I
was assigned to Beijing for the second time in my career in 1987. My
previous posting there was as First Secretary in the Embassy from 1965-68. I
understood then what the proverbial Rip Van Winkle must have felt when he
woke up to find his world transformed after a 20 year sleep!
The
hundreds of portraits and statues of Mao Zedong had given way to just one at
the Tiananmen Square. Some old messengers of the Embassy who joined in Red
Guard demonstrations against us in 1967 received me warmly at the airport.
Shiny skyscrapers overshadowed stodgy Soviet-style structures. Air hostesses
went out-of-the-way to make passengers comfortable instead of thrusting
red-books at their faces. The last Indian diplomatic walk-out from a
Chinese-hosted Reception receded more than a good 15 years. Many models of
Japanese cars plied the streets where traffic jams were common. Foreign
tourists crowded the Friendship Store. So many signs of a China which was so
different from the sixties. While it was evident that China had changed, I
had the confidence that things could also change for the better in
Sino-Indian relations.
Two
days before I arrived in May 1987, Mr. PN. Haksar came as special envoy of
Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi accompanied by Mr. V. V. Paranjpe. The evening
of my arrival we were invited to a fabulous dinner by the late Prof. Wu
Xiaoling, a close friend of Mr. V.V. Paranjpe and a great Sanskrit scholar.
During the dinner Mr. Haksar and Prof. Wu Xiaofing recited verses from
Kalidasa’s Meghdoot in Sanskrit.
Mr. Haksar had by then finished rounds of discussions with then Premier Zhao
Ziyang and senior Chinese officials. The message conveyed by Mr. Haksar was
that India was prepared to be forward-looking, that India did not consider
China to be an adversary and that both countries must make efforts to put
the past behind. A clear signal of India’s desire to work towards better
understanding and improved relations with China and thus conveyed at an
authoritative level.
Within
two weeks of this visit, there was the transit halt in Beijing of the then
Minister of External Affairs, Mr. N.D.Tiwari, on his way back to India from
Pyongyang. Discussions with the Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Liu Shuqing
took place after the evening banquet. The background to the visit was the
situation created on the ground over the previous two years in a small
section of the Kameng frontier in Arunachal Pradesh, over which there was a
measure of mutual dissatisfaction. Indian and Chinese troops had stationed
themselves in close proximity to each other in an action-reaction sequence.
There was wide publicity given to each side’s viewpoint thus leading to
speculation in domestic and international circles that India and China were
headed in the direction of an escalation of tension along the border, if not
an armed conflict. Discussions during the Tiwari visit led to a lowering of
public disputation and the determination that differences over the
territorial question would not impede the development of relations over a
wide gamut of subjects.
In
December 1997 came the visit to India of the Chinese Vice Foreign Minister
Liu Shuqing with a formal invitation to Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi to visit
China. The Prime Minister’s immediate acceptance of the invitation came as
a big relief to the Chinese side. It was a concrete sign that India meant to
follow-up on the messages conveyed during the Haksar mission.
My
familiarity with Chinese language and an earlier assignment in Beijing were
not the only factors which helped in my becoming fully acclimatised to the
China which was so different in the eighties when compared to the sixties.
The Embassy war staffed with officers, all of whom knew Chinese, were
excellent students of China and who enjoyed a wide network of contacts with
the China that had “opened up”. Led by Counsellor Shivashankar Menon,
they briefed me thoroughly in each area of their operations and assisted me
in all my calls on senior Chinese officials. Amongst the vastly expanded
diplomatic and journalist corps, there were atleast three others who knew me
from earlier times. Among the Ambassadors with whom I enjoyed discussions
was Troyanovsky from the erstwhile Soviet Union. Coming to China after a
two-year stint in Moscow I was fully aware of the vastly improved tenor of
Sine-Soviet relations consequent on Gorbachev’s assumption of office in
1985. Hearing Troyanovsky urging for better relations between India and
China was a refreshing contrast from Ambassador Vorontsov’s discouraging
remarks on this subject, a decade earlier in Delhi. From Troyanovsky one got
a good sense of the several areas of political, economic and military
interactions which were rapidly re-opening between Beijing and Moscow and
the softening Chinese posture over their three problems with Moscow.
