74 6 { China’s Quest
in the era of China’s rise. The conclusion reached via this American recal-
culation was that a strong, self-confident, and globally engaged India would
help prevent China from achieving hegemony over greater East Asia, and was
therefore (among other reasons; no claim of monocausality is intended here)
in the US interest. Rather than viewing India in a regional context and linked
to Pakistan, as the United States had done previously, US leaders (or at least
the dominant group in both the Clinton and George W. Bush administra-
tions) began viewing Indian in a global context and as a potential balancer in
an era when China was emerging as an ambitious Asian and global power. On
the basis of this recalibration, the United States shifted first toward neutral-
ity in India-China affairs, and then toward broad support for India’s emer-
gence as a major power to keep a powerful China from achieving hegemony
in Asia.^21
In effect, a new post–Cold War US-India-China triangle was in the process
of formation. As a new India-US alignment formed in the early 2000s, as soon
as the Vajpayee government had retracted its “China threat” justification of
India’s nuclearization and embraced once again the politically correct but
hollow professions of China’s non-threat, Beijing revived its friendship offen-
sive toward New Delhi. Now that formation of a genuine India-US strategic
partnership was underway, keeping India from aligning too closely with the
United States was important to China. Frequent visits to India by top Chinese
leaders were one component of Beijing’s friendship diplomacy. Li Peng visited
in 2001 as head of the NPC, Premier Zhu Rongji visited in 2002, Premier
Wen Jiabao in 2005, and finally Hu Jintao in 2006. Military-to-military ties
were expanded in an effort to assuage apprehensions about China’s inten-
tions among India’s military establishment, traditionally one of the most
anti-China constituencies in India. A Sino-Indian security dialogue was
launched in March 2000 (the same month President Clinton made a path-
breaking visit to India). Second and third rounds of that dialogue occurred in
2001 and 2002. A PLA-N squadron visited India in 2001. (This was the second
such visit; the first had been in 1993.) In 2003, Indian and Chinese navies con-
ducted their first-ever joint exercise. A second set of joint naval exercises was
held in 2005. The PLA deputy chief of staff, chief of staff, and defense minister
visited India. In 2005, China agreed to a “strategic dialogue” with India—a
forum Beijing had long resisted on the grounds that India was not a nuclear
weapons state under the NPT.
Beijing also made several concessions on territorial issues as part of its
courtship of India. In 2005, the two sides agreed to a set of Guiding Principles
and Parameters for settlement of the territorial issue. Article 7 provided that
a settlement “shall safeguard due interests of ... settled populations in the bor-
der areas.” Since Arunachal Pradesh had a population of one million, while
Tawang district had a population of some 39,000, this implied that those
areas would remain with India. This proviso also hinted at a Chinese return