India's rapid progress under Modi improved global ties: Global Times

China's Global Times says India has rapidly shifted toward a 'great power' strategy

India, with its rapid economic and social development, has become more strategically confident and proactive, but these rapid changes in its internal and external strategies pose challenges to itself and the international community, an opinion piece published in China’s leading daily Global Times said on Tuesday.

In the write-up published in the mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, its author, Zhang Jiadong, the director of the Shanghai-based Center for South Asian Studies at Fudan University, observed that India was now "indeed a major power". "It appears that a transformed, stronger, and more assertive India has become a new geopolitical factor that many countries need to consider," Zhang said.

In the diplomatic sphere, Zhang said, India has rapidly shifted toward a "great power" strategy. He said Prime Minister Narendra Modi has, during his tenure, advocated for India a multi-alignment strategy, promoting India's relations with the US, Japan, Russia and other countries and regional organisations but distanced itself from the West on the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and "aligned itself more closely to the developing world."  At the same time, Zhang said, India's reservations about Western powers have significantly diminished, and its activities within Western countries have become more frequent, extending beyond organising large-scale diaspora events.

Global Times is a daily newspaper published by The People's Daily, the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. The editorials and opinion pieces in Global Times are tracked internationally to gauge the nuances of Beijing's worldview. According to the website of the Institute of International Studies, Fudan University, it is a "key cooperative research institute for policy studies" of the Chinese Foreign Ministry for 2022-24. The assessment of India by a leading Chinese scholar comes in the context of years of border tensions between India and China, including the recent 2017 Doklam standoff. 

In the article, Zhang said he visited India twice recently, his first visit to the country in four years, and found that "India's domestic and foreign situations have changed tremendously compared to four years ago." According to the academic, whose research interests are terrorism and international security, "India has achieved outstanding results in economic development and social governance, and its great power strategy has moved from dream to reality", but "potential risks and crises have also begun to unfold." 

According to Zhang's assessment, India has moved from emphasising its democratic consensus with the West to highlighting the "Indian feature" or "India's versions" of democratic politics. "Currently, there is even more emphasis on the Indian origins of democratic politics," he said. The Chinese scholar said India has sought to escape its status as a "political dwarf", which resulted from its colonial history, but also wants to act as a "world mentor" politically and culturally and has been proactive in creating and developing a "Bharat narrative".

Zhang said these internal and external policy changes align with the logic of India's long-held policy, as it has always considered itself a world power. Still, the process has accelerated in the last few years. "However, it has only been less than ten years since India shifted from multi-balancing to multi-alignment, and now it is rapidly transforming toward a strategy of becoming a pole in the multipolar world. The speed of such changes is rarely seen in the history of international relations," he said. "Obviously, India no longer only regards cultural tradition as a channel to achieve its own interests or as a symbol to attract foreign tourists, but also sees it as one of the pillars of India's status as a great power," he said. 

Zhang said he also found during his discussions with Indian representatives that "their attitude toward Chinese scholars was more relaxed and moderate, instead of being stubborn at times." He pointed out that when discussing India's "trade imbalance" with China, Indian scholars would earlier focus on China's measures to reduce the trade imbalance, but now place more emphasis on India's export potential, actively seeking to reduce the trade deficit with Beijing by taking the initiative and increasing Chinese imports from India.

New Delhi's urban governance has improved somewhat. However, the haze is still severe, Zhang noted, adding that "but the distinctive smell that hit you as soon as you stepped off the plane four years ago has generally disappeared."