Sino-India Visa Controversy and Kashmir

By Awais Bin Wasi

In a very surprising diplomatic move China has, of late, started issuing visa to the people of Indian held Kashmir on a separate paper instead on the Indian passport. The visa is generally pasted on the passport of the applicant and China has also been doing the same practice for the people of Kashmir, but it has taken a shift on its visa policy for kashmiris for quite sometime now. India stopped such visa holders from getting on china-bound planes and lodged a formal protest with Beijing; however, the silence of Beijing over this diplomatic move is quite mysterious.

While it is construed by some that this diplomatic move indicates that China has taken the strident line over Kashmir, it is unfounded when we look at the unfolding of the events regarding Sino-Indo relations at this moment in time.  Although China has been oscillating from neutrality to more forceful policy on Kashmir to support the peaceful settlement and UN resolution, its policy on Kashmir has been by and large reflecting the aspirations of the people of Kashmir.  

China had a neutral policy on Kashmir in the decade of 1950 due to Pakistan’s participation of US sponsored alliances SEATO and CENTO that transformed into a more proactive one and toed the Pakistani line on Kashmir dispute. Sino-Indo war in 1962 primarily motivated China to adopt a paradigm shift in its policy towards South Asia and decided to have strategic depth in its relationship with Pakistan.  China, then, started supporting firmly the just struggle of the people of Kashmir and the Chinese leadership would more often than not make the pointed references of the phrases ‘just struggle of Kashmiris’ and ‘the right to self determination for the people of Kashmir’ in the policy discourse. This vocal policy of China maintained till 1980 when the phrases like the ‘right to self determination’ and ‘peoples’ just struggle’ were ingeniously replaced by the expression of ‘peaceful solution through bilateral negotiations’ and the earlier strident endorsement of Pakistan’s stance on Kashmir issue toned down. This was believed to be done due to the resumption of diplomatic relations with Delhi in 1976 and Pakistan’s coming closer to the USA during Afghan Jihad.

Since then Indo Chinese relations started growing gradually and in 2008 China became India’s largest trade partner and India the 10th largest trade partner of China. Notwithstanding Beijing’s growing relations with Delhi the deep seated resentment between the countries and the border disputes are the real bottlenecks on the way to evolve full-grown and cordial relations between the two counties.

While the slogan Hindi Chinee bhai bhai has never come true, at present the hollowness of this slogan is badly exposed as China India relations have come to its lowest ebb. Well-informed Indian journalist Kuldeep Nayar has even said in a recent published article titled India’s tense ties with China that ‘The way China is behaving towards India today invokes memories of the run-up to what happened in 1962.” Likewise, former Indian Law minister Ram Jethmalani has also maintained in a recently published article in famous Indian weekly Tehelka that ‘repetition of the Chinese aggression of 1962 is highly probable’. There is no exaggeration in these comments as the recent happenings between China and India rightly substantiate these observations.

On August 8 of this  year Chinese International Institute of Strategic Studies published an article titled ‘If China takes a little action, the so-called Great Indian Federation can be broken up’ in which the author Zhan Lue has recommended that Beijing should adopt the policy of the balkanization of Indian Republic by collaborating with Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangla Desh and encouraging the separatist movements in Asam, Jammu and Kashmir, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Tamil Nadu and other parts .

Since IISS is an influential think tank and guides Beijing over global and strategic issues, the Indian claims hold value that such article cannot be published by IISS without the nod of the government. While China refuses to buy the argument of the author and says that views expressed by the author are his own and does not reflect the Chinese state policy by any means, but the matter is not as simple as it looks, rather it provides a lens to view the present-day Chinese thinking.

In addition, India’s recent protest over China’s assistance to hydroelectric and highway projects in Azad Jammu & Kashmir,  Beijing’s serious dissatisfaction over the PM Singh’s visit to Arunachal Pradesh, the visit of Dalai Lama to Arunachal Pradesh despite the strong opposition of China, his another planned five day long visit to Taiwan in the second week of November this year, skirmishes on Indo China border, and China’s denouncement to Asian Development Bank’s 2.9 billion dollar loan to India, and the trends emerged in an online poll conducted by huanqiu.com on June 10, 2009 which shows that  90% Chinese view India as a thereat indicate that Indo China relations are passing through a very critical juncture and the visa controversy is one of the Chinese diplomatic snubs to India.

Thus, instead looking in isolation and construing the visa controversy as China’s aggressive shift in its Kashmir policy, China’s visa controversy with India needs to be looked into the broader context of Sino Indian relations in order to decipher the underlying thinking behind this move. Besides the aforesaid developments the growing Indo US nuclear cooperation, NATO, US and the greater than ever Indian presence in Afghanistan, in fact, also contributed to subtle but significant shift in China‘s policy vis–vis India. And, regarding China’s current Kashmir policy it is significant to note that since Pakistan’s position on Kashmir has not been strident for the past several years, to expect that China would take a giant leap forward over Kashmir is the utter misreading of the events.

Author is research associate at Institute of Policy Studies Islamabad and focuses on Kashmir Conflict and Pak India Relations.