South Asia Rising

[ROUDRAM]

[color=#3F3F3F]Although India has always been wary of external interference in the affairs of the subcontinent, Delhi can no longer simply ignore the growing third-party interest, especially that of China.[/color]

[color=#3F3F3F]The eight-member South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC), whose leaders are meeting this week in the Maldives, already has nine observers. These are the United States, China, Japan, South Korea, Myanmar, Australia, Iran, Mauritius and the European Union. Turkey is now pressing to join SAARC as an observer.[/color]

[color=#3F3F3F]For a regional organisation that is widely considered a slow-boat, the increasing international interest in SAARC would seem anomalous. The reality is, that after being relatively marginal to international politics all these decades, the subcontinent is reclaiming its position at the crossroads of Asia.[/color]

[color=#3F3F3F]As the subcontinent’s geopolitical weight grows, India must devote some attention to the emerging role of South Asia as a bridge between different regions —East Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East.[/color]


[color=#3F3F3F]Instead of keeping outsiders at bay, India must ask itself if there is a way to benefit from the growing number of SAARC observers. Right now, the SAARC members are divided on the role of observers. India’s smaller neighbours, for example, want to see China play a larger role in the economic development of the region and take a more active part in the SAARC process. Beijing, in turn, has invested considerable diplomatic, political and economic energies in promoting a South Asian regionalism of its own imagination.[/color]

[color=#3F3F3F]Delhi’s own strategic instinct has been to limit the role of China in SAARC. That, however, has not stopped Beijing from taking the lead on regional economic integration.[/color]

[color=#3F3F3F]China has always resented India’s claims for an exclusive sphere of influence in the subcontinent. From Beijing’s perspective, it has as much right as any one else to develop all-round cooperation with India’s neighbours. Beijing is also acutely aware that the subcontinent is an important element of its periphery. That the subcontinent borders some of the more sensitive frontier regions of China - Xinjiang, Tibet and Yunnan - makes the region very special from Beijing’s internal security perspective.[/color]



[color=#3F3F3F]Sub-regionalism[/color]

[color=#3F3F3F]China encourages all its provinces with international borders to initiate direct engagement with countries across the fence. Whether abutting the Russian Far East, the Korean Peninsula, Indo-China, Thailand, Burma, Nepal or Central Asia, China’s border provinces are now in diplomatic overdrive.[/color]

[color=#3F3F3F]This, of course, stands in contrast to some of our own chief ministers in border states, for example, in West Bengal or Tamil Nadu, who think burning bridges with the neighbours makes better political sense.[/color]

[color=#3F3F3F]As China began to invest in the transformation of its far western regions over the last decade, its engagement with the subcontinent has rapidly grown. This has involved building road and rail networks and pipelines to connect the remote regions of China to the warm waters of the Indian Ocean.[/color]

[color=#3F3F3F]For more than a decade, the Yunnan province has spent much energy in developing economic cooperation with Burma, Bangladesh and India. The Tibetan regional government in Lhasa wants to develop closer links with Bhutan, Nepal and India. Xinjiang, which had long benefited from trans-Karakoram links with Pakistan, is now exploring similar connectivity with Afghanistan. As China develops the historic city of Kashgar in Xinjiang as a regional hub, the idea of a “Pamir Group” bringing Xinjiang, Afghanistan and Pakistan together into a regional forum is gaining ground.[/color]



[color=#3F3F3F]SAARC Plus One[/color]

[color=#3F3F3F]To complement China’s bilateral and sub-regional engagement with each of India’s neighbours, Beijing has begun to focus on a collective engagement with SAARC. In the last few years, China has made sustained overtures to the SAARC secretariat and developed a track-two process involving consultations with scholars and policymakers from the eight member states.[/color]

[color=#3F3F3F]The notion of “SAARC Plus China” does not find too many takers in official India. No surprises there. The one missing link in China’s SAARC policy is a comprehensive dialogue with India on South Asia. A structured bilateral conversation between Beijing and Delhi could help dispel the notion of a Sino-Indian rivalry in the subcontinent and explore ways to leverage the weight of the world’s two fastest-growing economies for regional stability and prosperity.[/color]



[color=#3F3F3F][i]The writer is a senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, Delhi[/i][/color]
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