1988
was a year of preparations for the Rajiv Gandhi visit. A few delegations
from the Congress-l Party visited China and were well received at high
levels. They were told that the Prime Minister would be received warmly at
the highest level, that his visit would give the momentum so necessary in
relations and that it was seen as a foundation-laying exercise from which
both India and China would benefit. Similarly a few hand-picked leading
journalists were despatched to China to gauge the sentiment in China and to
help prepare the public-opinion base in India. A few days before the visit I
was interviewed about Indian expectations from the visit by the leading
newspaper Renmin Ribao (People’s
Daily), the Xinhua Agency and by Radio Beijing. People had forgotten when an
Indian Ambassador was last given such positive media prominence in Beijing.
The editorial in the People’s Daily
on the day of Rajiv Gandhi’s arrival in Beijing, on a cold winter morning
in December 1988 was warm and very friendly. The two preparatory visits
undertaken by Foreign Secretary, K.P.S. Menon, ensured that the visit itself
would pass off smoothly and that the substantive discussions during the
visit and the bilateral agreements to be signed would lead to beneficial
results.
The
visit of the Prime Minister of India to China after a gap of more than three
decades, which had seen friendship turning into hostility prior to the
gradual normalisation of relations, was of great symbolic and substantial
significance. Enough has been said of these aspects elsewhere. Less reported
perhaps is the deep impact that the attractive Rajiv and Sonia couple
imprinted on the youth of Beijing and Shanghai and the quiet contrasts they
drew with the aging Chinese leadership. Their appreciation and
identification with the image of an attractive and modern India which the
couple reflected was evident in the thunderous applause accorded by the
students of Qinghua University, when they were
addressed by Rajiv Gandhi. Official talks with State President Yang
Shangkun, Supremo Deng Xiaoping, Premier Li Peng, General Secretary of the
Communist Party of China Zhao Ziyang were conducted in a warm and friendly
atmosphere, with the leaders of both sides carrying oil conversations
as
though there had never been any break in highest level dialogues between
India and China. The highlight of the visit to the Forbidden City by the
Indian Prime Minister and his party was the first-ever opening of the
private chambers and collections of some early Qing Dynasty emperors. The
astronomical predictions which guided sowing and other agricultural
operations inscribed in stone were explained in great detail at the Temple
of Heaven.
Apart
from the official programme in Beijing, one of the highlights which pleased me
very much was the reception organised by the Embassy for our Prime
Minister and party at the State Guest house complex at Villa No. 18 in
Diaoyutai. Normally reserved for head of states, kings and queens, the
Chinese opened this Villa for our Prime Minister. The Chinese generously
allowed the Embassy to use the spacious Reception halls of this Villa for an
evening reception, where leading Chinese academic figures and professors who
devoted their lives to classical studies on India attended, along with
Chinese Ministers, former Ambassadors to India, senior Foreign Office
officials, leading representatives of the burgeoning business groups,
dancers, musicians and young Chinese scholars who had studied in India. The
galaxy included the doyen of Indian studies of Beijing University, Prof. Ji
Xianlin, along with the translator of Ramacharitra Manas, Prof. Jing Dinghan, an old student from
Santiniketan (who happened to be Mrs. Indira Gandhi’s classmate) Prof. Wei
Fengjiang, Prof. Huang Xinchuan, Director of the Institute of Asia-Pacific
Studies (formerly of South Asian Studies), Prof. Wu Baihui, a well known
interpreter of Indian philosophical texts and scores of senior associates
from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and other higher educational
institutions like Beida etc. engaged in studies of contemporary South Asia.
Each of them presented writings on India to the Prime Minister, My
satisfaction with the fullest Chinese cooperation in ensuring the success of
this moving event was particularly complete since my proposal to have this
reception at the Embassy premises was, turned down by the advance Indian
Security Party in yet another instance of arbitrary decision-making and
interference in the programmes or visiting dignitaries not warranted by a
proper appreciation of local conditions.
