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Keeping aside their intense battle of nerves on cross-border issues such as Arunachal Pradesh the Dalai Lama, incursions and Chinese interest in PoK, the proposed dam on the Brahmputra, the Prime Ministers of India and China last week vowed not to allow mutual differences to jeopardize “functional cooperation” in bilateral ties. Meeting on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit at the Thai beach resort of Hua Hin, on Oct. 24, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao observed that a robust partnership between the two Asian giants was in the interest of the region and the world.

Briefing on their talks, N Ravi, Secretary [East], Ministry of Eternal Affairs said Prime Minister Singh told his Chinese counterpart that he would like to see India-China relations move forward in every direction He emphasized that neither side should let differences act as an impediment to the growth of functional cooperation. The Chinese leader echoed the views of his Indian counterpart and said, he believed that their two countries should maintain a good relationship in the future which conforms to the interests of their countries. Describing Dr. Singh as an “old friend”, Mr. Wen said it was important to implement the agreements outlined in the 10-pronged strategy of 2006 and Vision Document of last year to “deepen mutually beneficial cooperation” on bilateral, regional and international issues.

In his opening remarks, Dr. Singh told Wen Jiabao that the issues that have come up in the recent months should be “properly handled” through discussions. The Indian side maintained that neither the issue of Arunachal, which China claims as its own nor the upcoming November visit of the Dalai Lama to the State of Arunachal Pradesh was raised. However, Xinhua, the official news agency of China reported that the two leaders agreed “to gradually narrow differences on border issues between the two countries.” Both the leaders agreed that differences between them on a range of issues should not be allowed to act as impediment.

“Dr. Singh reminded Wen of the understanding that peace and tranquility would be maintained at the LAC…”

Incidentally, although Ravi during his briefing on the talks avoided any specific mention of contentious issues, the English daily, THE HINDU, quoted some senior officials on condition of anonymity that difficult issues were raised and discussed, especially the recent tension over the boundary question and lingering uncertainties about upstream water projects on the Yaluzangbu, as the river Brahmaputra is known on the Chinese side. In a reference to the growing assertiveness of Chinese border patrols along the Line of Actual Control separating the two countries, Dr. Singh reminded Wen of the understanding that peace and tranquility would be maintained at the LAC even as the Special Representatives sought to find a solution to the boundary question. According to Indian officials, the Chinese Premier reaffirmed this understanding twice. Wen said the border dispute was “complicated and difficult” and that both sides must have “courage, vision and patience” in order to reach a settlement that was “fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable.” He also noted that in 2,000 years of shared historical and civilisational ties, India and China had been through a “very difficult period” just once. Without making specific reference to any upper riparian projects, Prime Minister Singh conveyed in his opening remarks India’s concerns about the need for relevant information and data sharing. Premier Wen said some data had been shared in the past but agreed that a proposed meeting of technical experts — the joint expert-level mechanism on trans-border rivers is supposed to meet annually but has been delayed this year — could take up the issue. But even though the boundary issue figured in the Manmohan-Wen talks, the Tibetan spiritual leader was not mentioned directly or indirectly by either side.

Verbal sparring with China

Ahead of the meeting of the two Prime Ministers, Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao told newsmen that bilateral relationship will be in focus. She noted that the relationship between the two countries was “a complex one” though it has “developed in many areas” in recent years. The Chinese Ambassador to India, Zhang Yan, also joined in to lower the temperature. He told newsmen on Oct. 21, that the two countries were on “very good terms” and committed to advance their ties in a “cooperative and mutually beneficial” manner.

Yet, the two Prime Ministers at their meeting had the tough task of attempting to put an end to the sharp exchange of words between the two sides in recent weeks.

The Chinese have been making unwarranted statements like the one criticizing Prime Minister Singh’s visit to Arunachal Pradesh which they claim is Chinese territory. The opposition to the Dalai Lama’s visit to Arunachal, the stepped up incursions as a way of expressing their anger at his coming visit, the attempt to block Asian Development Bank aid for a project in Arunachal earlier this year, President Hu Jintao’s statement that his country would continue to support projects in Pak-occupied Kashmir and his commitment of assistance to a project to upgrade the Karakoram highway and the Neelam-Jhelum hydroelectric project in PoK, are clearly unhelpful in maintaining good relations with China with which India also has a longstanding border dispute.

Beginning with exaggerated Indian media reports of an alleged increase in Chinese incursions along the undemocratic Line of Actual Control, the rhetoric has now taken on a life of its own with government-run newspapers in Beijing accusing India of “hegemony,” Indian analysts making dire predictions of conflict, and senior Chinese officials making repeated public demarches about Arunachal Pradesh as part of their claim that the Indian state is actually a part of Tibet.

Although the immediate focus of China’s assertive pronouncements and actions is apparently Arunachal and also Jammu and Kashmir – the Chinese Embassy in New Delhi recently began issuing visas to the State’s residents on a separate sheet of paper rather than stamping their Indian passports – the war of words has cast a shadow over not just the ongoing boundary negotiations but also the positive long-term trend in bilateral relations between the two countries.

At the heart of the recent deterioration in relations is the proposed visit to Arunachal Pradesh by the Dalai Lama, spiritual leader of the Tibetan Buddhists and a man Beijing reviles as a separatist bent on pushing for the independence of the Autonomous Region. The Indian side has said repeatedly and publicly that the Dalai Lama is a guest and is free to visit any part of the country he wishes. Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao told newsmen on Oct. 23, that the Dalai Lama was free to visit any part of the country. He is due to visit Arunachal Pradesh for a week beginning November 8 and also visit Tawang to deliver spiritual lessons and visit a hospital for which he had helped raise funds. Opposing his visit, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu [Oct. 20] repeated China’s “great concern” and said, Beijing was “firmly opposed” to India’s permission to let him go ahead with his planned visit to Arunachal Pradesh.

Though there is no indication that New Delhi will rethink its position, senior officials say the intention is not to score points over China or to use the visit in order to underline the status of Arunachal Pradesh as an integral part of India.

But, the wider politics of the Dalai Lama’s visit to Tawang was complicated. China, after all, cites the monastic connection between Tawang and Tibet as the basis for its claim to the town and State, a connection that would be reinforced by the Dalai Lama’s coming visit. During his visit to the monastery there in 2003, the Dalai Lama had in fact said he believed Tawang was a part of Tibet. Since then, the Tibetan spiritual leader has said he accepts the McMahon line, which forms the basis for the Indian demarcation of the Sino-Indian border, much to the consternation of Beijing. Some officials believe the Chinese fear is that the Dalai Lama may use the occasion of his visit to Tawang to tell media persons that the district is an integral part of India.

The People’s Daily on Friday published a commentary, ‘Dalai Lama goes further down traitorous road’ in which it accused the “Dalai Lama clique” of “[cooperating] closely with India whenever Sino-Indian border negotiations are being held or the Indian side is maliciously speculating over a border dispute.”

There have been other newer irritants like the Chinese Embassy starting to issue visas to people from Kashmir on separate paper and stapling them on their passports and the Indian Government asking the Chinese citizens who entered India on a business visa only but getting employed on projects, to either leave India before Oct 21 or face action for flouting the new visa regime which prohibits foreigners from working here without holding an Indian employment visa. So far only 1800 of them have applied for conversion of their business visas to employment visas ahead of the Oct. 31 deadline. There are some 25,000 Chinese working on projects in India. Beijing has sought extension of the deadline.

Concern over Brahmaputra diversion plan

Of greater concern to New Delhi is the report of a Chinese plan to divert the waters of the river known as Yarlung in China and Brahmaputra in India when it enters Assam. Yarlung that runs from the West to the East meandering through the mountainous Tibetan region takes a complete U turn before it descends on Arunachal Pradesh and assumes the name of mighty Brahmaputra as it enters Assam. It flows westward for about 900 km through the fertile Assam Valley before it joins Jamuna in Bangladesh and eventually drains into the Bay of Bengal.

Assam Chief Minister, Tarun Gogoi called on Prime Minister Singh in New Delhi on Oct. 20 who assured him that India would take up the issue with Chinas Prime Minister when he met him in Thailand, about its proposed dam on the upper reaches of the Brahmaputra. A delegation from Arunachal Pradesh led by Chief Minister Dorjee Khandu also met the Prime Minister on the issue.

Talking to newsmen ahead of his meeting with the Prime Minister, Gogoi said in Guwahati, such a project by China would dry up the Brahmaputra and affect water resources in Assam. He said, it would adversely affect navigation on the Brahmaputra river and its after use for other socio-economic purposes in the State.

Sources say the National Remote Sensing Agency [NRSA] and the National Technical Research Organisation [NTRO] had alerted the Government in May last year about nine suspected locations along the river on the Chinese side. The NTRO had informed the Committee of Secretaries about increased infrastructure activity near the Great Bend where the Brahmaputra takes a steep turn to enter India. Citing “open sources”, NTRO had even indicated that 2009 could see “commencement” of construction work in the Great Western River Diversion Project.

Reports on Chinese plans to divert Brahmaputra waters have been taken note of ever since 2003. In 2005, Li Ling’s book “How Tibet’s water will save China” detailed plans to divert about 200 BCM of water from Tibet, including 120 BCM from the Brahmaputra basin on the Chinese side.

The Committee of Secretaries [CoS] has been monitoring this aspect since 2006 and having regular meetings to discuss implications of Chinese plans to build a dam on the Brahmaputra. At one stage, the CoS was informed that the Great Western River Diversion Project had “moved from discussion to planning stage”. Despite a CoS recommendation, the Government did not constitute a Group of Ministers.

