This is second visit of Guanglie to India. He came to Delhi in 2005 as the chief of general staff of the People’s Liberation Army.

Significantly, he is arriving in Delhi after stopover in Sri Lanka; he will not go to next door Pakistan but will travel to Laos.

Top officials of China’s air force, South China Sea Fleet, and Lanzhou and Tibet military regions will be a part of his 23-member delegation; his discussions with India’s defence minister A K Antony will focus on measures to boost ‘peace and tranquility’ along the border and on the Sea, besides CBMs- confidence building between the armed forces of the two countries, which would facilitate and promote military cooperation between the two armed forces.

China is actively involved in the area, which Pakistan based Uyghur militants use for forays into troubled Muslim majority belt of Xinjiang province. It is possible that the PLA presence and militant menace may be unrelated. Many of these Chinese soldiers may indeed be engaged in engineering and construction works since the area is yet to recover from the ravages of the earthquake it suffered in 2005. Nonetheless, presence of PLA in the disputed NA is a matter of concern to India and what better way is there than to hear from the Chinese Defence Minister himself.

On his part, the Chinese leader will be keen to know Delhi mind on a host of issue of interest to his country that have a bearing on the growing tensions in the South China Sea and East China Sea. Largely these tensions are a fall-out of Hillary Clinton’s policy of rebalancing US policies towards Asia which is a euphemism to renew pressure on China.

The US has bases in Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, and in the Philippines, which are all directed against China.  To an extent, Beijing itself contributed to heightening tensions on its entire eastern sea board with its near and long term planks  

General Liang Guanglie’s sojourn is taking place when Beijing is busy with preparations for the 8th Party Conference of the Chinese Communist Party, which is due in about a month. This is one give away that China has invested heavily on the India visit in the context of evolving SE Asian situation.   

Some commentators like to see in the Sri Lanka leg of his three nation tour a signal to Delhi that Beijing has other and more viable options in this part of the world. Because, the Chinese premier was in Kathmandu early this year.  While the growing Chinese ties with Sri Lanka and Nepal, even Bhutan are a reality that Delhi has to factor in in its strategic calculations, it is noteworthy that the Chinese defence minister has not scheduled a visit now to Pakistan which considers China as its all-weather friend. It shows that Beijing is careful to avoid any unpleasantness in its equation with Delhi.
 
Gen Liang Guanglie’s India visit is a part of PLA’s military diplomacy, according to Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei. He has a point. PLA Deputy Chief of Staff Gen Ma Xiaotian is presently on a visit to Vietnam, Myanmar, Malaysia and Singapore while another high level delegation led by Lt Gen Cai Yingting, Deputy Chief of General Staff of the PLA is in the United States. All this shows, as a strategic expert, Meng Xiangqing at PLA’s National Defence University says China is increasingly using ‘military diplomacy’ to supplement other exchanges.

Since Sino-Indian military ties have witnessed twists and turns, there is reason to subscribe to the view that the purpose of Gen Liang’s visit to India is as much a demonstration of goodwill as creation of a secure region where the Chinese interests are protected and promoted.

Also, as Professor Zhao Gancheng from the Shanghai Institute for International Studies told the Global Times, the visit is to show that there are no tensions between the two countries, which had fought a war and have unresolved border disputes. In a broad sense therefore, Gen Liang’s visit to India is timely. It may even be a ‘positive signal that both countries are willing to develop a good relationship’, as Fu Xiaoqiang, a researcher from the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, told the Global Times.

-m rama rao