A missed chance for India-China relations

That the Chinese side should have proposed a visit by Wang to India as part of his tour of South Asia is unsurprising, given that it is standard practice for visits by Chinese leaders to cover several countries. Wang Yi’s participation as “guest” at the 48th Session of the OIC Council of Foreign Ministers (CFM) hosted by Islamabad on March 22-23 is the first such attendance by any Chinese foreign minister. The tour served several objectives for China.

First, it was an effort to convey to the world that China is a big power assuming a leadership role in engaging the region to develop consensus on important issues such as Afghanistan and Ukraine. Second, it was aimed at ensuring the success of the in-person BRICS summit later this year. Third, Beijing intended to consolidate the impression that China and India have a shared interest in ensuring that Russia is not isolated, and further, to suggest that there is a rift between the US and India over Ukraine.

Fourth, by becoming the first P-5 country to send a foreign minister to visit Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover, China sought to convey to the international community that it is a “responsible” power in contrast to the US, which withdrew from Afghanistan and has since subordinated Asian security to its priorities in Europe, thus making it an unreliable partner. Fifth, Wang’s participation at the OIC CFM meeting signalled China’s desire to be seen as a strong and sympathetic backer of the Islamic world, making common cause against stereotyping by the West.

A stand-alone visit by Wang to India, in any case, would have been difficult to set up in the absence of a clearly agreed-upon agenda, adequate preparation and demonstrable outcomes from India’s point of view, especially on the core issue of disengagement in the border areas.

Wang’s visit ought to have provided a healing touch and a chance to rebuild trust. It did little to thaw the deep freeze in bilateral ties. By all accounts, he stuck to the boilerplate formulation that “the border issue should be put in its proper place in bilateral ties”, a euphemism for demanding India’s acquiescence in China’s unilateralism without linkage to other fields, including trade, which continues to lean disproportionately in China’s favour. His Indian interlocutors no doubt hammered home the point that peace is a prerequisite for normal ties.

There exists a wide chasm in positions on bilateral issues and on strategic themes such as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the Indo-Pacific and the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue. As it is, the multilateral space for cooperation between India and China has shrunk in recent years with Beijing gratuitously interfering in India’s internal affairs and attempting to rake up the Kashmir issue at the UN Security Council. By making an insensitive reference to Kashmir at the OIC CFM meeting in Pakistan, and playing to the gallery there, Wang precluded any chance of forward movement.

For China, itself in occupation of Kashmir’s territory in Aksai Chin and the Shaksgam valley, such machinations are perhaps a means to divert attention away from the treatment of its own Islamic and other minorities. In Xinjiang, there is little evidence on the ground of the respect for the “Islamic civilisation” and “Islamic wisdom” that Wang Yi alluded to while in Pakistan.

Given the ongoing crisis in Ukraine, China is keen to signal to countries in the region that the idea of the Indo-Pacific is a red line for China, akin to NATO expansion for Russia. It has not gone unnoticed in Beijing that Nepal’s parliament recently approved a $ 500 million US government aid programme under the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), which provides an alternative to infrastructure and developmental finance under the BRI.

Recently, Chinese scholars have encouragingly referred to India’s “strategic autonomy” as a key factor in New Delhi successfully resisting US pressure to toe the line on Ukraine. Such guile is unlikely to alter New Delhi’s appreciation of the hard reality of adverse Chinese policies, its expanding strategic and military ties with Pakistan and its growing shadow in South Asia and the Indian Ocean region. The lack of agreement on disengagement at the remaining friction points in the border areas may make it difficult for visits at the apex level to resume.

There is much greater international appreciation today of India’s principled position on the war in Ukraine than there is of China’s strategic ties to Russia. The global situation is complex. The security imbroglio in Europe is likely to endure. At this juncture, one wonders if there is any merit in India participating in either the in-person BRICS summit or the 19th Meeting of Foreign Ministers of the RIC (Russia-India-China) grouping to be hosted by China later this year.

This column first appeared in the print edition on March 30, 2022 under the title ‘Not far enough’. The writer, a former diplomat, is a China specialist currently serving as the Director-General of the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses. Views are personal