Can the New China-India Thaw Last? - October 19, 2018

Last week, I did my weekly column for The Diplomat on the state of the India-China relations and whether the current thaw is long lasting or not. In the "Can the New China-India Thaw Last?," I argue that despite India’s recent seeking of friendlier ties with Beijing, the future prospects for relations remain uncertain.

A year after Doklam, India appears to be intent on seeking friendlier ties with Beijing. Whether this is sustainable for the long-term, however, is unclear. Even as this process has unfolded, India continues to worry about China’s activities in the neighborhood and continues to build up its ties with other partners, though cautiously.



For the full essay, click here.



Since April, there have been a series of meetings between the top Indian and Chinese leaders, Narendra Modi and Xi Jinping. After the “informal” summit in Wuhan in April, the two met on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Qingdao in June and the BRICS leaders’ summit in Johannesburg in July.

At the Wuhan Summit, Modi and Xi agreed to the China-India Plus cooperation format to work in third countries such as Afghanistan. Thereafter, India’s Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale went on to develop an outline for a capacity-building project, which was announced on the sidelines of the SCO summit in Qingdao in June.

On October 15, India and China jointly began a training program for Afghan diplomats in New Delhi, a significant development. Chinese Ambassador to India Luo Zhaohui is reported to have said that the two countries should collaborate in other neighboring countries such as Iran, Nepal, and Myanmar. The 10 Afghan officers, on finishing the training at the Foreign Service Institute in India, will go to China for the second leg as part of the joint training program.

Though Afghanistan sent its diplomats for training under the program, the Afghan leadership is reportedly disappointed with India. Kabul is apparently of the view that because of India joining hands with China, there has been a downgrading of India’s assistance to Afghanistan to “smaller” projects as a way of assuaging Pakistan’s concerns. Reports indicate that “India had, in fact, conceded [to] China’s request to jointly implement a limited ‘capacity building’ project to opt for a smaller project in Afghanistan, possibly to assuage its ally Pakistan’s misgivings.”

India’s efforts to assuage China are not limited to Afghanistan alone. The two sides are slated to sign a bilateral internal security cooperation pact on October 22 during the visit of Zhao Kezhi, China’s minister of public security to India. Intelligence exchange, sharing of best practices, exchange programs, and cooperation in disaster mitigation are some of the areas the two sides intend to cooperate on under this agreement.

Quoting officials, reports suggest that this security cooperation arrangement could possibly lead to an agreement to exchange prisoners in each other’s countries. There are apparently 10 Indian prisoners is Chinese prisons and “an equal number of Chinese in Indian prisons as well,” according to the Financial Express. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is scheduled to come to India in December to co-chair a meeting that focuses on people-to-people ties, a decision that was taken by Modi and Xi in the wake of the Doklam crisis.

While New Delhi tries to address Beijing’s concerns, there are questions about how long all this will last, given that there seems to be no letup in the expansion of China’s military and diplomatic presence in India’s periphery. For instance, just as India and China started their joint training program for Afghan diplomats, China was busy deploying PLA Navy submarines in the Indian Ocean after a gap of more than a year. It has been reported that China had sent a Type 039A Yuan class SSK diesel submarine and submarine rescue vessel, which were sighted in the Indian Ocean earlier this month. This is the first such PLA Navy mission in the Indian Ocean since the Doklam crisis.

How India will respond remains to be seen. India’s Chief of Naval Staff Admiral Sunil Lanba recently said that India was “working with all like-minded nations and we are in dialogue with China as well.”

Meanwhile, China is also continuing to demonstrate its interest in pushing into India’s sphere of influence in Bhutan. Even though Beijing has no formal diplomatic ties with Thimphu, it has been expanding its footprint in Bhutan for a while now. Reports suggest that China has increased the number of shipments into Bhutan in the past decade, everything from machinery to cement to electrical equipment to toys to the point where China is now “the third largest source of foreign products” to Bhutan.

