Washington's focus on Pakistan and
economic dependence on China are forcing India to reassess its own
place in South Asia, reviving long-standing fears of strategic
encirclement by its giant northern neighbor. Analysts say Indian
suspicions about China, suppressed during the boom years by burgeoning
trade ties, have been stoked by Chinese involvement in Pakistan and a
sense that Beijing has replaced India as the favored friend of the U.S.
in the region.
“There is a very strong feeling that
China is India's threat number one,” said Subhash Kapila at the South
Asia Analysis Group, an Indian think-tank. Under former President
George W. Bush, the United States forged close ties with India — in
part seeing it as a counterweight to growing Chinese power —
culminating in a deal effectively recognizing its nuclear-armed status. India and China also made efforts
to mend relations soured by a border war in 1962, while their growing
clout in the world economy earned them the nickname “Chindia.”
But with the financial crisis highlighting U.S. dependence on Beijing to bankroll its debt, India is fretting that while it acquired a friendship, China bought the U.S. economy. “During the Bush era, U.S. policy was seeking to build India as a counterweight to China,” Brahma Chellaney, from India's Centre for Policy Research, said at a conference in London. “As this was going on the Chinese and U.S. economic ties were getting thicker and thicker,” he said. “'Chimerica' is more meaningful than 'Chindia.'” (Myra MacDonald, China Post/Reuters)
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