DELHI — The sooner that India and China accept their inevitable strategic competitiveness but limit it through tactical cooperation, the better. Two tactical areas needing immediate Chinese and Indian intervention are a fix for the world economy and overcoming terrorism from Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The Asia-Europe (ASEM) meeting Oct. 24 in Beijing, where Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was feted as a star economist by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, sets the ball rolling for Asian ideas to spearhead the rescue of international finance. And in December India will host the second counterterrorism joint military exercise with China, which has fortunately survived the downturn in bilateral relations for most of this year.
China fears the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal. Unable to stop it in the Nuclear Suppliers' Group (NSG), it has not said no to Pakistan's matching demand for it, and is only constrained by certain international opposition to it and by grave doubts about Pakistan's stability. But the Indo-U.S. deal, far from expanding India's deterrent, constrains it by obligations not to test and not to provoke a nuclear arms race with Pakistan. Indo-U.S. military-to-military ties also raise Chinese hackles. China (and Russia) expressed concern over the 2007 Malabar war games in which India, the U.S., Australia, Singapore and Japan participated.