FOR purposes of brevity, I have organised this complex subject with a long history under three broad heads: (i) What have the Chinese materially done? (ii) What is the explanation for what they have done? and (iii) What extrapolation is needed to re-orient our policies to secure our interests?

The start of China’s terrible record in proliferating nuclear weapons to Pakistan goes back to 1983. The importance of the year will be clear later, but in 1984, without any opposition, China was assisted to join the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency). It was in 1983 that a nuclear bomb design was first passed on to Pakistan and Pakistani officials were invited to witness the nuclear test in Lop Nor. In 1986, Chinese scientists assisted the Kahuta laboratories to solve problems related to uranium enrichment centrifuges.¹ 

It is believed that the largest of the Pakistani bombs tested in Chagai in May 1998 was produced from the Chinese design of 1983 and was theoretically to have been 25 kt. Though China officially acceded to the NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) in 1992, it was formally bound to non-proliferation since 1984. In 1983, along with the bomb design, it also transferred weapons grade plutonium for ten weapons as well as tritium gas to boost the atomic bombs into hydrogen weapons.² Pakistani scientists began to visit Chinese facilities for training and witnessed another nuclear test in 1989. In 1989, China also built a nuclear research reactor with a 27 mw output for Pakistan on which an entire generation of Pakistani scientists were trained.

Following this construction, China built a plutonium reprocessing facility in Chashma in the early ’90s, unsafeguarded, which became Pakistan’s chief source of weapons grade plutonium. In 1994-95 the Chinese built the Khushab reactor³ (40-100 mw), also unsafeguarded. In 1995 China transferred 5000 ring magnets, used for centrifuge bearings for uranium enrichment. And though, following international outrage, it promised to stop all proliferation activity, the following year itself, in 1996, China transferred an industrial furnace with a demanding casting surface (in which the bomb core is cast) and helped Pakistani engineers install it in Khushab.⁴ It is believed that after the tests in 1998 no transfers have taken place, but visits by Pakistani scientists to Chinese nuclear entities continue.

The history of the nuclear transfers is incomplete without simultaneously understanding the proliferation of delivery systems. Some analysts suggest that the sale of missiles to Pakistan was a rogue action by a missile factory to earn foreign exchange after its budgets were cut in 1984. This is a ridiculous idea because the transfer of nuclear technology and missile technology went hand in hand over 15 years. Early Pakistani attempts to make missiles though their SUPARCO were all failures and these include the HATF I and II. Initial Chinese assistance went into trying to retrieve Pakistan’s failed projects until Chinese engineers decided that there was no hope of rescuing the Pakistani programme.

 

As early as 1987-88, US intelligence reported that both M11 and M9 missiles appeared to have been transferred. The range of the M11 at 290 km does not violate the MTCR while the M9 clearly does.⁵ In 1988 it became known that Pakistan had paid $ 516 million for total technology transfer of missiles of which $ 185 million was for the outright purchase of M11 missiles. The discrepancy in the figures didn’t strike anyone until much later. In early 1991 the CIA reported that Transporter Erector Launchers (TELs) and 30 M11 missiles had been transferred to Pakistan. These missiles were sighted in Karachi port for a number of months before being moved inland.

 

The M11 transfer was actually a smokescreen for the transfer of an entire M9 factory to Pakistan and it is this that explains the discrepancy in the figures. At a Congressional hearing in 1992, the CIA spokesman clarified that in the light of the M11 transfer he could not explain the information they had received about the M9 transfers. China at the time was not, and is still not, a member of MTCR which sets a 300 km limit on the transfer of missiles. Though the transfer of the M9 factory was known to the US administration at the time, the news was suppressed because of President Clinton’s forthcoming visit to China to open up trade. The missiles that currently target New Delhi were produced in the factory that was transferred to China after this deal, during Clinton’s presidency.⁶ 

Today the core arsenal of Pakistan consists of the M9 Chinese missile called the Shaheen I stationed in Sargodha. The Chinese factory was set-up in the Kala Chitta mountains outside Fatehganj, 40 km west of Islamabad in what is called the National Defence Complex. The missile factory transfer has more implications that will live with us for another two or three decades.⁷ This is because in April 2004 Pakistan launched the Shaheen II, an even better missile with a 2000 km range. This also to a large extent neutralised India’s greater technological advantage in the field.

