The yawning asymmetry –between India and China on the military and economic fronts –leaves India with little wiggle room. Recent tensions “will likely underscore to strategists in New Delhi and Beijing that they should be prepared for sustained competition across domains, and that India could hardly take for granted its partnerships in the region,” Joshua White, a professor of South Asia Studies at Johns Hopkins University, recentlysaid. For any meaningful impact on Beijing’s regional policy, New Delhi has to go beyond a delusionary course and plan for the long haul. Truly, the strongly gravitating New Delhi-Washington relationship is producing a centrifugal impact on the future of Indo-China relations. China’s regional role is positively dominant. The present zero-sum game in the region, a reflection of a la Modi’s evil design, seems ominous for regional peace and stability.
Truly, successive Indian governments, including the present one, have reckoned it difficult to do so bluntly against China. The Chinese view of the MacMohan Line was absolutely different and had discarded India’s view. Chou En-lai successive visits to India saw a decline in mutual understanding on some of these pertinent themes including the border. And subsequently, China’s Sinkiang province had been linked to Tibet via road in the Aksai Chin area. The current border-dispute between the two sides is created because of New Delhi’s expansionist design in the region, particularly Modi’s reorganization order 2020 in the Indian Occupied Kashmir.Given the current situation in the eastern Ladakh, China holds a prompt stand as it is a disputed territory between China and India.
Moreover, given that bothChina and Pakistan are affirmed to maintain an organic strategic-alliance, while India and Pakistan are still hostile to each other, the power-balance game is still being played in the region. China is also very sensitive about India’s recent involvement in oil exploration in the South China Sea and its actions to strengthen maritime co-operation with Japan, which has disputes with China over islands in the region. The so-called string of Pearls strategy amply indicates that China is constraining India by constructing ports and bases in the Indian Ocean region, has been heavily covered by the Indian media.
The Chinese built and maintained Gwadar port is a declared defence entity. It is also a virtual Chinese naval facility. It connects with the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) for which Beijing has promised US$46 billion is intriguing for India’s dream to downgrade Pakistan regional significance.In addition, “India’s maritime enthusiasm and the Indo-Pacific approach is fairly recent. Many of these partnerships and engagements are foundational, but due to the absence of active maritime-focused policies in the last decades, these agreements/partnerships are important,” said Darshana Baruah, an expert on the Indian Ocean at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
In the eyes of Indian policymakers today, Beijing’s expanding strategic dominance in Asia and beyond is much reflective of casting an impinging effect , which is rightly in contrast to U.S. primacy in the region, which despite past rivalries, still holds the leverage; one that has been the core to the environment that enabled India’s economic growth since the 1990s. This has largely motivated India’s support for the US positions on matters like freedom of navigation. The India-China trade deficit has continued to grow in spite of years of discussions between the two sides. While the Chinese side views it as a structural problem that cannot be resolved in the short term; India views it as an issue of market access requiring Beijing to address non-tariff barriers.
Yet, an important issue for China is the US targeting of major Chinese technology firms to prevent them from getting global business. China is keen that India resist US pressure. The Indian government is caught between competing demands. Indian telecom companies want Huawei to participate in 5G because it keeps prices down, but India must also address the security risks of exposure to cyber threats and the “potential US sanctions risk” of being caught up in increasingly fractious US-China trade tensions.Arguably, Modi’s government current drive to boycott the Chinese products remains highly delusional.
Virtually, China is replacing the US role as a global power, keenly observed by the West and, increasingly, the rest of the world. Yet strategically put, for two states of such growing importance and with a rich history, their relationship seems largely reactive and, more broadly, adrift
The impact of the growing rivalry in region’s other states is inescapable since Bangladesh is a good illustration of the challenges India faces in its rivalry with China. India’s relations with Bangladesh are in fairly good shape and have improved significantly in recent years. The two countries have been systematically pursuing a series of energy deals that can potentially bring big benefits to both nations. Additionally, discussions have begun for an electricity-sharing mechanism between India, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal. And yet not surprisingly, India remains u able to stop China from deepening its footprint and influence in New Delhi’s backyard, from Pakistan to Sri Lanka and many places in between, leading to worries that it’s slowly being pinned down and encircled by China.”The China-Iran deal is a blow to New Delhi, given that it all but assures India will be shut out of Chabahar. “India, which has refused to join [the Belt and Road Initiative], is left with no potential plan to access markets in Afghanistan and further afield in Central Asia,” said Michael Kugelman, an American expert on the South Asian affairs.
Though India is somehow cautious to choose sides in the US-China rivalry in terms of President Donald Trump’s Indo-Pacific strategy and a proposed quadrilateral coalition with the US, Japan and Australia take the side. Instead, India has been reluctant to enter into a military alliance with the US over fears of losing its “strategic autonomy” and becoming a subordinate ally because of the obvious power asymmetry between Washington and New Delhi, analysts say. “While China has been put on the defensive in handing the Trump administration, Beijing is very much on the offensive in its periphery region to get as much leverage as possible,” said Yun Sun, a senior fellow at the Stimson Centre in Washington.
Virtually, China is replacing the US role asa global power, keenly observed by the West and, increasingly, the rest of the world. Yet strategically put, for two states of such growing importance and with a rich and sometimes fractious history, their relationship seems largely reactive and, more broadly, adrift. And undeniably, the post- Covid-19 global dynamics warrant that for India, it will be a mammoth challenge to deter the growing Beijing’s impact both regionally and globally.The irony that rests with the Modi Government foreign policy is that instead of astutely managing the regional differences with its neighbours, New Delhi is pursuing a policy that fosters a political hedonist approach which is lethal to regional peace and stability. Needless to say, Modi’s fascist discourse is bringing both Islamabad and Beijing moreclosely to an inevitable strategic partnership.A stable Afghanistan in South Asian region is also important for China’s regional policy.
The writer is an independent ‘IR’ researcher and international law analyst based in Pakistan