As India seeks better ties with China, it is also continuing to build up its partnerships in the region. India-Japan maritime cooperation saw a boost with the re-starting of the exercise, JIMEX that concluded earlier this week. India also held the inaugural 2+2 Dialogue with the United States last month and signed the Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement (COMCASA). India-Australia ties are also seeing some revival with a number of security dialogues and military exercises between the two sides.

On the other hand, in a demonstration of “strategic autonomy” from the United States, India has signed an agreement to purchase the S-400s anti-aircraft missiles from Russia and also plans to buy more oil from Iran from November, despite the threat of U.S. sanctions. Whether India can continue this high stakes strategic tightrope-walking remains to be seen.

Can India Make Headway in the Nuclear Suppliers Group in 2018? - June 14, 2018

My third essay in June for The Diplomat - Can India Make Headway in the Nuclear Suppliers Group in 2018? - focused on the NSG plenary that is underway this week and examining India's NSG membership issue. How likely is the NSG to discuss and make progress on the issue? Despite New Delhi’s continued hopes and some encouraging signs, significant challenges remain.

Becoming an NSG member would be a major foreign policy achievement for the Modi government but given China’s opposition, it is unlikely that this week’s plenary will see any forward movement. Nevertheless, given India’s technological advancements and its potential to engage in nuclear commerce in the future, it should be an imperative for the participating governments to bring India into the NSG tent rather than leave it outside.

For the full essay, click here.



The next plenary of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) is taking place this week, and a second plenary for the year later in December. India is making some serious but quiet efforts to garner support for its membership into the group, an exclusive club of 48 nuclear supplier countries.

The NSG strives to uphold and strengthen the nonproliferation architecture by implementing its own guidelines to regulate nuclear commerce. India has now become a member of three of the four export control mechanisms that deal with weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and other strategic technologies – the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) in June 2016, the Wassenaar Arrangement in December 2017, and the Australia Group in January 2018.

Upon admission into the Australia Group, the group announced, “With its admission into the AG, India has demonstrated the will to implement rigorous controls of high standards in international trade, and its capacity to adapt its national regulatory system to meet the necessities of its expanding economy.” With accession to the three export control regimes, India has attempted to prove its nonproliferation credentials, particularly important because India is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Becoming an NSG member would be a major foreign policy achievement for the Modi government but given China’s opposition, it is unlikely that this week’s plenary will see any forward movement. Nevertheless, given India’s technological advancements and its potential to engage in nuclear commerce in the future, it should be an imperative for the participating governments to bring India into the NSG tent rather than leave it outside.

India’s membership bid was first taken up for discussion at the Seoul plenary in June 2016 but Beijing at first even refused to entertain India’s case for discussion, using as an excuse India’s refusal to join the NPT. Though they were some other countries that were also unenthusiastic about India’s membership, it was China’s opposition that scuttled India’s entry into the NSG. The question is whether the recent bonhomie between India and China following the informal summit in Wuhan changed ground realities in India’s favor.

Indian security analysts believe that things are looking up for India. Many believe that there is a considerable shift in India-China relations after Modi’s meeting with Xi in Wuhan on April 27 and 28. While there is a general mood of optimism in the air and the optics of the relationship have improved, it is too early to suggest concrete positive changes in the bilateral relations between the two. Since the NSG makes decisions on the basis of consensus, there is little chance of India being able to join the NSG unless China drops its opposition.

Currently, India is believed to have undertaken some quiet diplomacy in reaching out to strategic partners and friends to push India’s membership at the upcoming NSG plenary. India has been in touch with countries such as the United States, Russia, and the Netherlands to make a concerted push at this week’s plenary.

The Netherlands Prime Minister Mark Rutte, during his recent visit to India reaffirmed the Dutch support to India’s NSG aspirations. The joint statement issued at the end of the visit noted, “In order to further strengthen global non-proliferation, the Netherlands reaffirmed its strong support to building consensus among regimes’ members on the issue of India’s membership to the Nuclear Suppliers Group; recognizing that India’s accession will add value to the aims and objectives of these regimes.”