 

Nations continue to do what they have to do to secure their national security interests. Implicit in this statement is that large nations don’t usually cheat in their commitments, not for reasons of ethics or morality, but because of changed geopolitical circumstances. An instance is the US abrogation of the ABM treaty. Therefore, if China claims that helping Pakistan become a nuclear power was an act of national self-interest, it is understandable, even though we may not appreciate it. But to conduct international relations for over 15 years through deceit and subterfuge is an extraordinary event in international relations.

 

The sorry tale begins in 1983. In that year the leadership in China took an extraordinary decision – to help Pakistan become a nuclear power. This was done not in an ordinary way, like allowing Pakistan to acquire some critical secrets or technologies, but with single-minded determination and tenacity. Knowing fully well that the consequences of making Pakistan a nuclear power would last three or four decades, the Chinese leadership took that decision, and hung on to it for all the years when Islamabad needed help ever so often. The help included designs, in acquiring centrifuges, construction of reactors, plutonium processing plants, missiles, missile factories and the training of hundreds of Pakistani engineers.

 

So who took this decision, and why was it taken? To peep through the opacity of the Chinese decision-making process is impossible, but the Polit Bureau and the CMC must have been likely forums where the decision was made. If one looks at the composition of the Polit Bureau and the CMC, the State Council and the PPCC, it becomes clear who runs China. About five or six names keep reappearing. The question is, who was running China in 1983, and why was a decision taken to drag Pakistan across India’s path for the next three or four decades? Obviously this was an irrevocable step. After all, China had begun to leave India rapidly behind in 1978 itself and by 1983 the gap between the two had already widened.¹⁰

 

Yet, in a way, that is how the Chinese leadership is known to react – for long-term results, a nuclear competition was set up south of the Himalaya and that competition was nurtured for over 20 years. This tenacity and persistence has to be seen in the light of the violation of international regimes, incurring the displeasure of all the responsible powers in the NPT, and a clear message being sent to India of near perpetual hostility for at least half a century. The purpose of showing the continuous history of transfers over two decades is to make it clear that what the Chinese have created in South Asia is not the result of one aberrant decision in 1983 by a subsequently discredited leader, if indeed anyone was discredited. The long history of deceipt and duplicity is, as many observers point out, reflective of the Chinese leadership’s long term view of history.

 

Since 2002, when Zhu Rongji made his notable speech suggesting that the economic relationship between India and China could be made to grow faster, the trade figures have indeed grown spectacularly. Since the great excitement today is economics and trade, let it not be said that this essay argues to the contrary. Nothing that is contained in this paper suggests or argues that the economic relationship between the two countries needs to be curtailed until the strategic scenario becomes clear. It may well never become any clearer. In the meanwhile, if trade between the two countries continues to boom, then there is obviously profit to be made, and prosperity to be created.

Officially, the expected trade figure of $ 10 billion by 2005 has already been exceeded and that by 2020 the figure may touch $ 20 billion. This figure may be more easily achieved if India manages to break into the Chinese foodgrain import quotas which are set in advance every year. It is also clear that with trade booming the way it is, economics could become a driving factor in the overall relationship. But the relevant question is whether it will be the sole or the overwhelming driving factor in the years to come. One agency has forecast that Sino-Indian trade may actually skyrocket to $ 45 billion by 2010. While this figure is questionable, the presence of 50 Indian companies in China (2005) indicates that the two counties are likely to create new business models to replace the China-West trade pattern.¹¹

 

A look at the previous history of trade and conflict indicates that not much wisdom can be extracted from case studies. For instance, it seems fairly clear that even as early as 1912 the possibility of war between France and Germany was quite high. When war did break out in 1914, it came as no strategic surprise. Yet it seems astonishing that in 1914, Germany and France were each others largest trading partners.¹² So how could the national security establishment of the two countries have moved their countries to war even when they knew the catastrophic effects on the economies of both countries?

Yet again in the run up to the Pacific war in 1941, it was clear that the economic sanctions imposed by the USA against Japan for its adventure in Manchuria would cripple Japan. At that time close to 90% of Japanese steel was made from US exported scrap and the USA was also Japan’s chief source of oil. Eventually of course the oil embargo and Japan’s crippled industries would have ended the war, but how could it have taken place at all?¹³ The only deductions that can be made from these and other case studies is that democracies that trade don’t go to war, but states that trade often do, if one or both parties are not democracies and have mysterious and opaque decision-making systems.

