INDIA-CHINA: TIME FOR A RESET
Things haven’t been this adversarial since the 1960s, but India and China also have a chance to reassess and rebuild their fraught relationship
TTHE DEATH OF 20 INDIAN SOLDIERS and an unknown number of PLA (People’s Liberation Army) soldiers in a clash in Ladakh on June 15 marks an inflection point in India-China relations. The clash was a result of changes in Chinese behaviour on the border since April this year. The PLA has attempted to establish a permanent presence across the Line of Actual Control (LAC), concentrated force along the line and prevented Indian soldiers from following their normal patrolling patterns in several places in Ladakh. In effect, China’s actions have changed the status quo that both sides are legally bound to respect under a series of bilateral agreements since 1993. A reset of India-China relations is now inevitable and necessary.
WHERE ARE WE TODAY?
The June 15 clashes come as the culmination of a series of incidents of ever growing scale, duration and severity along the India-China border since 2012. In 2013, the PLA intruded across the line and pitched tents in Depsang, withdrawing after negotiations over two and a half weeks. In September 2014, on the day that President Xi Jinping arrived in India for a state visit, over a thousand PLA troops entered Chumar and only vacated the area three weeks after his visit. In 2017, the PLA entered and stayed on the Doklam plateau, disputed between Bhutan and China, an area they had only patrolled sporadically before. A 72-day stand-off between Indian and Chinese troops ended with the face-off spot being vacated by both sides. Since then, the Chinese have left the face-off spot vacant but have built permanent structures and stayed through the year on the rest of the Doklam plateau. However, the intrusions in Ladakh this year are a significant escalation, for they occurred at multiple points along the LAC—at Depsang, Galwan, Hot Springs, Pangong Tso and, according to local Ladakhis, elsewhere as well. Chinese forces have been strengthened in the eastern and middle sectors as well.
It could well be that China drew the wrong lessons from the Doklam experience. The government of India claimed a victory in having faced down the Chinese and got them to move away from the face-off spot. The Chinese may have concluded that a two-steps-forward-one-step-back approach, like the one they have followed in the South China Sea, would work on the India border as well and that they could change outcomes on the ground without risk of major conflict or military pushback.
The Narendra Modi government’s reaction to Chinese actions since April has been diplomatically tentative while strong on rhetoric. The Indian government has spoken of restoring the status quo, disengagement and a cooling off on the LAC as its goals for the ongoing discussion with China. China, too, has signalled its desire to negotiate disengagement and there’s talk of a ‘buffer zone’ between the armies.
HOW DID WE GET HERE?
China’ actions come despite the Modi government’s public deference to Chinese sensitivities on a series of issues after Doklam in 2017. Official India has recently muted criticism or been silent on the Chinese occupation of the Doklam plateau, the Belt and Road Initiative, developments in Xinjiang, Hong Kong, the South China Sea, the East China Sea, Taiwan and on China’s culpability for the Covid-19 pandemic or the need to bring Taiwan into WHO discussions on the pandemic. Tibetan activities in India have been curbed. Government leaders have not met the Dalai Lama in public since 2014, unlike previous governments. While respecting Chinese sensitivities, India has moved steadily in the past few years to upgrade her defence and security relationship with the US, signing agreements that previous governments found difficult, increased inter-operability of the armed forces, particularly the navies, and improved India-US relations to the point where President Donald Trump wishes to see India in the G-7.
TO MY MIND, the most likely explanation for China’s behaviour is that domestic stress led the party-state and its leader Xi Jinping to seek victories abroad, or, short of victories, to be able to show the Chinese people that the nation was under attack and that they should therefore rally around the flag and leader. The Covid pandemic and deterioration in China-US relations should have been enough to make this case except that these could be portrayed as failures of the present Chinese leadership. Hence, China has stepped up her assertiveness in disputes across the board: submarine patrols and military flights in the East China Sea around the Senkakus; military aircraft in Taiwanese airspace; sinking Vietnamese vessels in the South China Sea and declaring new administrative structures in those contested waters; and starting a tariff war with Australia. Assertiveness on the LAC with India would then be part of a broader pattern of China’s “wolf warrior” behaviour and diplomacy.
