At his maiden meeting with India’s new envoy Pradeep Kumar Rawat in Beijing, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi reiterated that “common interests between the two nations far outweigh differences”. In the same vein, he also praised his Indian counterpart, S Jaishankar, for calling out Western ‘meddling’, and also acknowledged it as a “sign of New Delhi’s independence”. The question is if Wang Yi’s observations were perfunctory, or were aimed at Indian reaction to a veiled proposal for reviving bilateral talks at whatever level.
The reasons are not too far to seek. At the GlobSec 2022 Forum at Bratislava in Slovakia recently, Jaishankar was highly critical of West Europe, declaring that India’s foreign policy choices were not “cynical or transactional”. On specifics, he was responding to European nations and their leaders comparing the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war in the context of India’s strained relations with China, and cautioning/threatening New Delhi, ‘What if you are the next…’ He said the two Asian neighbours could manage their bilateral relationship on their own — and declared that the world (too/alone) had to “come out of its Euro-centric mindset”.
Wang Yi’s ‘independence’ observation viz India flowed from this aspect of Jaishankar’s speech. “Recently, External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar publicly expressed his disapproval of European centralism and objections to external forces meddling in China-India relations. That reflects India’s tradition of independence,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Ambassador Rawat’s meeting with Minister Wang Yi. “The two sides (namely, India and China) should work together to cope with various global challenges, and safeguard the common interests of China, India and the vast developing countries,” the statement quoted Yi as telling Rawat further.
Governance of global economy
Expanding the scope and indulging in a lil’ kite-flying, Chinese President Xi Jinping, chairing a virtual summit of BRICS leaders, said the world “must abandon Cold War mentality” and “bloc confrontation” — and “oppose unilateral sanctions and abuse of sanctions”. Of course, the reference was to the US-led West, especially in the immediate context of the Ukraine war and sanctions on Russia. In context, his mention of “bloc confrontation” has to be construed as a legacy issue from the Cold War era. If, however, Xi had India, Quad and India-Pacific in mind, he did not mention it.
Of course, Russian President Vladimir Putin too flagged the ‘sanctions’ issue as it was targeted against his nation continuously for years now. He said that BRICS “can find solutions to the crisis situation” in the global economy because of “ill-conceived and self-interested actions” by some nations that have been “using the financial mechanism”.
Predictably, Prime Minister Narendra Modi stayed away from such controversies. Instead, he stuck to issues such as ‘governance of the global economy’ in the aftermath of the global pandemic of the past couple of years. “Even though the scale of the epidemic has reduced globally…many of its ill effects are still visible in the global economy. We, the BRICS member countries, have had a very similar view of the governance of the global economy. And so, our mutual cooperation can make a useful contribution to post-Covid global recovery,” Modi said.
Cultural context
It is anybody’s guess if Xi’s mention of “bloc confrontation” did not include Chinese BRI, especially if his reference also included Quad and the Indo-Pacific, where New Delhi has a decisive role. Then, there is BRICS and also SCO, which may not have evolved as new ‘blocs’ in the post-Cold War era, but was feared so by the West, when they were taking shape. It is the moderating presence of India, compelled both by circumstances and attitudes, that ended up being the guiding force, if it could be called so.
In the past months, the US lynch-pin of Quad and Indo-Pacific has clarified that the two, especially the former, was not a military alliance, as thought to be. That clarification, the US made when it signed the AUKUS military treaty with the UK and Australia last year, when it also announced the decision to sell nuclear submarines to the latter, replacing the French deal to supply conventional subs to Canberra.
There is a larger issue, one of imbibed, inherited political culture that governs governmental thinking, attitude and approaches, making them either ‘transactional’ or ‘abiding’. With a history that is relatively recent, the US has always remained a nation of fortune-seekers, originally from across the Atlantic, now from across the world, including India and China, compared to Europe, and more so, Asia. ‘Transactional relations’ come naturally to Americans, for whom the ‘all-American’ identity still remains the binding force, and a necessity, be it in global politics, economy or sports. Europe lost its soul in the previous century, thanks especially to the two Great Wars.
Asia, especially India, did not fight wars of such magnitude in recent centuries. Until after Independence, most Indian wars were with itself and within itself – dating back to the era of the Ramayan and the Mahabharat. Including the post-Independence wars with Pakistan, and the lone one with China (1962), India did not lose its soul. So, culturally, Establishment India has imbibed an element of ‘abiding’ relations with neighbours and others alike.
It is thus the governing principle of what Prime Minister Modi often mentions as the Indian characteristic of Vasudaiva Kutumbakam in Sanskrit, and Yaadum Oore, Yavarum Kelir’ in Tamil – both meaning, the ‘World is one family’. If anything, the British colonial rule, with its set of imperial policy behaviour, may have replaced one set of traditional values with another, that too only up to a point.
