India, China ‘peace’ deal belongs to future

India and China decided on Tuesday to 'work together to maintain peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region'. Srikant Kondapalli, one of the few credible experts of the country on China, especially its Peoples' Liberation Army [PLA] couldn't recall any other occasion when the two countries had talked about the specific region at the higher levels of leadership ever. 

This came through in the meeting between the defence minister A K Antony and the visiting Chinese defence minister Gen. Liang Guanglie. This development took place three months after the US defence secretary Leon Panetta came calling on Antony and talked about the US strategic ‘pivot’ towards the Asia-Pacific with six Aircraft Carrier Battle Groups being assigned to the region. Panetta had told all and sundry at that time that India was a lynchpin of this strategy. 

But, the Chinese even then expressed doubts about India falling in line with the US plan and, instead, the Chinese Communist Party [CCP]-run publications, like the Chinese version of Global Times, had commented that for a long time China did not have a clear strategic intent about India and it needed to develop one. It had also noted that there was deep mutual distrust between the two countries.

So, if Guanglie's current visit is on this accord, it also smacks of 'tokenism', says Kondapalli. For, by the next year, the Chinese military's apex politico-military body, the Central Military Commission [CMC], would undergo many changes in personnel, commensurate with the political leadership changes at the top. There is some speculation that the president of China and the CCP general secretary Hu Jintao may not lay down the office of the chairman, CMC, like his predecessor Jiang Zemin did. 

Even then, the next Chinese leader to be anointed the general secretary in the forthcoming 18th party congress to be held in a few months time, and then become the president of the country, early next year, Xi Jinping has very strong connections to the PLA. In fact, his wife is a major general of the army’s cultural wing.

In that context, the real military engagement, beyond the ‘token’ exercises involving the two armies and the two navies announced in Tuesday’s meeting, would take place only after the new political and military leadership rise to the office. 

For now, General Guanglie's visit can only be called an exploratory journey and a kind of 'holding operation' till the real act goes on stage. Antony, in his turn, did not overtly reach out, and instead remained true only to the context of the visit.