The Sino-US trade pattern must be studied by Indian strategic thinkers because it is a good case study of a booming trade growth, accompanied by deep strategic suspicions. China and the US are each other’s largest trading partners but are also each other’s primary threat source. This in theory should never happen, but it does. So can it in our case?

 

An export figure of $ 120 billion from China to the US should theoretically put at rest any doubt that the countries which are competitors can become ‘rivals’. The China Daily recognizes that US perceptions are of ‘inevitable conflicts between China and the United States.’ China acknowledges that after 2010 the US will see China not as an ‘emerging’ but a ‘major’ competitor. Interestingly, in no analysis of the Sino-US strategic relationship does the massive trade between the two countries even find a mention.

The strategic dialogue between the two countries does mention the trade, and that any assessment of the military and nuclear aspects of the strategic relationship must take into account the fact that China is a worldwide economic power. But how does anyone do that? How can anyone balance the stand-off over the downing of an American intelligence aircraft at the time when China was the foremost supplier to the giant US Wal-Mart chain? Or how do the growing trade figures explain the discernible US moves to contain China?

 

Does China conduct its foreign policy on two separate tracks? Is that what it was doing in the years when political visits to India had no relationship to what it was doing with Pakistan? Does the two track method of conducting foreign policy continue in their dealings with us? It would appear so, because post 2002, after Zhu Rongji made his famous statement about driving the economic relationship between the two countries, the following events have transpired in the strategic relationship.

* Chinese help to the Pakistani nuclear capability has gone more underground with most transactions being conducted through training personnel.

* China has established an electronic listening post on Coco Island in collaboration with Myanmar and built facilities in the Indian Ocean littoral in Myanmar and Gwadar in Pakistan.

* There are indications of a Chinese policy of containment towards India.

The strategic implication of these moves must be seen as increasing its military capability in the Indian Ocean which can only be construed as a hostile move by India. So what do we do about this dysfunction? Obviously, the increase in trade is beneficial to India and should not be tampered with. Can the trade boom be ‘used’ to influence the strategic relationship in a way that has not been done in the Sino-US case? This is a challenge for policy-makers. Traditionally, those who manage trade have been uncomfortable about security issues, looking at people in that field as money wasters. This may well be true, but we cannot remain ostrich-like, trapped in separate communities.

 

Footnotes:

1. China’s Nuclear Exports and Assistance to Pakistan, NTI, available at www.nti.org/db/china/npakpos.htm

2. Robert Shrey and Shirley Kan, CRS Issue Brief, 20 September 1995.

3. Jeffrey Smith and Thomas Lippman, Washington Post, 8 April 1995.

4. Bill Gertz, ‘Beijing Flouts Nuke-Sales Ban’, Washington Times, 9 October 1996.

5. R. Jeffrey Smith, ‘Chinese Missile Launchers Sighted in Pakistan’, The Washington Post, 6 April 1991.

6. The acknowledgement of US awareness of an M9 missile transfer is from personal conversations with US analysts in Washington. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee heard the testimony of Dr Gordon Oehler, Hearing on the Proliferation of Chinese Missiles, US Senate, 11 June 1998.

7. Jeffrey Smith, ‘China Linked to Pakistan Missile Plant’, The Washington Post, 26 April 1993.

8. Taken From Pakistan Missile Study, undertaken by USI, New Delhi, of which the author was chairman. Report not published; yet to be declassified.

9. The material on Chinese visits was collated from MEA handout on Sino-Indian relations.

10. Data taken from CPAS’ India-China comparison at www. Cpasind.com

11. Nalin Surie, ‘Indian Amabssador in Beijing’, available at rediff.com, 2 April 2004; Niraj Dawar, The Financial Times, 31 October 2005, on Yaleglobal online at Yale.com

12. For an authoritative treatise on the causes of WWI, see James Joll, The Origins of the First World War (London: Longman), 1992 , chapter 7.

13. See A. Iriye, The Origins of the Second World War in Asia and the Pacific (London: Longman) 1987 and R.H. Spector, The Eagle Against the Sun: The American War With Japan (New York: Vintage Books), 1985.