As scion of a global industrial empire on his way into retirement Ratan Tata could not but be diplomatic. His famous last words are quoted thus: “China has never done anything adversarial…India, I think, has been more concerned about China’s economic strength overpowering India, which we really don’t see”. Of course Mr Tata is right that China is not doing anything adversarial up front and face to face but it is using proxies -- Pakistan and its Islamist hordes --to bleed India “with a thousand cuts” to borrow a well-worn Chinese tactic to undermine an adversary.

Its change of stance from claims to just the Tawang tract to the whole of Arunachal Pradesh. Its refusal to give visas to persons from the State claiming that they are Chinese citizens leading to the cancellation of military-to-military contacts intended to be confidence-building measures apparently do not come within Mr Tata’s definition of “adversarial”

There have been 500 Chinese intrusions across the Line of Actual Control in recent times which militates against the provisions of the Accord of Peace and Tranquillity along the Line of Actual Control that was intended to prevent the kind of bloody confrontation that occurred at Nathu La, where the two sides are in touching distance of each other, in 1967 and at Chola in Sikkim. That the Government of India has thought it fit to raise an additional two Divisions of troops to secure Arunachal Pradesh from nibbling by Chinese troops is on the face of it a measure of caution but it does represent an appreciation that the Chinese can shift from hectoring to bullying at short notice. Signs of that have been noticed in the Aksai Chin segment where China has objected to the construction of a track on the Indian side of the Line of Actual Control or of pitching tents by the Indian Army in an area that it has traditionally patrolled.

As part of the encirclement of India, China has posted, by our own count, 4000 personnel in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir ostensibly to assist in the relief measures launched after the landslides in 2010. It is two years and they are still there and their numbers are, by the US Central Intelligence Agency appreciation, close to 11,000. They are troops disguised as engineers and labourers. There are reports from within Pakistan itself that Islamabad is preparing to hand over PoK to China on a 50 year lease to consolidate its hold on territory that belonged to the former kingdom of Jammu and Kashmir at the time of Accession to India in 1947.

Pakistan is, in the meantime, engaged in a program of extermination of the Shia majority population that straddles the area through which the illegally constructed Karakoram Highway has been aligned. All this is in preparation for China to construct a railway and lay oil and gas pipelines through PoK connecting its province of Xiangjiang (former Sinkiang) with the Pakistani naval base at Gwadar which was constructed by the Chinese and has since been handed over to them as a strategic outpost in the north Arabian Sea.

The changes in the demography in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir is not just a humanitarian issue. It is closely linked to geopolitical changes being sought to be imposed by Beijing in this part of the world. China has encouraged Pakistan in its policy of using Islamic fundamentalist jihadis as tools of its foreign policy in its neighbourhood in Afghanistan, against India and in the former Central Asian Republics of the Soviet Union. Its recent trenchant statement aimed at the US that any attack on Pakistan would be construed as an attack on China was made at a time when Pakistan had unleashed the Taliban/ Al Qaeda combine against the American embassy in Kabul.

As far as India is concerned it is a victim of Chinese coercive diplomacy and its soft-footed approach on the developments in PoK sends out a message that it does not want a confrontation with China. Beijing is taking advantage of this by putting off any settlement of the border issue one way or the other, preferring to retain a situation of no-war, no-peace along the Line of Actual Control. It has brazenly indicated that if there are no Indian troops at a specific location where is there the question of “actual control”. It is in response to this stance that India has increased the troop strength by two additional Divisions which many military men have stated is too little given the Chinese ability to deploy up to 40 Divisions at short notice.  

Occasionally China has raised objections over the activities of Islamic fundamentalist activities in the Urumqui area where the Muslims are in a majority but it has never tried to dissuade Pakistan from using jihadi terrorists as tools of the State. That Pakistan is a catspaw of China is evident also in its renewed calls for the demilitarization of the Siachen Glacier as a bilateral arrangement with India without any similar demand for the removal of troops of China from other parts of the Jammu and Kashmir.

Fears have been expressed over the possibility of China stepping on to the Siachen Glacier once India withdraws after delineating the Actual Ground Position Line on the specious plea that if Indian troops are not there then the area must be Chinese territory as it has done in many places along the Line of Actual Control which it has steadfastly refused to demarcate on the ground.

It needs to be recalled that there was a sustained campaign within India itself for many years for the withdrawal from Siachen on grounds that it is too difficult a terrain to defend and has no strategic value. If it has no value why is Pakistan insisting that Indian troops withdraw from it?

Under such circumstances where is the question of there being an “adversarial” relationship with China? It can better be described as subservient.