In My View

Misguided Visions of ‘Yellow Peril’

While the American GIs have a particular talent for coining offensive, racist tags about ‘others’ – symptomatic of their non-cosmopolitan grounding in American culture – visions of ‘yellow peril’ was a product of their more erudite ancestors, almost dating back to the times the first Chinese immigrants landed in San Francisco, California in early 20th century. Last fortnight, much of that was in evidence in the remarks of US Vice President, Dick Cheney, while speaking at Sydney, Australia.

Finally, the rising crescendo reached a fever pitch this week when it was announced that Beijing would be raising its defence budget allocation for the current year to $ 44.94 billion or 17.8 per cent over the previous year’s allocation. Immediately, visions were invoked from Washington of a certain Chinese attempt at global dominance of the militarist kind. Even more dissonant were the Indian concerns - though belated, and clearly triggered by an ‘urgent need’ to play the regional foil to China - expressed by a spokesperson of the Union government.

To put the Chinese figure in perspective, here are some details:

The USA had a GDP in 2004 of about $ 11 trillion, while China’s was about $ 2 trillion i.e. the USA had an economy more than five times larger that of China.

American defence allocation for the current year is pegged at $ 440 billion (excluding separate allocation for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan) as opposed to China’s $ 45 billion i.e. ten times that of China.

India’s GDP, even in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms, is about 2.5 times smaller than China.

And India’s defence allocation of approximately $ 22 billion is just 0.5 times of that of China i.e. much higher in absolute terms, despite being 2.5 times smaller than China in terms of economic size.

The argument thus can run, why the commotion? The key possibly lies in China’s recent test of a anti-satellite (ASAT) missile that tweaks the nose of the American claimants belonging to its strategic community, who believe that their country should continue to dominate what are called in misleading international parlance, the ‘commons’: high seas, air and outer space. The Chinese test, unlike India that had meekly acquiesced with the US’s unilateral abrogation of Anti Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty under the erstwhile National Democratic Alliance government, has punctured a small hole in the National Missile Defence (NMD) programme of the George W. Bush administration. Indeed, Dick Cheney’s venom spewed in Australia was for that reason.

So are these early signs of a possible end to the Chinese long term cooperation with the USA? After all, US-based analysts point out that the younger generation of Chinese strategists, though schooled in Western theories of international relations, reject totally their notions of the world and instead, predict the rise of what they call “Chinese school of thought” in which such idealistic visions of individual and institutional
benevolence, altruism, interstate cooperation, moral international politics, harmony,
order, and an open international system, take precedence.

A realist understanding of the Chinese defence modernisation programme has to take into account that though it was made a part of the famed ‘Four Modernisation’ programme of the mid-1970s, the updating of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) was accorded the lowest national priority. Between 1979-1989, defence allocations actually declined.

The immediate trigger for the increased attention to PLA was the concern about developments concerning Taiwan, beginning in 1990s. Added was the motivation for securing the national economic assets which typically grew in areas adjacent to ocean-fronts. So emphasis was put on defensive, access-through-sea denial as opposed to more ambitious and aggressive, sea denial.

In fact, a recent American study shows that the entire fleet of Chinese submarines, 55 in number had conducted just two sea patrols in 2006. A patrol would normally mean “investigations to detect other submarines, participating in naval defense operations in coastal or outside coastal areas; or deployed for the purpose of gathering information or harassing (intrusive vessels.)” This leads one to believe that the Chinese fleet is geared not so much for power projection purposes as guarding coastal waters.

On the other hand, though China is modernising its strategic (read nuclear) force – so is the USA with its plan to introduce new designs of nuclear warheads for its missiles, called Reliable Replacement Warheads (RRWs) - its primary delivery systems remain short and medium range missiles that are more befitting as a deterrent to Taiwan, or South East Asia and Japan.

So does India need to worry about the Chinese defence modernisation programme? Ironically, the answer to that is to a great extent a product of India’s own making. As is noted by many analysts, the first configuration of the Chinese nuclear missiles were towards the Soviet Union; and then the USA in the 1980s and 1990s as capabilities improved. But with India exercising its option of weaponising its nuclear capability, it has now emerged on the Chinese crosshairs.

Hence, a sober Indian analysis would base itself not on the epistolary contortions of a Atal Behari Vajpayee but on the understanding that Jawaharlal Nehru had shared with senior officials of the government of India, a while before the 1962 war. He had apparently told them, as BN Mullik had recorded in his book that Chinese communists were nationalists first and communist later. Little has changed since then to believe the contrary even now.

Thus unless India feels it is in its national interest to attack the national boundaries of China, Chinese national interest in the medium term would possibly dictate that India be left alone even as a potential adversary. After all, the Chinese planners have been honed in the school of difficult choices, by which they have cooperated with the USA, while concurrently modernising their armed forces, amidst an environment of containment and encirclement.

Pinaki Bhattacharya, currently located in Kolkata, is a Special Correspondent with Mathrubhumi (Kerala). He writes on Strategic Security issues. He can be contacted at pinaki63@dataone.in .