Rajiv
Gandhi’s departure to Xian on the morning after the conclusion of the
Beijing segment of the visit by special plane was delayed by some three
hours on account of foggy conditions in Beijing and Xian. Throughout the
delay, I was impressed by the close attention to the details of adjustments
to the programme and the up-to-the-minute information that was provided by
the Chinese Protocol Department to some of the impatient higher-ups in the
Indian Party! The Xian programme consisting of visits to the Terra-Cotta
Warriors, the Xian Museum, the Mosque, the ancient City Walls and the
evening banquet by the Governor of Shaanxi Province etc. went off smoothly,
the only practical adjustment being to the banquet which was delayed by an
hour and a half. From Xian the Prime Ministers party flew to Shanghai. An
extensive visit was arranged to a suburb of Shanghai to the Malu township in
Jiading county. There we saw many Township and Village Enterprises (TVE)
(one of the proud hallmarks of Dengist Reforms) and had an insight into the
graphic Chinese saying of “Leave land-tilling without leaving the
village” (li tu buli xiang), and “Enter factory without entering the city” (jin
chang bujin cheng). Small scale industrial production of consumer
requirements, ancillary components of larger industry, food processing units
were the features of the TVEs here. As in other parts of China, these
enterprises located near urban capitals feed the requirements of the bigger
towns and have been the engines of contemporary economic growth in China.
The mandatory drive through Shanghai city to view the sights from its days
as a British “concession” attracted vast crowds who were blocked in
Shanghai’s narrow streets by the security authorities to allow the long
motorcade to pass unhindered. Chinese media publicity over the previous few
days to the visit as much as the blocked roads ensured that hundreds of
thousands of enthusiastic public applauded as the motorcade wound its way to
the State Guest House. Here Zhu Rongji, then Mayor of Shanghai and now the
Premier of China, hosted a luncheon where he spoke eloquently about Shanghai
and the proposed Pudong Development Project, the economic prospects of
Shanghai and its vast social problems, A few hours after that the Prime
Minister and his party left for India.
The
Minister-in-waiting Qu Yuanjing and his wife, with whom my wife and I waited
on the tarmac till the Air India plane went out of view, turned around and
hugged both of us and in an uncharacteristic gesture kissed me on both
cheeks, We both obviously were greatly relieved that the visit passed-off
smoothly. Since that date not an opportunity is missed by Chinese spokesmen
on Occasions of high-level exchanges between Indian and Chinese leaders to
recall the visit and its historic significance. The impact on the Chinese
psyche and the frequent recall of the importance of this visit is a proof
positive of its outstanding success, no matter how critics in our plural
society view it!
Reference
to the Rajiv Gandhi visit would not be complete if one forgot to mention the
uncharacteristically large delegation of VIPs who accompanied him. Former
Ministers Narasimha Rao, Dinesh Singh, Shankaranand, Natwar Singh were in
his entourage. Secretaries to the Government, K.P.S. Menon, Ahluwalia, G.K.
Arora. S.K. Misra (Civil Aviation), Veeraraghavan (Culture), Gowarikar
(Science) were also there amongst other officers from the Ministry of
External Affairs and the Prime Minister’s Office. Nearly a hundred Indian
journalists came either in the same aircraft or separately. The unsung
heroes of the visit were my Embassy colleagues who managed the logistics of
separate meetings for practically all of the above VIPs with their Chinese
counterparts, in addition to looking after their private requirements of
special diet, shopping etc. Ably coordinated by Counsellor S.S. Menon, the
officers and staff performed outstandingly and my thank-you Reception for
the Chinese and Indian colleagues was small compensation for the grinding
demands they made on themselves for over two months in November and December
of 1988. My wife went through self-taught crash courses on the Forbidden
City, the famous artistic street, Liulichang, and the historic old city of
Beijing to guide Mrs Sonia Gandhi on her separate tours.
