India’s warming ties with Taiwan could annoy China
BEIJING: Seemingly planned warming of ties between India and Taiwan, which China sees as a renegade region, could soon become a new talking point in the choppy China-India relations.
State-controlled media lashed out at New Delhi for signing an industrial collaboration MoU with Taipei this month, though China is yet to react officially.
What could particularly annoy Beijing is that the MoU – as per the official statement in Chinese released by Taiwan – was signed between “two nations”.
In the English version, it is referred to as one of the five bilateral agreements signed between “two countries”.
“India and Taiwan island signed a MoU on December 14 to promote mutual industrial cooperation, an alarming move that could sabotage the recent smoothing of Sino-Indian relations, said Chinese experts,” the nationalist tabloid Global Times reported on Wednesday.
The MoU was the fifth bilateral agreement since President Tsai Ing-wen took over as Taiwan’s first woman leader in May 2016.
India has no formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan; the de facto Indian embassy in Taipei is the India-Taipei Association and the Taiwanese maintain the Taipei Economic Cultural Centre in New Delhi.
Beijing opposes any official contact between Taiwan and other countries and has warned India earlier this year to strictly follow the “one-China” policy.
The Chinese foreign ministry had then said it was against any “upgrade” in India-Taiwan ties.
Following the 19th Communist Party Congress in October, there is no doubt that China has at least in words strengthened its plans to unify Taiwan with the mainland. Therefore, Beijing is expected to be more sensitive to any effort by India to inch closer to the democratically-run island nation.
“India is using the Taiwan question as a bargaining chip in exchange for China’s support and concession on its own territorial disputes,” Wang Dehua, head of the Institute for South and Central Asian Studies at the Shanghai Municipal Center for International Studies, told Global Times.
To mainland experts, President Tsai is exploiting India’s strategic mistrust against China in an effort to expand trade ties.
Taiwan, of course, seems happy with the progress in ties with India.