It is not clear as to what extent these countries have been successful in effecting a change of mind in Beijing. India has also been articulating the need to have a merit-based approach while considering new applicants. India’s clean nonproliferation track record along with the NSG waiver in 2008 should strengthen the case for India. But there is also some understandable fear that member-states will get stuck at first establishing criteria to consider new membership cases.

Meanwhile, India is also trying to work with other countries such as Brazil, Argentina and South Africa, to head-off any procedural issue – which usually is an excuse — with examining the Indian application. South Africa has more than on one occasion extended support to India’s NSG membership bid.

India’s heightened diplomatic outreach to many of the NSG member countries is testament to the importance of this to the Modi Government. In May this year, the two ministers from the Ministry of External Affairs, MJ Akbar and VK Singh, were in Austria and Argentina respectively pushing the NSG agenda. India also hosted the foreign minister of Serbia in May.

But clearly, the big puzzle is China. If China were to behave as a more magnanimous power, it could change not only Sino-Indian relations for the better, but potentially wider Asian power dynamics as well. But this is far from certain.

My contribution to the ChinaFile Conversation this week - One Year After They Almost Went to War, Can China and India Get Along?

This week's ChinaFile Conversation @AsiaSociety focused on India-China relations, specifically looking at the likelihood of another border stand-off that might erupt in the near future - One Year After They Almost Went to War, Can China and India Get Along?. This is a pertinent question to ask, a year after the Doklam conflict. The ChinaFile Conversation carried short write-ups from other experts as well, including: Jeff Smith, Oriana Skylar Mastro, Sameer Lalwani.

I argue that even as Sino-Indian relations have stabilized since the serious military confrontation last year at Doklam, the fundamental problems between the two sides continue to persist. The “informal” Wuhan summit between President Xi and Prime Minister Modi was touted as the “reset” in the bilateral relations. The two leaders have met again at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit, and there are more meetings planned. The talks are believed to have improved understanding between the two sides even as substantive issues between India and China remain.
Though there is optimism, there appears to have been no significant progress made on issues that are crucial to both sides.

For the full article, click here.



Though there is optimism, there appears to have been no significant progress made on issues that are crucial to both sides. Beijing has yet to accept India’s concerns on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), especially the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) branch of the BRI, or support India’s bid to join the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) or India’s efforts to use multilateral tools to contain Pakistan’s support for terrorism. India remains concerned also about China’s greater role and presence in the maritime space in India’s neighborhood, and China has not taken steps to reassure India that its intentions are benign.

For China, India’s lack of endorsement of the BRI may still irritate. India has supported regional connectivity proposals, but New Delhi has articulated that “connectivity initiatives must be based on universally recognized international norms, good governance, rule of law, openness, transparency and equality, and must be pursued in a manner that respects sovereignty and territorial integrity.” Accordingly, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs has stated that the “so-called ‘China-Pakistan Economic Corridor’ violates India’s sovereign.”

While these are important parameters for both India and China to judge the state of the relations, a more critical and a deep-rooted problem is the competition for the Asian strategic space. Beijing believes its rise is a natural phenomenon and it approaches the world in a hierarchical manner, which is increasingly problematic for a number of countries in the Indo-Pacific, including India. The speech delivered by China’s Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin at the sixth Xiangshan Forum, held in October 2015, reveals China’s view: he spoke about the responsibility of “big countries” in not creating spheres of influence while small and medium countries should not take sides between big countries. The Chinese division of the international system into big, medium, and small countries itself reflects China’s hierarchical view of the international system and the differentiated role that it has assigned to itself as a big country and to its neighbors as small countries that ought to know their place. This line of thinking repeated itself when President Xi discussed with President Obama the format for developing a new pattern of major country relations. Such an approach is hardly the way to reassure its neighbors or win friends. The Asian strategic order that China seems to want is one where it sees itself as the hegemon. Therefore, even as relations have become warmer, it is unlikely that Sino-Indian relations have stabilized for good. Border stand-offs like Doklam are just the beginning of a troubling phase in Asian security.