Vikram Misri’s Beijing visit underlines India’s limited options

For India, there are no easy options available after years of a China policy built on talking things up at home and little analytical capacity building.

At the end of January, Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri visited China in the latest step in an unfolding thaw in the bilateral relationship. It should be clear, however, from the statements put out by each side on the meeting between Misri and Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Sun Weidong that the two countries appear to want different things and have different priorities.

Note, for instance, that the decision to resume the Kailash Mansarovar Yatra later this summer comes at the top of the Indian statement on the visit, but is only point number five in the Chinese statement.

Also at the top of the Indian statement was the agreement “to hold an early meeting of the India-China Expert Level Mechanism to discuss resumption of provision of hydrological data and other cooperation pertaining to trans-border rivers”. However, the Chinese reference to the issue is at the bottom of their statement at number six. This suggests that the Chinese intend to continue using their leverage as the upper riparian state to discomfit India. Stopping the sharing of river data with India in the first place was itself a breach of bilateral agreements, and there is really no guarantee that this blackmail will not continue.

The Indian side in point number three in its statement has a generic formulation on an agreement “to take appropriate measures to further promote and facilitate people-to-people exchanges, including media and think-tank interactions” as well as “to resume direct air services between the two countries”. The Chinese side, refers to media and think-tank exchanges and to the resumption of direct flights in in points number three and four in its statement, but in the latter point, also specifically refers to “measures to facilitate personnel exchanges and exchange of journalists between the two countries”, indicating that having journalists in situ in the other country is perhaps more important to the Chinese side than it is for the Indian side. The Chinese are also able to fund a lot more journalists in India than the Indian State and private media are able — or even willing — to.

This is somewhat surprising given that it is India that is supposed to be the open democratic system interested in ensuring people-to-people contacts and as wide a range of information and opinion as possible on its neighbours. Instead, what this difference in priorities indicates is that the Chinese are far more confident about the usefulness of the work of their State media and journalists in India than the Indian government is. Given how China represents India’s biggest foreign policy and security failure in recent years, New Delhi probably prefers to keep the narrative on China within India as limited and as tightly controlled as possible, by limiting the numbers and scope of its own journalists reporting from China.

Meanwhile, missing from the Indian statement is the effusive support that India is supposed to have extended to support China’s presidency of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) as recorded in Chinese statements of Misri’s meetings not just with Sun (point number one) but also with Communist Party of China politburo member and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. These statements declare that India “will spare no effort” (jiang quanli zhichi) while the Sun statement adds that India “will actively participate” (jiang jiji canyu) in activities hosted by China under the SCO framework. While India’s reluctance to support Chinese-led organisations is not surprising, it is not clear how much New Delhi can block or stymie the SCO’s activities in the year ahead without cost to itself from the Chinese, especially in the economic realm.

At least one reason why New Delhi has chosen to move past the tensions since 2020 is because it believes it is in need of Chinese capital and technology. This, even as the Indian Army Chief, General Upendra Dwivedi is on record saying that “a degree of standoff” still continues in eastern Ladakh despite the latest disengagement agreement.

It is worth noting that the Chinese side did not mention any discussion of what the Indian statement called “[s]pecific concerns in the economic and trade areas” including “promoting long-term policy transparency and predictability”, suggesting that Beijing sees India’s economic concerns as a bargaining chip.

In fact, a news report from mid-January that Beijing has been preventing Foxconn workers who are Chinese citizens from travelling to India as well as recalling others, and holding up shipments of critical equipment to India suggests that China will continue its zero-sum approach towards India in economic affairs, as in other matters.

The problem for India is that there are no easy options available after years of a China policy built on talking things up at home and little analytical capacity building. Once again, Beijing has the measure of New Delhi.

(Jabin T Jacob is Associate Professor, Department of International Relations and Governance Studies, and Director, Centre of Excellence for Himalayan Studies, Shiv Nadar University, Delhi NCR. X: @jabinjacobt.)

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