ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT India & China An Incompatible Arranged Marriage
Since he was reelected with a landslide majority as the leader of the world’s largest democracy last May, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has met twice with his Chinese counterpart, President Xi Jinping; just as many times as with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The latest meeting at the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan, led to a trilateral handshake which somehow marked an obsolescence of sorts of the Western liberal order. Held at the behest of Modi himself, the informal meeting paves the way for India’s new “Act East” policy at a golden time for Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Connecting the countries surrounding India, Beijing’s transcontinental Eurasian integration initiative dovetails with Delhi’s plans to boost ties with its own neighbours but also compromises India’s geopolitical sphere of influence in the region.
In the absence of unipolar global leadership, multilayered adversarial fronts dominate international relations. The endless Brexit crisis within the European Union has been competing for column inches with the trade war between the US and China along with the likelihood of a new arms race involving nuclear, space and cyber domains. Meanwhile, the erosion of US-Russia arms control agreements and the withdrawal of the US from the Iran nuclear deal as well as the growing dispute between Saudi Arabia and Iran have added tension to the existing chaos in the world. Lately, Western powers have also shown greater focus on Asia – now rebranded as the Indo-Pacific strategic region occupying most of the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean. In this context, and with no development westward of itself due to its rivalry with Pakistan, Delhi has opted for a new foreign policy grounded on commercial and cultural development with East Asian countries, which involves a revival of India’s relations with its main regional competitor and necessary ally: Beijing.
“The Belt and Road Initiative is an economic cooperation initiative, not a geopolitical or military alliance. It is an open and inclusive process and not about creating exclusive circles or a China club.”
“There is a continuity of India’s policy towards China which began with Rajiv Gandhi and Narasimha Rao. And it is likely to continue because neither of the two want this to break down, although they may not want it to break through either,” explains
