| China, the United States and India are three of the most important countries in the world. China's former leaders called on the country to make a great contribution to humanity. Americans see their country as the most important in the world. India's leaders use to say that, acting in concert, the four great powers of India, China, the US and the Soviet Union could offer leadership to the world.
When a country emerges as a major power, its rivals do not plan their competitive strategies alone. Instead they scheme and link up with others to cooperate against the stronger country. Such behavior tends to produce destructive patterns of competition. We have seen many examples of this in human history.
For instance, China surprised the world with 30 years of economic growth, which on the face of it ought to be grounds for congratulation. But the US felt threatened by China's rapid development and sought to link up with India. Washington used to be firmly opposed to technical cooperation with India on civilian nuclear power, on the grounds that India refused to rule out developing nuclear weapons. But as China grew stronger, the US relaxed its stance, saying that so long as India didn't expand its nuclear weapons capability, the US would assist its civilian nuclear program.
The previous US administration was quite straightforward about the strategic causes and consequences of cooperating with India. Senior officials in the Bush administration made it clear that the US should work together with India to contain China, and to achieve this goal the US should not hesitate to relax its principles on non-proliferation. As things turned out, cooperating with India did not help contain China, but it nevertheless led to the US losing credibility on the issue of non-proliferation. As a result the US had much less leverage when it came to demanding that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and Iran should abandon their (real or suspected) nuclear weapons programs. The DPRK hopes to carry on developing nuclear weapons, just as India did, and is waiting for a favorable opportunity to get the US admit to this reality. Pakistan also feels it is being treated unfairly as it has no cooperation agreements with the West on civilian nuclear energy. It is a transparent pretext for the US to cite Pakistan's previous development of nuclear weapons to justify refusing civilian nuclear cooperation.
China also feels the change in the US stance is absurd. China participates in the world non-proliferation system, since doing so is not only beneficial to the international community, but also for China's own security. It makes no sense in terms of either strategy or principle for the US to try to contain or weaken China by forming an alliance with India. It would be very childish for the US to think it might become an effective new strategy.
India, for sure, feels it needs to expand cooperation with the US since it undoubtedly feels uncomfortable at the pace of China's development. However, it's hard to see how any such cooperation could succeed in containing China, while India risks having to pay a price in political and security terms, including potential restrictions on its nuclear development plans. As for China, since the US-India cooperation appears to be directed against it, it is unlikely to view any such cooperation favorably.
The relationships between China, the US and India are becoming unnecessarily complicated. In an ideal world, when one of three countries makes progress, it should be congratulated by the other two. Competition will always exist, but it should be benign not aggressive. To band together to set obstacles in the way of a third party is a dangerous approach that is likely to harm international security.
On US President Barack Obama's visit to Asia and he said several times that his administration does not intend to set out to contain China. We hope China and the US will be able to renew their relationship, celebrate each other's achievements and take due account of each other's security concerns. We also hope India will not feel threatened by an improvement in Sino-US relations, but will, on the contrary, feel reassured. Equally, China has no need to harbor negative feelings about Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's upcoming visit to the US. The improvement in India-US relations accords with the fundamental interests of the two peoples and will contribute to world peace. As long as China persists in pursuing peace and common development, better US-India relations will remain compatible with all-round win-win relationships among China, the US and India.
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