Prime Minister Modi has invested heavily in relations with China and in personal diplomacy with President Xi Jinping, more than any other Indian prime minister. He has met the Chinese president 18 times, more than with any other foreign head of state or government. Modi has visited China nine times, five times as prime minister. The border clashes show that the personal diplomacy which worked with President Trump has not succeeded with the world’s oldest and toughest-minded bureaucracy.
Modi’s initial emphasis was on the economic relationship with China, and this had a certain success. Chinese investment in India, which was cumulatively $1.8 billion in 2014 when he came to power, is now estimated at about $26 billion, and is significant to several Indian start-ups and unicorns; it also provides technology and financing in sectors like fin-tech. (Indian investment in China was cumulatively only $0.92 billion by the end of 2019.) China has a strong presence, or is critical to, sensitive Indian sectors like power, pharmaceuticals, automobiles and telecom.
India-China relations have been increasingly adversarial in the past three years or so. It has been evident for some time that the modus vivendi agreed in 1988 during the Rajiv Gandhi visit to China no longer works. That modus vivendi was based on an agreement to discuss differences like the boundary dispute while keeping the peace, not allowing differences to prevent normal cooperation such as trade and travel and working together on the international stage where interests coincided, as at the WTO or in climate change negotiations. Signs of stress in that understanding have become increasingly clear since 2012, as China, whose GDP in 1988 was similar to India’s, grew phenomenally to an economy almost five times
ASSERTIVENESS ON THE LAC WITH INDIA IS PART OF A BROADER PATTERN OF CHINA’S “WOLF WARRIOR” BEHAVIOUR AND DIPLOMACY
the size of India. China became an economic superpower and a significant regional military power. India, too, grew at historically unprecedented rates, and as both countries grew, their interests did too. For instance, freedom of navigation in the South China Sea has become important to India just when China has chosen to make it a Chinese lake and call its ownership a core Chinese interest.
If peace held on the border for 40 years despite economic asymmetry and political dissonance, it’s probably because the effective military balance of usable power on the border was not as skewed as comparing GDP figures or even military budgets would suggest. Successive Indian governments have sought to maintain that balance by building border roads and infrastructure since 2004, raising two mountain divisions since 2010, opening advanced landing grounds for aircraft near the border, raising a mountain strike corps since 2013, and so on. That China should today try to change the status quo suggests she thinks that the balance on the border has shifted in her favour, or that other factors, such as the Indian government’s fear of political embarrassment, or a favourable international context, will help her override it.
BLUEPRINT FOR CHANGE
It is clear there will be a reset in India-China relations, complex as they are. The immediate popular reaction in India to the clashes is to call for a boycott of Chinese products, a call that is supported by the ruling BJP’s supporters, some of its front organisations and trade unions. This will not be easy to achieve: China is India’s largest trading partner in goods, and second only to the US when services are added. As India and China enter a more openly adversarial phase in their relationship, it seems likely that the Indian government will act to limit exposure to Chinese firms and products in critical infrastructure such as telecom, railways, power, and where it can control the terms of entry, as in the rollout of 5G networks. Short of war, limits on trade would be more difficult to impose, given India’s dependence on Chinese products and her obligations under WTO and other agreements. India has a chance here to rework the economic relationship with China to a less unequal and more advantageous one, should she wish to.
The calls to boycott trade with China feed into India’s existing inward turn. Customs duties have been raised for four years running. After eight years of negotiation, India has opted out of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement with China, ASEAN, Japan, Korea, Australia and New Zealand, potentially the world’s largest free trade area, encompassing 40 per cent of the world economy. The collapse of the world economy in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic has led the Indian prime minister to call for selfreliance, just as President Xi has in China. In both cases, it is unclear how autarchic their idea of self-reliance is and to what extent it will increase mercantilist and protectionist behaviour by the two economies that were the greatest beneficiaries of the globalisation decades.
Trade boycotts or steps to address economic asymmetry between India and China will not restore the status quo on the border or immediately increase Indian leverage in dealing with China. And that is where the first focus should be—on restoring or strengthening the effective balance on the border. Here, India has options ranging from quid pro quo strategies to other options on the ground that will strengthen the negotiating task of securing a restoration of the status quo as it existed before April 2020. After the immediate crisis is over, a review of lessons learnt from this episode, covering the intelligence chain, the military response, the diplomatic effort and the government’s overall performance will presumably lead to changes in India’s border management—organisationally, in the standard operating procedures, the
INDIA NOW NEEDS TO TAKE A SERIES OF SELFSTRENGTHENING STEPS, MILITARY REFORM INCLUDED, TO RESTORE THE BALANCE ON THE BORDER
rules of engagement and so on. A rigorous programme of self-strengthening is required and likely. India must prepare for escalation of the situation on the China border in order to deter it. Much of what India would do in response to these events is in the realm of domestic policy, accelerating the military reforms that are under way, and working to reduce asymmetries of power with China.
