China’s foreign minister Wang Yi is on a four day visit to India aimed at accelerating people to people ties between the two Asian giants. When the FM arrives in Delhi today, he will address a high level joint India-China media forum together with external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj.
India-China relations have looked up ever since Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping met at an informal summit in Wuhan last April and decided to put the 72-day stand-off in Doklam behind them. The idea of a media forum was decided in Wuhan as the Chinese side felt that the Indian press had played a negative role during the Doklam confrontion. Indians felt the same about China’s state-run newspapers like Global Times, which went hammer and tongs against India. In fact a few writers reminded India of the humiliating defeat at the hands of the PLA in the border skirmish of 1962, when Chinese soldiers marched into Arunachal and nearly reached the Assam plains.
That defeat has haunted the Indian establishment ever since and made the general public suspicious of China. The border war took place even as both countries signed the Panchsheel Agreement in 1954 and loudly proclaimed Asian solidarity, with the India-Chini bhai bhai slogan. This together with China’s close ties with its arch rival Pakistan, has led to deep rooted distrust of China. The frequent incursions of PLA soldiers into India has not helped matters. This is why the Modi-Xi decided in Wuhan, to promote understanding of each other. People to people contacts and interaction between journalists of the two countries. Since Wuhan relations have improved dramatically.
Pictures of Indian army and PLA soldiers dancing together last week during the joint military exercise in Chengdu is in sharp contrast to the eye ball to eye ball confrontation in Bhutan this summer. The military exercises were resumed post Wuhan. The decision to continue the Hand-in-Hand exercise was taken as a confidence building measure. In short, things are looking up for now, but there are major unresolved issues between the two countries, including a long pending border problem which has yet to be sorted after several rounds of fruitless negotiations.
Wisely both India and China pulled back from the brink in Doklam, realising that instability could affect developmental efforts of the two. India is struggling to lift millions from the grinding circle of poverty, and needs a stable periphery to concentrate on development. While China is now the second largest economy in the world, there are still areas of backwardness and uneven development between regions. China’s growth rate is slowing, and with an unpredictable Trump blowing hot and cold over China, nothing can be taken for granted by President Xi Jinping.
In this uncertain environment with the shadow of a full scale trade war between China and the US looming large, the far thinking Chinese leadership has been working at improving ties with its Asian neighbours. Whether it is India, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam or Indonesia, China is reaching out to countries with which it has had testy ties in the past. But much before the trade war with the US, China had been eyeing the growing warmth in Delhi’s relations with Washington with concern.
The signing of the India-US civil nuclear deal in 2005 by former PM Manmohan Singh and George Bush, was the starting point of a new chapter between the worlds largest and oldest democracies. The process that began then has gathered momentum with successive leaders of the two countries. China is well aware that US motive in wooing India was to balance China’s growing clout in the Indo Pacific region, stretching to the Indian Ocean.
Under Modi and Trump this relationship has further extended with India now signing two of the three foundation defence agreements with the US. The Americans are making no bones about Washington’s desire to involve India in the loose defence cooperative architecture of the Indo-Pacific waters. The pet phase now is freedom of navigation in international waters that include the South China Sea and broader Pacific periphery. Beijing has been flexing its muscles in asserting its claim over the South China Sea, which is contested by Vietnam, Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei. Washington’s outreach to Delhi had added to China’s stragetic concerns.
Keeping all this in mind, China is reworking its strategy. This has worked out to India’s advantage. It is ready to welcome better ties with China, while sticking to its principles about sovereignty and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Delhi’s constant talk of China’s funding of the BRI projects has had some resonance in the region. Yet it helps India to have China as a friend to ensure stability in the neighbourhood. At the same time ties with US and Russia and other leading powers will continue to grow. India also needs time to build its defence capabilities, which it is doing at the moment. India is one of the world’s largest importer of arms. So in the next few days with Wang Yi in town there will be more talk of the Asian century.
—Seema Guha is a senior journalist with expertise in foreign policy and international affairs.
