Modi-Xi summit: A cautious step, but India must not lower its guard

The Galwan clash occurred six months after the Doklam disengagement and two high-profile meetings. India must not lower its guard

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping met formally on October 23 after a gap of five years in Russia’s Kazan, on the margins of the Brics+ meeting hosted by President Vladimir Putin of Russia. Brics is a grouping of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, which has recently expanded to include Egypt, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, Iran  and the United Arab Emirates. It is, therefore, a unique assemblage of several major emerging economies and representative of the Global South. This geopolitical context is important. The value of Brics as a leading group of the Global South would diminish if its two most consequential countries—India and China — were not on talking terms.

 

We have seen this story before. Relations between the two countries plummeted after an ugly standoff between their troops at the strategically important but contested tri-junction of the borders of India, Bhutan, and China at Doklam in June 2017.  This was resolved a couple of weeks later, clearing the decks for Mr Modi’s visit to China for the annual Brics summit.

 

In the present case, an announcement was made by Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri on October 21 that “agreement has been arrived at on patrolling arrangements along the Line of Actual Control in the India-China border areas, leading to disengagement and a resolution of the issues that had arisen in these areas in 2020.” He claimed that the disengagement process with China had been completed. This was confirmed by the Chinese side.

 

It is now learnt that the latest agreement relates only to Depsang and Demchok in eastern Ladakh, where Indian troops were being prevented from accessing patrolling points they had been regularly visiting over the years. The other points of contention in eastern Ladakh had already been dealt with by creating buffer zones between the troops deployed by the two sides, into which neither side would intrude. These remain in place. So it would not be true to say that the situation prevailing before the clash at Galwan in April 2020 has been restored. Enough was achieved in reducing the ongoing confrontation at the LAC in eastern Ladakh to enable the summit to take place and this is undoubtedly an important development. But it should not be over-interpreted. It is a positive nudge to the relationship and not yet a significant shift.

 

 The Doklam disengagement proved to be a tactical manoeuvre by China, despite being followed by two highly publicised “informal summits” between the two leaders, one in Wuhan in China in April 2018 and the other in Mamallapuram in India in October 2019, barely six months before the clash in Galwan in eastern Ladakh. India must not lower its guard. It should heighten its vigilance so as not to be caught by surprise once again.

 

The readout on the summit by the Indian and Chinese sides respectively point to sharp differences in their world views. While both countries talk about promoting multipolarity in the international order, India has reiterated that multipolarity in Asia must go hand in hand with global multipolarity. The Chinese readout omits that reference. This goes to the heart of the political dissonance between them. China has a hierarchical view of power and envisages an Asian order dominated by it. India does not accept this and is unlikely to do so in future.

 

Mr Xi  said that “development is currently the greatest common denominator between China and India.” This implies that economic and commercial relations between them should outweigh all other aspects of their relationship. Implicit in this is the expectation that the restrictive Indian approach to China trade and investment must give way to positive encouragement instead.

 

Mr Xi has cleverly tapped into a strain of thinking among India’s leading corporate entities and some sections of the government’s economic establishment, that see limits on China trade and investment as inimical to India’s own development trajectory. There is a demand for a re-look at Press Note 3, which subjects China-related investment proposals to strict scrutiny, particularly from the security angle.

 

With China one cannot divorce the political and security dimensions from the economic and commercial relationship. China consciously follows a strategy of asymmetric interdependence.  Mr Xi  has explicitly declared that China should make its economic partners more dependent on itself, while progressively reducing its own dependence  on them. This is already apparent in India-China relations despite the limits imposed by the Indian government. Our industry depends on Chinese intermediates for the manufacture of pharmaceuticals. Chinese components have become indispensable for our electronics industry. For major infrastructure projects, such as ports, our companies wish to source cheaper Chinese equipment. Even if this over-reliance cannot be changed overnight, there needs to be a conscious plan for diversification and indigenisation in critical products over the next five or 10 years. To insist that there is no alternative is making the country vulnerable to external pressure. National security does not come cheap.

 

The prospect of improved India-China relations must be welcomed. In the high-level official interactions to follow, the objective must be to de-escalate, to dismantle permanent structures close to the LAC and for troops to return to their bases. Overall relations must remain in step with the improvement in the security domain.

 

The author is a former foreign secretary