It is not vastly different in the case of China, or the rest of ‘old Asia’. Scratch the surface, and cultural and behavioural commonalities re-emerge, pushing multi-layered differences and divisions to the background. For none of them, ‘transactional relations’ holds good for long, though in the interim, they all learn to acknowledge, but not necessarily accept, the emerging global realities.
Middle Kingdom mindset
Yet, when China speaks about India’s ‘independence’, in terms of ‘foreign policy mindset’, it should also acknowledge that it’s not unidirectional, but is applicable to New Delhi’s approach to Beijing, Islamabad and all the rest. Whether at the negotiations table or provocative confrontations of the Galwan kind, India would stand up, and not yield ground on core elements like sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Beijing should thus look into the mirror, and also cure itself of its attitudinal problems vis-à-vis India before proceeding on matters of Indian ‘independence’. It means that Beijing has to begin by giving up the entrenched Middle Kingdom mindset, which also pervades China’s global thinking. It should acknowledge the leverage India also has as a nation-state and the implied and explicit responsibilities and accountabilities that go with it, especially in a democracy.
China cannot ride two horses at the same time, if it wants both to be harnessed to a grandiose chariot for the two nations to pull together. It cannot continue to begrudge India wanting to be a regional power in its own right with independent ambitions of a middle power and super-power in its time. It cannot expect India, among the nations of South Asia, to play a secondary role to China, even granting that in the existing geo-political, geo-economic and geo-strategic environment, New Delhi still has a long way to go.
***
Also Read
Xi Jinping will lead China for record third time, but is much weaker than we think
Xi Jinping’s strategic miscalculation spawns a dangerous Himalayan military stalemate
***
Beijing should stop running with the hare and hunting with the hound, as the saying goes. With New Delhi, it cannot enact Doklam (2017) one day and Galwan (2020) on another, and punctuate them with the ‘Wuhan Spirit’ (2017) and ‘Chennai Connect’ (2019) — and expect them to work. That is an old and worn-out game, unsuited for the 21st century, especially for the 21st century India.
Cautious optimism
If nothing else, the Indian social and political conscience does not work that way. Yet, every Indian government and leader, including incumbent Modi, has approached post-1962 China with ‘cautious optimism’ — without shutting the door for negotiations, expecting honourable reciprocation, and not a cloak-and-dagger approach, which is what Xi’s especially has proved to be.
Suffice is to point out in this context that Modi rolled out the red-carpet for Xi, who was also the first important overseas visitor after he became prime minister in 2014 — and also the first Chinese leader to get a public reception in six decades, after 1962. Modi gave it all a personal touch by hosting Xi in native Gujarat, which was unprecedented in matters of protocol.
The optics worked, but Xi and China, rather than taking it forward, put bilateral relations on a tail-spin. That renewable phase of ‘Hindi-Chini, bhai-bhai’ is all over now, and it is for China to begin afresh. Until Beijing convinces New Delhi that it is not what it used to be, it cannot expect India to lower its guard.
Interpreted, it could mean India still having to lean on the West on matters political, strategic and economic. Minus the China-provoked actions of the kind, Beijing has nothing much to fear from New Delhi. That may include India’s position on Tibet and the Dalai Lama, especially the future ones, which are all points for negotiations on a good day, not for confrontation, leading to more bad days turning worse.
China should acknowledge that India is no more in the sixties for it to have a military walk-over. It also has to accept that intermittent provocations over Arunachal Pradesh alone has made India revisit the nation’s Tibet policy’, from time to time. Towards the end of last year, Beijing wantonly announced Chinese names for 15 places in the north-eastern state of India — but without changing anything on the ground. Rather, it amounts to changing those names for the sake of changing, nothing more.
Trust-building is the name of the game, and China is not going to have it easy or early, given all that it has done over the past decade and less — leaving aside the motivated flip-flop at every turn since the mid-fifties. Yet, trust-building is not impossible, either. India gave the opening, when Minister Jaishankar reiterated at Bratislava how New Delhi did not need others’ help to sort out problems with China. Of course, it was a terse message to Europe, yes, but there was enough in it for China to take forward.
Jaishankar’s assertion was also a reaffirmation of India’s known policy on bilateral issues with China and Pakistan — but independent of each other. If, however, Beijing still feels that there is a tri-lateral angle to the ‘Kashmir issue’, over Aksai Chin, which is in Chinese possession, despite being a part of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), thus being an Indian territory on record, it may be holding the wrong end of the stick, or barking up at the wrong tree, one more time.
The writer is a Chennai-based policy analyst & commentator. Views expressed are personal.
Read all the Latest News, Trending News, Cricket News, Bollywood News,
India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
0 Comments: