Growing China-India Rivalry as viewed by CIIS Expert Lan Jianxue
According to Lan, India has been trying to curtail China’s influence within multilateral platforms such as the G20, BRICS and Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO).
China recently confirmed that its leader Xi Jinping would not be attending this weekend’s G20 summit in New Delhi, a first for a Chinese president. His absence has been interpreted by some analysts as a snub to India.
Earlier this year, Sinification shared the views of a regular Chinese commentator of Indian affairs and researcher at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (SIIS), Liu Zongyi (刘宗义), who believed that India would be seeking to “stabilise” relations with Beijing in order to secure its support for the upcoming G20 summit. In his words:
“Ultimately, the G20 summit cannot be a success without China's active participation. Even though the West lavishes praise on India and even though India presents itself as the so-called poster child of developing countries and the leader of the South, it will most certainly not succeed without China's support … In this context, my sense is that the Indian leadership wants to stabilise Sino-Indian relations and then host a successful G20 summit.”
Viewed from this angle, New Delhi evidently didn’t do enough to secure Beijing’s backing (not that it necessarily ever planned to).
Today’s post is a summary of a recent piece by Lan Jianxue (蓝建学), the director of the department for Asia-Pacific Studies at the Beijing-based China Institute of International Studies (CIIS) – one of China’s top think tanks. In this article, Lan gives his analysis of the gradual souring of Sino-Indian relations in recent years, which may provide some further clues as to Xi’s no-show this weekend. Direct quotes have been put in italics, the rest is my paraphrasing of Lan’s arguments. The subtitles and ordering of his views are my own.
As with so many of the pieces shared in this newsletter, this account remains one-sided. For those of you who are new to this newsletter, please be sure to understand that Sinification’s goal is to provide Chinese perspectives, not a balanced account, nor my own views, on international affairs. I repeat this so as hopefully to avoid the many critical (to put it mildly) messages that I received following Sinification’s publication of Liu Zongyi’s commentary in January.
Key Points
Modi’s government has abandoned India’s cautious approach to foreign policy and has turned towards Realpolitik and an increasingly anti-China stance.
The Sino-Indian border clash of 2020, which plunged relations to their lowest point in over thirty years, was the “inevitable consequence” of this shift.
Since then, New Delhi has launched a “government-wide”, “comprehensive” and “vengeful” strategy against Beijing that pursues “de-sinicisation” and decoupling from China in the political, economic, military and societal spheres.
The negative impact that India is now having on some of China’s core interests (e.g. Taiwan, Tibet, the South China Sea) and on the Indo-Pacific region as a whole is becoming increasingly obvious.
India currently has four key international objectives: 1. assuming the role of a global power; 2. becoming the leader of the Global South; 3. acting as the bridge between West and South; 4. asserting its hegemonic influence over the Indian subcontinent and its surrounding seas.
India is also trying to thwart China’s rising influence within multilateral platforms such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), BRICS or the G20, and is increasingly aligning itself with positions held by the West.
With US-China rivalry rising, New Delhi is keen to exploit these divisions for its own economic and geopolitical benefit. It has therefore become a willing participant in Washington’s containment strategy towards China.
As a result, part of India’s policymaking elite now see maintaining a certain amount of tension with Beijing as a way of deepening their ties with Washington and, more generally, the West.
Tensions between Beijing and New Delhi are set to grow and the “emotional volatility” of both Indian and Chinese public opinion will remain “one of the major challenges facing India-China relations” for years to come.