“The Committee of Secretaries [CoS] has been monitoring this aspect since 2006 and having regular meetings to discuss implications of Chinese plans to build a dam on the Brahmaputra.”

More than one year ago, China announced plans to build a series of dams in Tibet, including a hydel power generation plant at Zangmu on the middle reaches of the Brahmaputra. The plan was part of a larger initiative by Beijing to tap Himalayan rivers for hydropower. Tibet’s rivers have remained largely untapped because of the difficult terrain, but with improvements in technology in the past decade, China’s leaders have embarked on a damming spree in the mountains of Tibet and Yunnan in the southwest.

The plans will have an impact on the lives of millions in seven countries that lie downstream of these rivers — India, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and Thailand. The dams on the Salween river in Yunnan, by some reports, have already resulted in flooding in the Mekong region downstream.

How concerned should India, which lies downstream on the Brahmaputra, be? China’s projects on this river are of two kinds — one, for hydel power generation, and the more ambitious kind, still in the works, a massive diversion project that envisages diverting the river’s waters to the arid north. The Zangmu project, which has been in the news in India recently, was publicly announced a year ago, and the contract awarded this March. Some reports have alleged that Beijing was going back on its commitment to India to not divert the Brahmaputra.

The Zangmu site is essentially a hydel power project — a ‘run of the river’ power generation project, which experts say is no cause for alarm as it will have little impact on the course of the river downstream. The real worry for India, experts and officials say, is when China embarks on its diversion plan. The mammoth $62 billion “South-to-North Water Diversion” project, currently embroiled in debates and delays in Beijing, is the centrepiece of the Chinese government’s plans to address its northern water crisis. The spreading water crisis, which already affects more than half of the country’s 660 cities, is largely sourced in its strikingly uneven distribution of water resources. The arid north and northwest, home to 35 per cent of the population, has only 7 per cent of the country’s water resources.

The diversion project, first mooted by Mao Zedong in the 1950s, involves diverting water from the south to the north along three routes. The central and middle routes, which have no impact on India, will divert water from the Yangtze river to Beijing and Tianjin in the north. The western route, from the Brahmaputra, is the most ambitious and is of huge consequence to India and Bangladesh. It involves building a dam on the ‘great bend’ of the Brahmaputra — the spot where the river does a U-turn of sorts and begins its journey east to India.

Work has begun on the central and eastern routes. Prime Minister Singh raised India’s concerns about the western route when he met Chinese President Hu Jintao in Beijing in 2008.

The problem for India is that China has all the leverage in the issue, with weak international laws and no robust water-sharing arrangements between the two countries. The pressing concern for New Delhi, experts say, is to begin to actively engage with Beijing on water sharing issues. India needs to institutionalise a sharing mechanism before it is too late, and before Beijing presents New Delhi with a fait accompli about its dams.

“The problem for India is that China has all the leverage in the issue, with weak international laws and no robust water-sharing arrangements between the two countries.”

“There is no ‘water-sharing’ arrangement between India and China.” Ramaswamy Iyer, former Water Resources Secretary of the Government of India, said “Water has not figured in the India-China talks, there is no understanding.”

“The issue for India and China is that there is no agreement, on international rivers,” says Brahma Chellaney of the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi. “Between India and Pakistan, we have a treaty which provides for third party arbitration and defines what the rules and no-go areas are. But between India and China, there is a huge vacuum which is not good for stability and water security.” Chellaney says the first requirement for India is to “discuss and define what the no-go areas are, and arrive at basic rules,” something the two countries have not done. Officials have so far had three meetings through a working group mechanism that has been set up, but it does not have the mandate to come up with such a robust agreement. “As long as there are no institutional arrangements,” he observes, “India’s position depends on China basically coming to an agreement by doing us a favour. And that is not a position India should be in.”

China tirade under domestic pressure

Commenting on the Chinese stridency and its raising fresh irritants, China watchers in New Delhi say, domestic compulsions have forced the Chinese leadership to up the ante against India and use harsh words. The new generation of Chinese population is increasingly getting nationalistic The post-Tiananmen Square generation is more nationalistic and has even criticized its leadership for not being more assertive and strong vis-à-vis India on the issues of Arunachal Pradesh and the Dalai Lama. “Therefore, the recent stance by China on Arunachal cannot be seen in isolation”, sources said.

China is also unnerved by deepening strategic relationship between India and the US, according to an eminent American scholar. He argued that Beijing’s four-decade old policy of dealing with New Delhi on their own terms has gone hayware. Participating in a panel discussion in Washington on “China 2025” organized by the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations, Evan Feigenbaum, Senior Fellow for East, Central and South Asia, said Beijing is increasingly becoming concerned about the growing Indo-US relations. “Since 1962, the Chinese strategists have decided that they can deal with India on their own terms. But when you introduce the United States into the equation, it introduces all kinds of uncertainties into Chinese planning”, he said. He noted that for China, India has so far been a second, if not a third, tier security priority.