At the same time, there’s no getting away from the need for India to work on cost-imposition on China asymmetrically and in non-border areas. This has already begun in denying China contracts in the road and power sectors and in the bans on Chinese apps, for some of which India is the biggest market. The broader periphery India and China share and the maritime domain in the Indian Ocean are also now in active contention.
It is essential that India step up its game in the subcontinent and in our relationships with Nepal, Sri Lanka and other countries, all of whom will judge the effectiveness of our response to the Chinese actions on the border and draw their own conclusions. The longer term goal should be to build on our affinities and work on integrating the subcontinent economically and to convince our neighbours that India is a source of stability and security for them in their nation-building. This would require us to move beyond thinking of our neighbours in terms of their effect on local politics and elections within India.
EXTERNALLY, IT IS HARD TO THINK of a time since the Cultural Revolution when China’s international prestige and reputation have been lower. The government of India should bring the truth of what has happened on the border with China to the attention of the world. We should be talking to others and making our case rather than minimising the problem. But we should also recognise that despite China’s prestige being at an all-time low, there is limited appetite for a concerted China policy in a distracted international community that needs China’s economic strength to overcome the economic crash of 2020, a consideration that also applies to India’s China policy.
India’s external balancing responses will almost certainly include a strengthening of political, defence and intelligence ties with the US. Though the US president’s offer to mediate between India and China might suggest US neutrality rather than an interest in becoming directly involved in this confrontation, India will seek and likely obtain US diplomatic support and help in strengthening herself militarily. The transformed India-US relationship provides a platform for cooperation across the board in mitigating the effect of adverse Chinese actions internationally, and we can expect much better coordination. This will likely stay short of a military alliance, a NATO-East or Indo-Pacific Treaty Organisation, which is unnecessary. Instead, the US-India political-military relationship is likely to grow denser despite the US tending towards the role of an offshore balancer in Asian affairs. Over the past decade and a half, India has also begun to work much more closely with the US’s Asian allies and China’s other neighbours who bear the brunt of assertive Chinese behaviour. Each of them, like India, simultaneously has equities with China which limit the countervailing actions that they are willing to undertake. But we can expect India, the US and other partners working together to invigorate the Quad (with Australia and Japan) and bring in other southeast Asian partners in an attempt to shape the environment around China and mitigate the effects of Chinese assertion in the region.
Developments in India-China relations could also reinvigorate India-Russia ties which have long been strategic from India’s point of view but have stagnated recently. India’s major weapons platforms are Russian, which is unlikely to change in the short term. Indian and Russian interests coincide in Afghanistan and central Asia, and the two have a history of working together in that arena. Russia and Iran are two powers who could provide some answers to India’s strategic dilemma as China consolidates the Eurasian continent. That makes it unwise for India to entirely buy into present US policies on Iran and Russia.
All in all, there are limits to India’s external balancing of China on the current Asian stage. The US and her allies are primarily interested in the maritime domain, or in the Free and Open Indo-Pacific. India is also a continental power and our issues with China are on land. On the ultimate issue of safeguarding her territory, India has no choice but to rely on herself. For China, fighting and negotiating are not antithetical but means that reinforce each other, which can both be undertaken simultaneously, a lesson that India should learn.
Three hypothetical scenarios suggest plausible futures for this uneasy relationship: A breakthrough to a new modus vivendi, as emerged following the Sumdorong Chu crisis of 1986; a descent into the perils of armed conflict; or finally, and most likely, a no-war-no-peace scenario that sees both sides climb down to the plateau of a protracted adversarial relationship, on the border and on economic terrain. The paradox is that though India and China are closer to conflict than at any time since the late ’60s, they now have an opportunity to reset and rebuild their relationship. The choice is theirs to make.
THERE’S LIMITED APPETITE FOR A CONCERTED CHINA POLICY IN AN INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY THAT NEEDS CHINA’S ECONOMIC STRENGTH TO OVERCOME THE CRASH OF 2020