NSA to engage China's new leaders
Indrani Bagchi
New Delhi, November 8, 2012
With the hoopla of the US elections over, the attention of the world is now fixed on a very different kind of leadership change in China, a once-in-a-decade affair that will have a global effect almost as great.
As Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang prepare to take the reins of the world’s second largest economy from Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao, India is preparing to enthusiastically engage the new leadership, even though the new Chinese government will only take over in March 2013. By next week, the top seven (or nine) men who lead the Communist Party will be changed and that will indicate who will take over in the government.
Shivshankar Menon, national security adviser, will travel to Beijing in a few weeks for a “strategic issues” conversation with Dai Bingguo, a conversation that will be much bigger than border talks. Menon will meet a clutch of new leaders with Dai Bingguo, his counterpart who will retire by March 2013. This exercise, said sources, is expected to ensure continuity in the engagement between India and China, and has been proposed by the Chinese side.
Next week, prime minister will meet Chinese premier, Wen Jiabao on the sidelines of the East Asia Summit in Phnom Penh possibly for the last time. Wen will make way for Li Keqiang as the next premier, who will also take over in March. In the last week of November, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, deputy chairman, Planning Commission, will meet Zhang Ping, chief of China’s NDRC for the next strategic and economic dialogue. India is trying to interest China into investing in infrastructure creation in India, particularly in railways.
While the Indian government too is engaged in the new “Kremlinology” of trying to guage who will make the cut in the all powerful politburo standing committee in China, there is a general feeling that despite outstanding issues and a subterranean rivalry running through the relationship, the China relationship is reasonably stable.
An increasingly aggressive and nationalist China has been picking fights with almost all its neighbors in the past year as the Chinese party leadership began their internal jockeying for the transition. From Japan to Vietnam and Philippines and even the US, China has been very prickly and feeling threatened. Ironically, China’s relations with India has been uneventful, which is interesting since its the only neighbor with which China has a festering border dispute and other related problems.
The real question that India would be asking is what kind of a leader would Xi Jinping be? There was an attempt to get Xi Jinping over to India in 2011, but that never quite worked out. Indian leaders will only engage Xi Jinping after his anointment.
Xi belongs to a very different class of leaders in the Chinese hierarchy than Hu, whom he will replace as general secretary of the party next week, and as president in March 2013. As a so-called “princeling” Xi, whose father fought with Mao Zedong, is believed to be close to Jiang Zemin, former Chinese president. But from all accounts, the politburo standing committee, the 7 (or 9) leaders who will collectively rule China for the next decade, is peppered with many faces who owe allegiance to the Hu faction as well. India, like others, will be watching closely to see what the composition of the standing committee and the refashioned Central Military commission will be. For instance, in the recent reshuffle in the CMC, the edging out of some “political commissars” (or pol-coms) by people from the armed forces is believed to be a good sign.
Ultimately, India’s wants to work out a border agreement with China, open China’s markets for Indian products and keep China’s influence in India’s neighborhood in check. On a larger canvas, a growing India will come up against an even bigger China. That’s why the relationship needs to be managed more cleverly.
End
New Delhi, November 8, 2012
With the hoopla of the US elections over, the attention of the world is now fixed on a very different kind of leadership change in China, a once-in-a-decade affair that will have a global effect almost as great.
As Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang prepare to take the reins of the world’s second largest economy from Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao, India is preparing to enthusiastically engage the new leadership, even though the new Chinese government will only take over in March 2013. By next week, the top seven (or nine) men who lead the Communist Party will be changed and that will indicate who will take over in the government.
Shivshankar Menon, national security adviser, will travel to Beijing in a few weeks for a “strategic issues” conversation with Dai Bingguo, a conversation that will be much bigger than border talks. Menon will meet a clutch of new leaders with Dai Bingguo, his counterpart who will retire by March 2013. This exercise, said sources, is expected to ensure continuity in the engagement between India and China, and has been proposed by the Chinese side.
Next week, prime minister will meet Chinese premier, Wen Jiabao on the sidelines of the East Asia Summit in Phnom Penh possibly for the last time. Wen will make way for Li Keqiang as the next premier, who will also take over in March. In the last week of November, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, deputy chairman, Planning Commission, will meet Zhang Ping, chief of China’s NDRC for the next strategic and economic dialogue. India is trying to interest China into investing in infrastructure creation in India, particularly in railways.
While the Indian government too is engaged in the new “Kremlinology” of trying to guage who will make the cut in the all powerful politburo standing committee in China, there is a general feeling that despite outstanding issues and a subterranean rivalry running through the relationship, the China relationship is reasonably stable.
An increasingly aggressive and nationalist China has been picking fights with almost all its neighbors in the past year as the Chinese party leadership began their internal jockeying for the transition. From Japan to Vietnam and Philippines and even the US, China has been very prickly and feeling threatened. Ironically, China’s relations with India has been uneventful, which is interesting since its the only neighbor with which China has a festering border dispute and other related problems.
The real question that India would be asking is what kind of a leader would Xi Jinping be? There was an attempt to get Xi Jinping over to India in 2011, but that never quite worked out. Indian leaders will only engage Xi Jinping after his anointment.
Xi belongs to a very different class of leaders in the Chinese hierarchy than Hu, whom he will replace as general secretary of the party next week, and as president in March 2013. As a so-called “princeling” Xi, whose father fought with Mao Zedong, is believed to be close to Jiang Zemin, former Chinese president. But from all accounts, the politburo standing committee, the 7 (or 9) leaders who will collectively rule China for the next decade, is peppered with many faces who owe allegiance to the Hu faction as well. India, like others, will be watching closely to see what the composition of the standing committee and the refashioned Central Military commission will be. For instance, in the recent reshuffle in the CMC, the edging out of some “political commissars” (or pol-coms) by people from the armed forces is believed to be a good sign.
Ultimately, India’s wants to work out a border agreement with China, open China’s markets for Indian products and keep China’s influence in India’s neighborhood in check. On a larger canvas, a growing India will come up against an even bigger China. That’s why the relationship needs to be managed more cleverly.
End
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