FMs of China, India, Russia seek common grounds for alliance
Beijing, Moscow and New Delhi should seek further high-level cooperation on international issues of common concern, such as counterterrorism and postwar Afghanistan, experts said ahead of Sunday night’s three-party foreign ministers’ meeting.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi arrived in New Delhi early on Sunday, joining his Indian and Russian counterparts Salman Khurshid and Sergey Lavrov for the 12th meeting of foreign ministers from the three countries.
In addition to meeting separately with Khurshid and Lavrov, Wang was also scheduled to attend the 11th AsiaEurope meeting of foreign ministers, which convenes on Monday.
Experts said that the existing cooperation mechanism between China, Russia and India, set up in 2002, is necessary because the three nations hold similar positions on many international issues and share common aspirations for development.
However, while experts agreed the mechanism should be expanded to address urgent security issues, opinion remains divided on whether it should be elevated yet beyond the foreign minister level to include meetings between top leaders.
Qu Xing, president of the China Institute of International Studies, said strengthening cooperation with Russia and India, China’s two biggest neighbors, will help to maintain peace and stability in western China.
“Economic cooperation is likely to be a major focus of the meetings, though global security might turn out to be another heated topic,” he said.
“The cooperative mechanism among China, Russia and India has not reached its full potential. Also, it is still not time to elevate the mechanism to the level of leaders,” he added.
China, Russia and India, covering an area of 29.96 million square kilometers (22.5 percent of the world’s land mass), are home to more than 40 percent of the world’s population and have a combined GDP of more than 15 percent of the world total.
The mechanism, launched in 2002, has evolved into a platform through which the
Next year, the United States is expected to complete its withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. The war-torn state could then be haunted by a power vacuum in politics and security, which will directly affect the security of the three countries.” WANG WEIHUA RESEARCHER ON SOUTH
ASIA STUDIES AT THE SHANGHAI INSTITUTES FOR INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
three states can boost trilateral trust and exchanges.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei lauded the mechanism on Thursday.
“The foreign ministers of the three states will exchange views on regional and international issues of common interest,” he said. “Dialogue between China, Russia and India on a regular basis helps boost trust and expand collaborations.
“The meetings will achieve positive results and contribute to regional stability and peaceful development,” he added.
Analysts stressed that the mechanism also provides a great opportunity for the countries to explore cooperation on counterterrorism and postwar Afghanistan.
“Next year, the United States is expected to complete its withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. The war-torn state could then be haunted by a power vacuum in politics and security, which will directly affect the security of the three countries,” said Wang Weihua, a researcher on South Asia studies at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies.
Wang said trilateral cooperation on the Afghanistan issue contributes to the effort to guarantee that the Central Asian state does not remain an entrenched base for terrorists.
“Previously, China conducted bilateral anti-terrorism drills with India and Russia. But through this platform, more joint training and intelligence sharing aimed at terrorism can be carried out among the three countries,” Wang said.
In late October, Beijing surprised the world by receiving Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at the same time, a gesture that observers said demonstrated China’s reinforced efforts to improve relations with the two neighbors.
Hu Shisheng, director of the Institute of South and Southeast Asian and Oceanian Studies at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, said the three nations, unsatisfied with the current world order dominated by the West, are seeking to reinforce the emerging countries’ global voice.
“However, their joint countermeasures to offset the rein of the US and Europe in security and political fields are only symbolic, since no concrete cooperation has been carried out yet,” Hu said.
In fact, the three BRICS countries started considering the necessity of reciprocity and mutual benefit in the 1990s when then-Russian prime minister Yevgeny Maximovich Primakov proposed the concept of a “strategic triangle”.
Although the approach generated little enthusiasm at the time, China, Russia and India have begun to recognize the importance of seeking further contacts and cooperation.
The three-way cooperation mechanism represents great potential yet to be tapped, given its loose structure and a lack of concrete achievements, experts said.
Wang, the researcher, said it is time for the mechanism to transcend the current ministerial level, since it has already been in place for more than a decade.
“All three countries have enormous influence in East Asia and South Asia, and global politics and security nowadays is centered on the Asia-Pacific,” he said.