China absolutely impossible factor to ignore in India's confrontation with Pakistan: Tharoor

Washington: China is an “absolutely impossible factor to ignore” in India’s latest confrontation with Pakistan, Congress leader Shashi Tharoor has said, emphasising that a thaw in relations between Delhi and Beijing over the past few months was “seemingly making good progress” before the conflict.

Tharoor, who is leading a multi-party parliamentary delegation to the US, said, “I'm not going to mince my words, but we are aware that China has immense stakes in Pakistan." His remarks came during an interaction with representatives of think tanks organised at the Indian Embassy here on Thursday.

The largest single project under the Belt and Road Initiative is the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, Tharoor said, adding that 81 per cent of Pakistani defence equipment is from China.

“Defence may be the wrong word here. Offense in many ways,” he said.

"China is an absolutely impossible factor to ignore in what has been our confrontation with Pakistan,” Tharoor said.

He noted that despite the tensions between China and India since the Galwan Valley clashes in June 2020, "we had actually begun a thaw with China in September of last year, which was seemingly making good progress before this tragedy occurred.” Tharoor added that “then we saw a very different China” in terms of its practical support for Pakistan, even on the Security Council.  “We have no illusions about what the challenges are in our neighbourhood, but I want to remind you all that India has consistently chosen a path of keeping open channels of communication, even with our adversaries," he said.

"We have tried as much as possible to focus on development, on growth, on trade. Our trade with China is still at record levels. It's not that we are adopting a posture of hostility, but we would be naive” not to be aware of these other currents around, he said.

Pakistan is currently a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council.

Following the April 22 Pahalgam attack, the UN Security Council had on April 25 issued a press statement on the ‘terrorist attack in Jammu and Kashmir’ in which the members had condemned it in "the strongest terms”.

“The members of the Security Council underlined the need to hold perpetrators, organisers, financiers and sponsors of this reprehensible act of terrorism accountable and bring them to justice,” the press statement had said.

However, the press statement did not mention The Resistance Front as the group responsible for the attack after Pakistan managed to get the name removed with the support of China.

In October last year, India and China firmed up a disengagement pact for Depsang and Demchok, the last two friction points in eastern Ladakh.  Days after the agreement was finalised, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping held talks in Kazan, Russia, and took a number of decisions to improve ties.

External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar met Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in November last year in Rio de Janeiro on the sidelines of the G20 Summit and the two met again in February this year in Johannesburg.

During a conversation at the Council on Foreign Relations earlier in the day, Tharoor was asked about the Chinese military equipment that Pakistan used in the conflict against India and if there is a reassessment over this.

“Frankly, the reassessment took place while the fighting was going on,” Tharoor said.

He added that when India saw what the Pakistanis were attempting to do using Chinese technology, for instance, the ‘kill chain’ that the Chinese specialise in, where the radar, GPS, planes and missiles are all linked together and they react instantly, “we simply did things in a different way. Otherwise, we wouldn't have been able to hit” 11 Pakistani airfields and “we wouldn't have been able to breach the Chinese-supplied air defences.

“So it's clear that assessments were taking place while the fighting was happening, and we were recalibrating our strategies in order to end as effectively as we were able to end,” Tharoor said. 

“The fact is China has immense stakes in Pakistan, the largest single project on the Belt and Road Initiative is the one in Pakistan - the China- Pakistan Economic Corridor. So we have no illusions about the degree of commitment that China may well be feeling towards Pakistan.”