Unsettling signals from Chinese foreign minister's visit

India's wish for ending high-altitude stand-off with China dashed by Wang Yi's visit

In diplomacy, three hours is a long time - that was the period of interaction between China's foreign minister Wang Yi and his Indian counterpart. From the public announcements, this long meeting was as frosty as the two-year-old standoff between the world's two most populous nuclear-armed giants in the high Himalayas.

That Wang chose to visit was a surprise, that India agreed to the visit was a bigger one.

From his actions – bringing up Kashmir in the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) conference before landing in Delhi and ensuring the top of the line tanks and J10 fighter jets go to the Islamic Republic of Pakistan's military, onto the seemingly brusque Chinese insistence that India concentrate on other aspects of the India China relationship such as trade and people to people contacts and completely ignoring Indian concerns on the massive armed border buildup – Wang has set the tone for the future.

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China views the 60,000 soldiers it has posted with missile forces, rocket forces and mobile airborne support as a local problem – not an international security issue. India's stance has been to build capability and maintain diplomatic openness to bring down temperatures. While hard power has worked and China has seen a different sort of calibrated military match up by India, this visit underlined that its diplomatic impact is not yet visible with China's continued hard stance.

Wang has unsettled the relationship in three ways by his visit, and his underlying message is that time is on China's side.

In the two years of the standoff, India's trade deficit - the difference between India's imports from China and exports - is a staggering $103 billion. The quality of this trade deficit is also startling. India exports primarily iron ore, aluminium, and agricultural commodities while importing finished products across consumer and industrial categories, like electronics, pharmaceuticals, fertilisers, and infrastructure items from Beijing.

The trade lever is firmly in China's hands. Apart from banning a few apps, Narendra Modi's government has been unable to bring structural reforms over two years to dent this relationship. Although in 2020, India did narrow the gap by $5 billion owing to greater export of iron ore and slack consumer demand from Covid. It is still a drop in the ocean. India brought up the issue of non-tariff barriers as the Chinese keep Indian products out by denying market access- this is an important new issue on the Sino Indian agenda.

For India, the second major concern is the standoff in the high Himalayas itself. These are costly undertakings, and India is not walking the talk with its defence spending. China increased its defence budget by 7.1 per cent to $230 billion in 2022. It is three times that of India's $70 billion in 2022. While China will be pinned down by its expenditure going to the Taiwan Theatre, India too has a significant part focused on the threat from Pakistan.

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Without spending at the very least three per cent of her GDP on defence, India will find it increasingly difficult to match China's assertiveness on the borders. This could become dramatically apparent should China take advantage of the ongoing Ukraine-Russia crisis and open another front.

The third unsettling signal from China was that it intends to continue the 'string of pearls' strategy to encircle India in South Asia. Not just by propping up Pakistan's military but by going at the time when Pakistan is in for a likely regime change ensuring continuity in her dominance in Islamabad. By engaging with Afghanistan's ruthless regime for rare earth and minerals, China is trying to use a vacuum where India has almost no leverage. Sri Lanka and Nepal's infrastructure investments aim to cut India's regional standing. Deep seaports in Myanmar extend that envelope. This is a strategy of boxing India in and flies in the face of Wang Yi's assertion during his meetings in Delhi that China does not seek a unipolar Asia.

To sum up, both China and India appear to have hardened their respective positions and this threatens global stability. India has to keep building hard power when taking China on. Continuing diplomacy is difficult when our soldiers are engaged in difficult terrain and have been martyred. The objective of the Chinese foreign minister's visit was to ask for the in-person participation of PM Modi in the BRICS summit – the PM must turn that down.

(Ninad D Sheth is a journalist)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.

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