral and international relations between nations and regions, strategies and diplomacies. New Delhi need not jump the gun.
That being the case, China can as much be an opportunity for India as it could be an adversary. The same applies to Beijing too, particularly when the West is keen on propping up China as a 'calibrated global alternative' to the US in a uni-polar world. Such arguments pre-suppose the evolution of a bipolar world all over again, aborting a multi-polar global order at the conceptual stage.
The world has given itself time till 2020 for China to become a super-power. India has time till then to evaluate the emerging relations with China, without having to confer on it an adversarial role in haste. That is what Defence Minister George Fernandes unwittingly did at the height of Pokhran II, and has gone about repairing since.
India has had useful military relations with the US in the sense Indian soldiers are getting exposed to the American technologies, just as the latter got exposed to the sub-continental terrain and temperatures. India and China, for instance, may not require acclimatisation of the kind, but joint patrolling of the common seas could be of equal interest for both, as it has been for the US to have joint patrols with India in the seas of South and South East Asias.
If given the common border and memories of the past, India had more to fear from China than from the US, the American presence in Central and West Asia may have changed all that. Proximity can work either way, as the US presence in India's neighbourhood has proved, and New Delhi need not have to look at Beijing any differently.
The Chinese leadership has already spoken about joint exploitation of complementary skills in the IT sector at the global level. Space is where both nations have credible and creditable achievements, and this could be pooled together for common benefit. Joint maritime exploration and exploitation could be another area, if together they did not step on other regional and sub-regional toes.
Projecting China as an emerging security threat to ASEAN nations, and incorporating an anti-China military element into India's 'Look East Policy' would not help New Delhi's interests. Beyond a point, India could neither have the interest, nor the capabilities to 'defend' the region against China. In turn, Beijing should have no keen interest in the maritime neighbourhood of India, unless it casts New Delhi in an adversarial role.
To compare India's differences with Pakistan, and imposing the China angle onto it would be as wrong as introducing the Pakistan 's angle into New Delhi's ties with Washington. Nations strive, and should strive, to serve their political, economic and strategic interests, not those of their friends and neighbours. In this, China's stand cannot be different from the US' or that of any other nation or grouping. Only that India needs to learn from both, and distinguish its self-interests from those of its friends, allies and neighbours. Now and later.
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