China’s response to the killing of Osama bin Laden has been cautious and marked by a degree of nuance given potential changes in US ties with Pakistan and India.
While energy interests and the promotion of One-China Policy are the main drivers of Chinese aid, the white paper can also be read as a projection of China’s new position in the international order.
This article deals with two questions: first, what is the security framework in which an Indian decision-maker must operate? Secondly, what are the specific policy restraints which affect Indian decision-making? Both these questions are cast in terms of Indian nuclear policy and it is assumed that the actual existence of a conventional Indian military deterrent against China and Pakistan is a ‘given’ in the present military and political equation in South Asian politics. The argument of this paper centres on the problem of defining ‘security’.
The responses to the arguments that I forwarded in my initial essay, ‘China in SAARC? To What Effect?’, have introduced interesting dimensions to this debate. While most of the respondents have agreed with my proposition that it is premature to think about China's entry into the South Asian regionalist project and that it would introduce complex challenges that would be difficult to manage, they disagree with some of the reasons that I have cited.
‘China in SAARC: To What Effect?’ is a detailed article and the author has elaborated the modest achievements of SAARC despite its 25 years of existence. One of the foremost problems in the regional grouping has been a restricted charter which desperately needs a revision.
The debate on giving the People's Republic of China full membership of the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC) is primarily seen in the context of positive and negative thinking. While China has an observer status in SAARC along with Australia, the EU, Japan, Iran, Mauritius, Myanmar, South Korea and the United States, its case for full membership is primarily advocated by Nepal and Pakistan but not supported by India.
There is a common tendency among analysts and policy makers to compare SAARC with the EU and the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN). This is not fair. There are significant differences among these three regional groupings. Geo-strategically India looms too large in SAARC in a manner incomparable with Indonesia in ASEAN or Germany and France in the EU. Economically, SAARC started with a poor economic base and there were no large investments from outsiders like in ASEAN and the EU to boost economic cooperation.
Over the past few years there has been a move by some of the member states of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) to induct China into the regional organisation. China, in turn, has indicated its desire to join. Since other extra-regional states were also keen to be involved, SAARC has opened its doors since 2007 for out-of region states through a new arrangement.