1989
was remarkable for the Tiananmen Square episode and the Gorbachev visit to
China in the latter half of May when the Square was fully and most
colourfully occupied by demonstrators. From a couple of days after the
former General Secretary of the Party Hu Yaobang’s death, the Square began
filling-up. Intellectuals, students from practically all the higher
institutions of learning were joined by workers in massive demonstrations,
The age-old big character posters, leaflets, pamphlets, banners sprouted
almost everywhere. The Army which was called in from the outskirts of
Beijing to disperse demonstrators was blocked with the public refusing
right-of-way to the hundreds of their transport vehicles. Public expression
of dissatisfaction to which our avid Chinese readers in the Embassy had
access, ranged from the serious to the trivial, The “have-nots" from
every layer of society and those who saw no sign of personal benefit from
Chinese reforms documented their grievances. Opportunistic politicians
sprouted from amongst the youth as well as articulate self-appointed
leaders. To one who was witness to the years of the Cultural Revolution, the
big difference in the demonstrators attitude, reflecting the changed
environment in China and the world was their readiness to share their
grievances, real or alleged, with foreigners, The foreign media played a
direct rote in the turmoil to a much greater extent than it did on the
occasion of the mourning for Zhou Enlai, more than a decade earlier. We
mounted a 24 hour monitoring of events in the Embassy and were able to
predict the exact moment, where high level internal bickerings would lead to
the decision on the use of actual force to disperse the demonstrators.
Gorbachev arrived to find the ceremonial welcome in the Square cancelled, no
official engagements were possible for him at the Great Hall of the People
and the major achievement of full Sino-Soviet normalisation was overshadowed
by the happenings in Beijing.
There
was a fall-out on our Embassy of the Tiananmen Square event. A very high
level delegation of Indian writers consisting of U.S. Anantamurthy, Mrinal
Pande and others arrived in Beijing a couple of days before the use of
force. Chinese authorities were understandably keen to continue agreed
exchanges and important visits with foreign countries in an effort to show
that Beijing was normal. Our delegation was put up in a hotel near the
centre of student rallies near the university area. Since some of their
interlocutors sided with the students, they were not available for planned
meetings with them. Worse still, after the demonstrators were dispersed from
the Square, communications with our delegation were cut off. Accompanied by
my colleagues, I visited them in their hotel on the same afternoon of the
entry of tanks into the Square. My ride to their hotel enabled me to see the
burnt-out remains of tanks, lorries and trucks which were on their way to
the Square. The Indian writers were told that the rest of their programme
was cancelled and there was nothing to do except to return to India. The
difficulty was in obtaining airline seats for them as the hosts had
disappeared.
The
other fall-out from these events was more direct, leading to some difficult
decisions. For a couple of days after the clearance of the Square of
demonstrators, patrolling armed soldiers from armoured carriers shot at
random into the high rise buildings where foreigners stayed along the
Changanjie -the diplomatic area of Beijing. A few shells dropped into the
apartments of foreigners including some of our staff quarters. On one
occasion when I was on the phone around noon with the Joint Secretary in the
MEA, Vijay Nambiar, he could pick up the sound of light gun fire let-off by
Chinese patrolling troops near the Embassy. We decided then that it would be
best if for some time till full normalcy was restored in Beijing, wives and
children of officers and staff were repatriated to India. This was done soon
thereafter. The Indian Writer’s delegation was also on the same aircraft.
The wives and children returned to Beijing after normalcy returned sometime
in late July. Most of the Western, South East Asian and some African
Embassies also temporarily repatriated their families. Schools for foreign
children in Beijing closed down for 4-6 weeks. Mr. and Mrs. B.K. Nehru
visited China as tourists in early June. I packed them off from Beijing two
days before the tanks entered the Square to Guilin and Guangzhou. They heard
about the events only 4 days after, when they reached Hong Kong.
Fairly
soon after Jiang Zemin’s appointment as General Secretary of the CPC, it
so happened that Mr Ghulam Nabi Azad, then one of the General Secretaries of
the Congress Party, scheduled a transit visit through Beijing on his way
back from Pyongyang. This was a good opportunity to be received by the new
Chinese General Secretary. My request was met immediately and we became the
first foreign delegation to be seen by Mr Jiang Zemin after he became
General Secretary. For the rest of my tenure in Beijing I had three other
occasions to be received by him when delegations from Indian political
parties visited China.
In
July 1989, Foreign Secretary SK. Singh visited Beijing for the first Joint
Working Group meeting set up to discuss the boundary and other related
bilateral and international questions, He was received by Premier Li Peng.
