Category: Strategy

China’s Relations with North Korea: Not an Ally but a Card

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Jabin T. Jacob, PhD, Fellow, Institute of Chinese Studies

China has gone around Asia, particularly, Southeast Asia telling countries to behave because they are smaller than China.[1] Beijing however, is strangely more diffident when it comes to Pyongyang’s consistently cocking a snook at it and also complicating China’s regional security environment at the same time. As opposed as they are to the DPRK’s nuclear status, the Chinese also do not seek a US-led regime change through military means and to see either North Korean refugees or American troops on its borders.[2]

 

Chinese Views on North Korea’s Nuclear Programme

Chinese scholars also view the DPRK as feeling genuinely threatened by the US and that its development of nuclear weapons is for regime survival.[3] The huge US-ROK joint military exercises in March-April 2016[4] according to the Chinese caused major worry in Pyongyang, which sees such exercises as disguising potential military invasion. Continue reading “China’s Relations with North Korea: Not an Ally but a Card” →

White Papers: The Importance of Public Communication

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Amb. Kishan S. Rana, Honorary Fellow & Tshering Chonzom Bhutia, PhD, Associate Fellow, Institute of Chinese Studies

Jabin T Jacob, Fellow, Institute of Chinese Studies, recently shared the ‘India Network on China and East Asia’ Google Group (also known as the ICS-Delhi Group) a White paper published on 11 January 2017 by Beijing, entitled ‘China’s Policies on Asia-Pacific Security Cooperation’. As some newspaper comments in India have noted, India is ranked in importance at number three, after the US and Russia, but ahead of Japan; the references to India are positive, with no mention of points on which the two countries differ greatly.

China issues white papers from time-to-time on subjects such as family planning, human rights, environment, trade, development, space activities, labor, ecology, non-proliferation, mineral resources, social security, minority policy, gender, intellectual property, democracy, peaceful development, corruption, and so on; it also issues such papers on its declared ‘core issues’ such as Tibet, Taiwan, Xinjiang, and ‘Diaoyu Dao’. All these reflect the views of the country’s authoritarian regime, without any semblance of two-way communication with home publics. Continue reading “White Papers: The Importance of Public Communication” →

The 8th BRICS Summit: India Hosts, China Gains

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Jabin T. Jacob, PhD, Fellow, Institute of Chinese Studies

The 8th BRICS Summit in Goa in October this year, India came close on the heels of the G-20 Summit at Hangzhou in China and appears more or less to have had the same agenda except that it was smaller in size and therefore brought into sharper focus the contradictions within. The BRICS grouping remains an unbalanced one. China is in a league of its own in the BRICS – both in economic terms as well as increasingly in the political sphere. India is the only other member that has a strong economy – the other three economies are in various stages of stress. However, the grouping is also about taking political positions and here once again, China’s dominant weight has seen statements taking on anti-Western tilt. Continue reading “The 8th BRICS Summit: India Hosts, China Gains” →

Time to Rethink India’s Approach on OBOR

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Jabin T. Jacob, PhD, Fellow, Institute of Chinese Studies

When Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping met for their bilateral on the sidelines of the 8th BRICS Summit in Goa two issues dominated. One was the Chinese resistance to India’s membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). The other was China’s refusal to support UN action against terrorists living under state protection in its ally Pakistan, who were involved in the attack on the Indian Parliament in New Delhi in 2001 and the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai.

It is unlikely that New Delhi will get anywhere with the Chinese on either issue. The reasons are rather simple. Continue reading “Time to Rethink India’s Approach on OBOR” →

A Story of Two Ports: Chabahar vs. Gwadar

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Virendra Sahai Verma, Honorary Fellow, Institute of Chinese Studies.

India-Pakistan rivalry in Baluchistan-Iran coast line is hotting up to become a new nerve centre of geopolitics with direct involvement of US and China. Pakistan’s media is flush with hailing China’s promised investment of US$46 billion for China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) as a game changer which will make Pakistan as the ‘next Asian Tiger’. The coast line sits at the mouth of Strait of Hormuz and 17 billion barrels of crude oil pass through from here every day. It connects central Asia, south Asia and west Asia.

Continue reading “A Story of Two Ports: Chabahar vs. Gwadar” →

China’s Strategy to Implement OBOR

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K. Yhome is a Research Fellow with the Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi. This article is based on interactions with Chinese government officials and think-tankers during a visit to China as part of a delegation organized by the Institute of Chinese Studies, Delhi from 21-29 April 2016. 

Since Xi Jinping announced the ‘One Belt, One Road’ (OBOR) initiative in 2013 this has become another name for China’s diplomacy. Not only is the entire Chinese diplomatic and economic energy being directed towards this one project, the ancient Silk Roads that once connected China with the outside world, are now being presented through art and cultural heritage not only to popularise it within and outside the country, but also as a strategy to counter the growing perception that the OBOR is China’s grandstrategy for dominating the region.

Continue reading “China’s Strategy to Implement OBOR” →

Interpreting Ma Ying-jeou’s Visit to Taiping Island

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Jabin T. Jacob, Assistant Director and Fellow, Institute of Chinese Studies.

Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou’s visit to Taiping/Itu Aba Island in the Spratly Islands on 28 January 2016 was justified among other things on the grounds that he visited men and women in uniform before every Lunar New Year and that he was seeking to clarify the legal status of the island.[1]

Continue reading “Interpreting Ma Ying-jeou’s Visit to Taiping Island” →

North Korea’s Nuclear Test: Regional Reactions and the Chinese Responsibility

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Jabin T. Jacob, Assistant Director and Fellow, Institute of Chinese Studies.

Following North Korea’s fourth nuclear test since 2006, [1] the world led by the UN Security Council has condemned Pyongyang’s action.[2] The DPRK for its part blamed South Korea’s propaganda broadcasts in the Demilitarised Zone – which includes K-pop songs, by the way – and deployment of military assets, saying these were pushing the two countries to the ‘brink of war’.[3]

Continue reading “North Korea’s Nuclear Test: Regional Reactions and the Chinese Responsibility” →