From BRICS to G-20, clear China policy needed

THE contradictions which define India’s security ties with China, Quad, G-20 and BRICS — a loose grouping comprising emerging market economies, including Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — raise questions about the trajectory of India’s China policy. Despite a cordial BRICS summit on June 23 and the invitation from China’s state-steered Global Times to its readers to have a ‘taste of BRICS’ and “join us to taste this authentic and unique Pani Puri”, which it lauded as “India’s most loved snack”, Sino-Indian ties are far from reaching their best time in history.

New Delhi must be on the alert about China’s calculated cajolery on India’s stance on Ukraine, even as Beijing criticises the US, Quad, Japan and South Korea. By engaging with India and other BRICS countries and claiming to be the global power in the grouping, China intends to dictate terms to India and to retain the territory it has seized because it sees itself as having the economic and military vantage point over India. Only a strong deterrence strategy will equip India to defeat China’s threats to its territorial sovereignty.

This is evident from the meeting between Foreign Ministers Wang Yi and S. Jaishankar on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Bali on July 7. Although Wang urged both countries “to light up the bright future of bilateral relations”, he said nothing about the disengagement of Chinese troops from the disputed areas along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh since the border standoff in the summer of 2020. For New Delhi, this is essential for normalcy in Sino-Indian ties.

Earlier, at the virtual BRICS meeting, India joined China and other members of the group in calling for respect for “the sovereignty and territorial integrity” of all states. This sounds fine — until one faces the fact, for the nth time, that China is India’s greatest territorial spoiler and that their border dispute persists because China has always invoked its own version of ‘history’ to claim and occupy parts of northeast Indian territory.

Between 2014 and 2019, President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Modi held 18 meetings, but the LAC remains contested. The intractable border dispute is a reason why India recently discussed with Quad partners Australia, Japan and the US a maritime information-sharing project to combat illegal fishing, carried out by China’s Maritime Militia — wearing civilian clothes — in the Indo-Pacific region. This fishing fleet has been trained by China’s military and has intruded into the maritime territory of many of China’s neighbours in the South China Sea.

On a wider level, too, America, Japan and Australia aim at countering China in the Indo-Pacific. Japan has its own dispute with China over the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea; Australia in the Solomon Islands in the Pacific, the US in Asia and globally.

India should be careful, both at the international and bilateral levels. China has paraded its credentials to be a global power and donor by committing $4 billion for international development — and because of its progress, to establish its claim to be the leader of the BRICS. It also presented its Global Security Initiative, which highlights maintaining “common security”. This rings hollow since China supports terrorist-exporting Pakistan both economically and militarily.

On the bilateral front, let us recall that China’s intrusion into Ladakh, and its grabbing of some Indian territory caused the skirmishes in the Galwan Valley in 2020, in which 20 Indian soldiers died fighting, in what was the most serious border clash since 1967.

China’s unilateral attempts to alter the territorial status quo have led India to call for a return to the status quo ante; Beijing glibly reacts that China and India are partners rather than rivals. This diplomatic fluff is intended to cover up China’s refusal to give up any Indian turf that it has occupied. Meanwhile, China has refused Indian military patrols access to some border areas, and to discuss the locales where its army has erected tents, which it claims are occupied by civilians. And some one lakh troops from both countries are stationed in Ladakh. The American Commanding-General of the Pacific is alarmed at the military infrastructure being created by China in the area. Unsurprisingly, China’s Foreign Ministry has slammed his remarks as ‘disgraceful’, and an attempt “to fan the flame and drive a wedge between India and China”.

In fact, China is trying to divide India from Quad. Mindful of America’s aim to strengthen India against China in Asia, Beijing has recently avoided its habitual criticism of India as a backward country and America’s stooge in the Indo-Pacific. Instead, it has continually applauded India’s refusal to line up with the West in condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and its defiance of Western sanctions on Russia by purchasing its oil in huge quantities.

What China really wants, as Wang Yi told India’s new envoy in Beijing, Pradeep Kumar Rawat, on June 22, is that India and China should put the boundary issue ‘in an appropriate place in bilateral relations’ as partners rather than rivals.

Where or what this ‘appropriate place’ is, he did not say. But China wants to wean India off its relationship with the US and Quad. That’s why Wang congratulated India’s ‘tradition of independence’ and its resistance to “external forces meddling in China-India relations”.

The reality is that last May, Indian and Chinese diplomats spoke of a 16th round of talks between military commanders in Ladakh, but they could not even agree on the aim of the parleys. New Delhi hoped to achieve “complete disengagement from all friction points in eastern Ladakh” in accordance with the existing agreements. But Beijing affirmed that any fresh talks would be held to settle remaining issues along the LAC “under the principle of mutual and equal security” — whatever that means — given its long-standing imperialist aims on Indian territory.

India should expect more wheedling from China as America’s old Asian allies like Japan and South Korea attended the NATO meeting from June 28-30 — making them the first Asian countries to participate in a NATO summit. That organisation has traditionally focused on Europe, and will continue to do so. But the anger of China’s Foreign Ministry and official media at the presence of Japan and South Korea reflects Beijing’s concern that the US will cast its security net more widely over the Indo-Pacific, and make attempts to strengthen ties even with nonaligned Asian countries like India.

New Delhi must be on the alert about China’s calculated cajolery on India’s stance on Ukraine — while Beijing criticises the US, Quad, Japan and South Korea. By engaging with India and other BRICS countries and claiming to be the global power in the grouping, China intends to dictate terms to India and to retain the territory it has seized because it sees itself as having the economic and military vantage point over India.

In Bali, Wang expressed ‘certainty’ that India and China would “definitely not go with the flow” — implying America. India should not be taken in by such talk; it must stand its ground. Only a clear and strong deterrence strategy will equip India to defeat China’s threats to its territorial sovereignty and to enhance its status in Asia.