Willasey-Wilsey served for over 27 years in the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Much of his career was spent in Asia including a posting to Pakistan in the mid 1990s.
China has raised Kashmir at the United Nations Security Council repeatedly since August 2019 when India abrogated Article 370 and incorporated its disputed areas as two new Union Territories (federally administered by New Delhi). A diplomat at China’s Islamabad Embassy tweeted last week (since deleted) that the Chinese incursions into northern India were linked to India’s revocation of Kashmir’s special status. The tweet closely matched an article published by a think-tank associated with China’s Ministry of State Security. So, after years of somewhat artificial neutrality towards the Kashmir dispute, China has now both adopted a harder line and aligned it more closely with Pakistan.
China wants India to reverse Article 370, yet Beijing must understand that this would be politically impossible for Narendra Modi. It would represent a domestic political humiliation. So, the strong probability is that China’s policy shift is here to stay for the long-term. So why is China so exercised over Article 370?
The Chinese have been anxious about the security of the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) for some time. Back in 2017 their main worry related to Balochistan, where a low-level insurgency continues against Pakistan and particularly against CPEC. Even using the more secure coastal route from near Karachi to Gwadar, China suspects that India will encourage local Balochi resistance movements to disrupt the project.
However more recently the main Chinese disquiet has focused on Gilgit-Baltistan which is still formally a disputed part of Kashmir. The dispute had been in abeyance for decades and China had few worries when it built the Karakorum Highway in the 1970s. Since the start of CPEC in 2015, however, India has been protesting vociferously about China building infrastructure on territory which it claims. Initially China suggested that India should participate in CPEC. To the considerable relief of the Pakistani military hierarchy India firmly rebuffed the offer.
Then came the Indian air force attack on Balakot in February 2019 and India’s declaration that it reserved the right to make future pre-emptive strikes as required; and in August 2019 Narendra Modi revoked Article 370 accompanied by ministerial pledges to recover those areas of Kashmir (including Gilgit-Baltistan) currently occupied by Pakistan.
Tim Willasey-Wilsey, Former Senior Member, British Foreign Office
Former Senior Member of the British Foreign Office
The revocation of Article 370 was given insufficient thought by India. It was always likely to have perverse consequences although Pakistan has so far resisted the temptation to follow suit by taking direct control of its own occupied areas. Pakistan is concerned neither to undermine its own legal position at the UN nor to antagonise those Kashmiri groups which prefer independence for Kashmir.
But the most important unintended consequence of the revocation has been to alarm China. Not only did the measure heighten Chinese concerns for its investments and personnel in Gilgit-Baltistan but it also impinged on an even more fundamental interest; Aksai Chin.
The area of Aksai Chin was also part of the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir. It was acquired by stealth during China’s “liberation” of Tibet in the early 1950s, but India still regards it as part of Ladakh, which has also been granted Union Territory status.
The importance of Aksai Chin is that it connects the two areas of China about which Beijing feels most vulnerable; the mainly Muslim province of Xinjiang and the predominantly Buddhist Tibet. China’s National Highway 219 which joins the two is therefore seen as a key strategic asset. The impression in Beijing that India is reinvigorating its claim to Aksai Chin is a source of irritation; but any notion that Ladakh could be exploited in future to destabilise China as part of a putative new Cold War would represent a strategic nightmare. The fact that India has been building an all-weather road from Darbuk to Daulat Beg Oldie so close to Aksai Chin has exacerbated Chinese fears and it hardly helps that maps issued by India after the August revocation show Aksai China in the same colour as Ladakh with the words “occupied by China”.
It is hardly surprising that China would wish to re-examine its strategic posture through the lens of a potential Cold War. The term has been used repeatedly and carelessly in recent weeks in the West, often in terms of a harsher post Covid-19 relationship with China. Looking at this region in Cold War terms China would doubtless identify two key risks.
The first is the unease which drove the CPEC idea in the first place; namely that the West might seek to close the Malacca Strait as a means of disrupting China’s imports of vital raw materials. The concept of enlarging the port of Gwadar on the Arabian Sea and linking it directly to China was part of a wider plan to bypass Malacca.
Secondly Beijing would identify Xinjiang and Tibet as vulnerabilities. In the former there is a full-scale repression underway with re-education camps for the Uighur population and in the latter, there is a brooding albeit quiescent discontent at Chinese rule (and attempts to change Tibet’s demographics) and an ageing but charismatic leader living in India.
The solution to double-down on its alliance with Pakistan therefore makes sense for Beijing. The activity at the Security Council and the announcement of the Diamer-Bhasha dam in Gilgit Baltistan are just two of the indicators.
It could be argued that this new alignment will make the Indian Subcontinent safer. India could not make another air raid into Pakistan if there were a serious danger of a direct Chinese response anywhere along its 3,500km border. Furthermore, as a quid pro quo for its direct support for Pakistan, China might require Islamabad to stop assisting militants crossing the Line of Control into the Kashmir Valley. A more pessimistic assessment would argue that the Chinese intend to use the pressure points along the length of its border with India and in Kashmir, Bhutan and Nepal to keep New Delhi constantly off-balance.
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