The condominium

The principal purpose of Yang’s Washington trip was to prepare the ground for the meeting between Chinese leader Hu Jintao and President Barack Obama next month on the margins of a high powered gathering in London to address the challenge of global financial crisis. Although the meeting involves leaders of 20 nations, including India, for all practical purposes it likely to unveil the formation of a “Group of Two” — the United States and China. For both Washington and Beijing, the G20 might be a sideshow in comparison to the attractions of setting up a G2. The irony of the CCP chairman riding to the rescue of the world capitalism in collaboration with the US president might be lost on the CPM, but India will have to find ways to cope with the potential consequences of a G2. In a speech in New Delhi a few days ago, the prime minister’s special envoy, Ambassador Shyam Saran, has used the dreaded word “condominium” to describe one discomforting scenario that could emerge from deepening Sino-US partnership in global affairs.

Dumping Tibet

The earliest consequences of a Sino-US condominium could be felt in Tibet. In the last few months, the Anglo-American powers have put out unambiguous signals that the imperative of cooperation with China on managing the global financial crisis is far more important than teaching Beijing the virtues of respecting human rights in Tibet. First it was the turn of London to declare that China’s sovereignty over Tibet is absolute and apologise for using the lesser term ‘suzerainty” for more than a century. President Obama and his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton joined the bandwagon by saying that the issue of human rights is just one among many between Washington and Beijing. Washington’s liberal democrats have grasped at two words to abandon Tibet with a clean conscience — climate change. After all who can argue against cooperation with China on climate change? Meanwhile, the Hollywood radicals are bored with Tibet and have turned their attention to the Darfur region in Sudan.

... contd.