India joins Taiwan, US in trilateral initiative to step up cybersecurity cooperation

New Delhi: India joined Taiwan and the United States in an initiative to step up cybersecurity cooperation among the three nations – a move, which could rile up China.

The representatives from India, the US and Taiwan are meeting in New Delhi on Monday and Tuesday to deepen operational expertise and share best practices on cybersecurity issues. They held a joint workshop convened under the Global Cooperation and Training Framework (GCTF).

India’s former national cybersecurity coordinator Lt. Gen. Rajesh Pant joined Eric Garcetti, the envoy of Washington DC to New Delhi, and Taiwan’s Representative to India, Baushuan Ger, to co-host this event. It was the first in-person GCTF program held in India.

It was a rare move by India to join Taiwan in a trilateral initiative with a third country. The move is likely to trigger sharp reactions from Beijing, which always protests all forms of official interaction or engagement between Taiwan and any other country having diplomatic relations with China.

New Delhi made the move amid the more than three-year-long military stand-off between the Indian Army and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in eastern Ladakh as well as tension between China and the US over the communist country’s muscle-flexing against Taiwan.

“The United States is committed to working closely with partners like India and Taiwan to enhance cybersecurity and protect our shared interests in the digital space,” Garcetti said, adding: “ When we connect, protect, and detect with technology, instead of fearing what it can do to divide or oppress us, we can take full advantage of the nearly limitless potential that these advances will bring.”

Ger highlighted GCTF’s importance as a platform to utilise Taiwan’s strengths and expertise to address issues of global concern. Pant said that for India, with over 800 million internet users and 1.2 billion smartphones, cybersecurity was a major part of national security.

India, like most of the other nations, has been adhering to the One-China policy since 1949, recognizing only the People's Republic of China. That is why India and Taiwan do not have formal diplomatic and consular missions in their respective countries. The One-China policy recognizes only the People's Republic of China, which came into existence in 1949 after the communists defeated the nationalists in the civil war of China. It does not recognize the existence of Taiwan (or the Republic of China), where the nationalists retreated to and based the seat of their government after losing to the communists.

The India-Taipei Association, which is headed by a diplomat, functions as New Delhi’s de facto diplomatic and consular mission of India in the capital of Taiwan. The Taipei Economic and Cultural Centre (TECC) in New Delhi similarly serves as the de facto diplomatic and consular mission of Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (RoC), in the capital of India. A TECC was also set up in Chennai in 2012.

China’s April-May 2020 moves to unilaterally change the status quo along its disputed boundary with India in eastern Ladakh and the consequent two-year-long-and-still-unresolved military stand-off between the two sides, however, triggered calls to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government in New Delhi to review its policy on Taiwan to send out a message to the communist country.

The government, however, has not yet initiated any such move.

New Delhi had earlier reaffirmed its One-China policy in all its joint statements with Beijing. But it had not done so for eight years since 2010 — in response to the communist country's policy of issuing “stapled visas" to the residents of Jammu and Kashmir, instead of normal visas pasted on passports issued by the Government of India.

The Modi Government, however, had in July 2018 virtually re-asserted its adherence to the “One-China policy” and made Air India replace “Taiwan” with “Chinese Taipei” in the list of destinations on its website.

Taiwan had strongly reacted, stating that the move by Air India could be seen as India “succumbing to the unreasonable and absurd pressure from China.