China and India: sailing closer?

As an old-fashioned Asian nationalist, I rejoiced last Friday when Indian and Chinese warships engaged each other in their very first search-and-rescue operations. Three Indian ships (a destroyer and a corvette, both capable of carrying guided missiles, and a replenishment vessel) visited Shanghai for the exercise.

The significance lay not in the event's military impact, but in its political message. It opened a new frontier that could have a profound influence on regional stability. India and China are rising Asian powers. Both have nuclear weapons. Both have blue-water ambitions. Boys who play together do not fight each other. But to close ranks, they must first exorcise the canker of suspicion.

Indian strategists see the Association of Southeast Asian Nations playing a leading role in the process. At last month's Bali summit, Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee proposed an Asean plus four - India, China, Japan and South Korea - grouping that might heal the wounds of the past and lay the foundations for future solidarity.

Japan, for instance, has not fully lived down its second world war record in parts of Asia. Neither have India and China faced up to the causes and consequences of the 1962 war. However remote the possibility of a recurrence of that confrontation, history warns against dismissing anything as impossible. Security is largely a matter of perception; much depends on national sensibilities.

Although Sino-Indian relations have been improving steadily, the Indian defence ministry's annual report claimed only a few months ago that it could not ignore the fact that 'every major Indian city is within the reach of Chinese missiles'. A week before the Sino-Indian exercise, China's navy was involved in a similar drill - its first ever - with ships from Pakistan, a country that has fought three wars with India and which Indians accuse of sending Islamic terrorists into Kashmir.

Within days of the exercise, Pakistan's military ruler, Pervez Musharraf, was a guest in Beijing. China is also Pakistan's principal military supplier. Not surprisingly, India's defence ministry also noted these developments.