In the discussions, the Premier frankly acknowledged the lack of Chinese
expertise in controlling mobs, the bitter memories of the chaos during the
Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and the paramount need to maintain
stability as the highest value in society while thanking the Government of
India for its understanding attitude when referring to the recent turmoil in
China. During the autumn, as in previous years, we participated in the tour
engaged for Heads of Missions by the Chinese Foreign Office. This time it
was to Jiangxi Province. An important footnote was the picnic at the scenic
Lushan mountain where in the stormy meetings of the Poliburo of the CPC in
1959, Mao Zedong victimised Marshal Peng Dehuai. Lushan has one of the most
attractive botanical parks I have ever visited with trees and horticultural
species from all over, the world.
In
early 1990, Qian Qichen the Foreign Minilster visited India when a different
government under Mr. V.P. Singh's Prime Ministership
was in power and when Mr. I.K. Gujral was the External Affairs Minister.
Hearing Mr. Singh’s very affirmative remarks about the Rajiv Gandhi visit
and its significance, the Chinese Foreign Minister said at a Press
Conference that he could see with his own eyes that there was a consensus
cutting across all parties on India’s relations with China. Through 1990
and till mid-1991 when I left Beijing on transfer for India there was a
brisk exchange of official and non-official delegations from various
spheres.
I
left in May 1991 after a 4-year assignment which saw events fully packed
with significance for China and for India-China relations, While it was a
privilege to have witnessed some of these events, life in China was very
satisfying for a variety of less publicised and therefore perhaps more
fulfilling engagements.
Just
a few months before the Rajiv Gandhi visit, the Embassy had started a
journal, “India Digest” which was the Chinese version of the well
acclaimed English version of the same name which my colleague, the then
Commissioner in Hong Kong, PP. D’souza had launched. For the Beijing
edition we had added contribution from Chinese scholars on India and a page
on comments from our Chinese readers. It was heartening to see how well this
publication was received in China and print-orders had to be increased, a
small reflection of the more open intellectual atmosphere in China. Like the
Annual Children’s painting competition held by Shankar’s
Weekly we too had a similar event in Beijing. Selected school children
from Beijing and the Provinces participated along with children of the
Indian Embassy. Subjects were allotted by a panel of Chinese judges who
adjudicated the competition held in a spirit of enormous good-will and fun.
Gifts were exchanged, snacks and drinks consumed and impromptu songs and
dances performed.
My
several visits to Prof. Ji Xianlin, the doyen of classical stars on India at
Beijing University (“Beida” as we called it) were always very educative.
He was instrumental, at Tan Chung’s initiative, in getting me to address
in Chinese, an international seminar on Dunhuang and Turfan studies
organised by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. The Embassy organised
functions to confer the Desikottama
award from Visva-Bharati University on Prof. Wu Xiaoting. On another
occasion we launched the Chinese translation of volumes of Tulsidas’ Ramcharita
manas undertaken by Prof. Jing Dinghan. We presented on more than
one occasion, collections of classics and contemporary books from India
in English and Hindi to the Beijing Library, Institute of Foreign Languages
and Beida.
One
of the memorable tours undertaken by my wife and I was to Xinjiang and Gansu.
In Kashgar we visited the ok “India House” made famous by Lady
Macartney’s memories, where the Sathes stayed as the last Indian
representatives. The ok and now dilapitated “India House” and its
spacious grounds were dominated by a multi-storeyed hotel, the favourite
lodge truckers and traders from Pakistan. From Urumqi we drove in the
company of my Danish colleague and his family to Turfan and then via Hami to
Dunhuang. The Chinese guide from the Xinjiang branch of the Foreign Office
accompanied us. His family an that of the driver, brought delicious packed
food for us, along with botttes of beer and drinks to last us over the
three-day drive With the Tian Shan mountains on one side and the desert on
the other, one saw such a variegated landscape. A dip in the famous Kerez
(underground springs of delicious freshwater) was most reviving as were the
grapes and peaches of Turfan. At Dunhuan I established contacts with the
director of the Museum and Grottoes, Prof Duan Wenjie which were
consolidated by Dr. Kapil Vatsyayan and the IGNCA.
