The more the US and China beat each other up, the more room for manoeuver other powers will have,” said historian Odd Arne Westad and the author Zorawar Daulet Singh feels that this equally holds good to India and China relations and that unrestrained competition only benefits other powers.
Though Sino-Indian relations have of late not been on too friendly a term with the tension along the border on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Eastern Ladakh continuing to simmer, but the writer feels that “history is obliging both countries to step up and play constructive roles to shape the emerging world order even as it is impelling both sides to learn to co-exist in a common neighbourhood.”
In the 335 page book, Singh who is a Delhi based historian and strategist says that the emerging multipolar world has brought the relationship at a crossroads where today’s choices will set in course events that will profoundly impact India’s economy, security and the regional order. It is therefore, critical, that India’s leaders get their China policy right.
The book indeed provides plenty of food for thought on Sino-Indian relations and China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) which was not supported by India and the recent border tension has brought geopolitics and hard security back to the forefront, making any nuanced conversatin on geoeconomics less attractive to the mainstream policy discourse.
“In such a context of mutual mistrust, and before a new reset in ties, it is unrealistic for both countries to dovetail their connectivity visions and engage in a less prejudiced dialogue where overlapping interests are perceived more objectively,” the author observed.
The writer is of the view that the region and structural shifts in globalisation will not wait and India will need to juggle its varied interests and priorities in an even more complex China policy framework.
“Multilateralizing China’s future engagement through a subcontinent-wide network of norms is more likely to convert the BRI into an advantageous proposition rather than a purely competitive approach that disappoints India’s recipients with her feeble outcomes, and frees China to pursue an ad hoc bilateral deals with little concern for the regional political economy,” writes Singh.
As the author says that for India to truly leverage the multi-polar world for national and geopolitical advantage, it needs to possess a normal and stable equation with all the great powers. China is the only major power with which India has struggled to normalize its relationship, despite years of high-level summitry, multilateral coordination and inter-state commerce. The obstacle lies more in the realm of beliefs and choices. Although there is a large measure of continuity in India’s foreign policy, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is attempting to effect change to make the necessary adjustment to a post-unipolar order. He is re-steering India’s role to focus on the neighbourhood, which in his words “occupies a special place in my national development plans and foreign policy.”
In each of his summits, the author says Modi’s body language with the Chinese President Xi Jinping has been one of confidence and equality with his Chinese interlocutor. But, Modi has also appeared conscious of Nehru’s ghost and the enduring suspicion and mistrust for China in the Indian mind. It will require statesmanship and a clear communication strategy to transcend the deep elite resistance against re-setting India’s equation with China. For Modi, changing China policy truly is as much domestic challenge as getting China to take India more seriously.
Even though Modi’s optics and efforts to connect the Indian people to the world of diplomacy and high politics is new, it is the substance of statecraft that ultimately matters.
As the author says that there appear to be two competing worldview related to the China part of the Indo-U.S. equation.
One view is that India is swinging towards total alignment in its wider Asia-Pacific policy with the U.S. like the “Joint Strategic Vision” for the Asia Pacific and Indian Ocean which is an endorsement of each other’s role in the Indo-Pacific.
However, given US maritime predominance over the large area, India is in effect bandwagoning with the U.S. and its allied network.
Another view is that India’s overall foreign policy vis-a-vis the major powers has not changed fundamentally. As Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar recently clarified ‘a rejection of non-alignment does not mean a rush to alignment: India will not join an alliance system.’
So, all in all, it is a book which gives valuable insights and makes suggestions that need to be heeded at the highest quarters to steer the country through the turbulent waters of Sino-Indian relations and the imperative need for removing the suspicion with which relations between the two neighbours are viewed from either side of the fence.
