By Bhaskar Roy
With India’s Look East policy becoming more pronounced and energetic, signals from China are increasingly of unease. From the time India unveiled this policy in the early 1990s the Chinese official media warned New Delhi to stay away from their backyard. More recent Chinese discussions are quite open that India is being encouraged by the USA to enter the Asia-Pacific Region more emphatically to counter China. The Chinese experts and official media, who have their own briefing sources from the government and the communist party have no hesitation to state openly that they perceive a US led ring comprising Japan, South Korea, and Australia in which India is a key player.
China appears confident to an extent of keeping natural Australia and south Korea, although both these countries have strong military and security ties with the USA. Australia is divided over China trade and China’s threat. South Korea’s main concern is Beijing’s diplomatic defence of North Korea. In the last three years, Pyongyang sank a South Korean frigate killing 45 sailors, and shelled a South Korean island. Seoul maintained restraint because of the US and Chinese diplomacy. Beijing, however, realises that it was becoming difficult to restrain the unpredictable Pyongyang. Yet, it cannot allow this country to collapse and unite with its southern half. That could bring the US forces on China’s borders, something not at all acceptable.
Over the last few years Beijing used propaganda and assertive postures and persuasion to break India-US relationship. In their perceived US-Japan-India anti-China partnership, India is seen as the weakest link easiest to be broken. Therefore, India is challenged with advisories, cautions and threats.
Read the full story at Eurasia Review