Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao visited India at the head of a 400-strong delegation of business leaders. The purpose, of course, was to boost bilateral trade and commerce. Speaking at a business forum in Delhi, Jiabao said, "China and India are partners for co-operation, not rivals in competition."
During the Chinese Premier's two-day visit, the two sides signed trade agreements worth nearly $16 billion. Sino-India trade, in fact, has been booming during the recent years, reaching the $60 billion mark this year from the previous year's $42 billion. This is happening despite the fact that the two countries have a longstanding border dispute, which erupted in a bloody war in 1962. As the Chinese Ambassador to India put it, relations between the two countries remain "very fragile, easy to damage and difficult to repair."
China has not refrained from taking a tough position where its interests are involved. Last year, for instance, it introduced a new visa policy for the Kashmiris, stamping their visas on separate papers rather than Indian passports. A few months ago, it gave India another cause for grouse, refusing to give visa to an Indian general for participation in a high-level exchange programme because he happened to be heading military operations in a 'disputed' area, namely Kashmir.
Both things angered India, especially hard-liners like the BJP and others of its ilk, no end. Yet bilateral trade has continued to grow from strength to strength. There is a lesson in it for Pakistan to learn: that normalisation of trade and commerce does not necessitate unsavoury compromises on important issues of dispute. Both can move on their separate courses. In other words, Pakistan does not need to hold back on economic co-operation with India, which can open up new and vast avenues of opportunities to both. Instead of hindering, such a policy can help resolve disputes, including the core issue of Kashmir.
India's fast growing industrial sector needs both new markets for its products and energy to keep the activity going. There is reason to believe that India entered into the Composite Dialogue process - that covered Kashmir - because of the attraction of new markets in Pakistan, and through it, access to both markets and energy in the resource-rich Central Asian Republics. Economic interest being the greatest driving force behind individual as well as the nation's behaviour, trade and commerce can actually create new constituencies for peace and make it that much easier for the governments, especially India's, which is to give up more than Pakistan in terms of traditional claims, to settle the Kashmir issue. It also needs to be remembered that there are three parties to the Kashmir conflict: Pakistan, India, and the Kashmiri people. The Kashmiris have been fighting an uninterrupted war of liberation for over twenty-one years now. They have amply demonstrated that they would not allow their cause to be put on the backburner, despite the ups and downs in the Pak-India dialogue process. Emulating the Chinese example may act as a strong impetus for Pakistan's efforts towards Kashmir resolution.