Honor one-China policy, India told

Beijing urged New Delhi on Wednesday to stick to the oneChina principle and respect China’s core interests, following a rare visit by a delegation of Taiwan politicians to the Indian capital.

China firmly opposes all forms of official contacts and exchanges between Taiwan and countries that have diplomatic ties with China, Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told a regular news conference.

China hopes that India will stick to the one-China principle and handle issues related to Taiwan prudently, he said, adding that China has lodged a protest with India on the issue.

The spokesman’s comment came after the visit of a Taiwan lawmakers delegation to New Delhi starting on Sunday. The delegation visited India’s Parliament House complex on Monday. It was the first visit to India by an official Taiwan delegation since Taiwan leader Tsai Ing-wen took office in May.

Tsai challenged the one-China principle in December when she made a congratulatory phone call to Donald Trump after he won the US presidential election. Trump assured President Xi Jinping last week that Washington will continue to honor the oneChina policy.

Noting that India has committed to recognizing the oneChina principle, Geng said New Delhi should respect and understand China’s core interests and maintain the healthy development of China-India relations.

A report in the Indian newspaper The Hindu said the Taiwan delegation sought to upgrade “diplomatic ties” with India in the coming weeks, quoting anonymous sources from Taiwan. Like most countries, India does not have diplomatic relations with Taiwan.

According to Resolution 2758, adopted in 1971 by the United Nations General Assembly, the People’s Republic of China is “the only legitimate representative of China to the United Nations”. The one-China policy confirmed by the resolution has since been the consensus of the international community.

Qian Feng, an expert at the Chinese Association for South Asian Studies, said that some Indians want to use the Taiwan question as a bargaining chip in dealing with China.

India’s suspicions and dissatisfaction toward China have risen in recent years, especially over the $46 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor project, he said.

Jin Yong, a professor of international relations studies at Communication University of China, said the Taiwan delegation’s visit will have a negative effect on China-India ties.

Tsai, the “pro-independence” Taiwan leader, came up with the “new southbound policy” last year to enhance economic exchanges with Southeast Asia, South Asia and Oceania, Jin said, adding that Tsai hopes to put pressure on the mainland by seeking closer ties with India.

“The one-China principle is a red line whose crossing will never be tolerated by Beijing,” he said.

Amid all the gloom of the global economic slowdown, India has emerged as one of the few bright spots with robust growth of 7.5 percent in 2016. Yet even more notable is the explosive rise in China’s direct investment in the neighboring country, which reached $1.06 billion last year, a staggering fivefold increase compared with the previous year. Much of that capital has gone into the telecommunications, energy, steel and infrastructure sectors. By the end of 2016, according to reports, China’s cumulative investment in India reached $4.8 billion, double the figure recorded two years before.

This may shed light on how closely intertwined the economies of the world’s two most populous countries are becoming, especially as China is also India’s largest trading partner.

Yet these economic ties, as well as various elements that help to make them happen, have often been ignored in favor of the narrative that the two countries are adversaries in a zero-sum game, with China’s growing national strength interpreted as a development that has negative implications for India and its security.

In this narrative, India’s bids to establish partnerships with other countries, especially the United States and Japan, are viewed as attempts to counter the growing Chinese influence in the Asia-Pacific region.

Likewise India’s hosting of a delegation of women from the Taiwan legislature, which risks souring relations for a time, has been viewed as a response to the building of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, an early harvest of China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

While it is natural for there to be some rivalry between the two neighbors, the suspicions that accompany their rivalry are the legacy of the brief border war they fought in 1962, and the historical enmity it caused, something which still has the capability to define bilateral relations, even though it was the only war between them in their thousands of years of friendly exchanges.

The continuing sensitivity over the border dispute is also why the improvement in relations that has been achieved in recent years is still able to be held hostage by a lack of trust.

However, despite the blips, under the strong leadership of the two countries, relations between the two neighbors have constantly been moving forward in recent years and in so doing have continued to release more potential for cooperation.

Rather than complicating the differences that it has with China and being suspicious of the Belt and Road Initiative, India should look to the future and embrace regional developments that can only be to its long-term benefit.