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Thursday, April 09, 2020

Four ‘Cs’ of Chennai summit

Summits and hyperbole are not an unusual combination. And so it was in Chennai, where Modi came up with a Chennai Connect, and Xi went a step further and spoke about the need to ‘hold the rudder and steer the course’ of Sino-Indian relations to ‘a 100-year plan’.
According to a report in Xinhua, this was broken down in six items. First, said Xi, there was need to ‘correctly view each other’s development and enhance strategic mutual trust’. In other words, they should not allow third parties to distort their views of each other and that the two sides needed to work on reinforcing positive views of each other through policies, joint endeavours and cooperation in global forums.
Second, he urged China and India to have ‘timely and effective strategic communication’ which would ‘dispel suspicions and doubts, and properly handle differences and sensitive issues’. Both should ‘prudently deal’ with each other’s core interests and issues that cannot be resolved should be ‘properly managed and controlled’. 
Direct and frequent meetings like the informal summits were the best way of achieving the goals of item one. India should not allow issues connected to the Sino-Pak relationship to derail the positive tenor of its relations, or get too worked up over the periodic Chinese incursions across the Line of Actual Control, or for that matter use the so-called ‘Tibet card’. 
Third, and this really flows from the Doklam incident, ‘the two countries should effectively improve military and security exchanges and cooperation’. The Chinese are aware that suspicions of their motives run deep in the military hierarchy in India. They are therefore keen to directly develop professional relations at all levels of the Indian military through exchanges and joint training activity.
Fourth, having dealt with the issues that cannot be easily resolved and must be managed to the lowest level of conflict and contention, Xi said, that his country was  keen on developing ‘pragmatic cooperation and tightening ties of interests’. This obviously relates to the economic and trade investment issues. In the one clear outcome of the Chennai summit, India and China have created a new economic and trade development  mechanism headed by Vice-Premier Hu Chunhua and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to align their economic development strategies and ‘build a partnership in manufacturing industry’. Xi asked the Indian pharma and IT companies, in particular, to invest in China.
Fifth, the two sides should buttress their new relationship by greater people-to-people exchanges. China sent abroad 127 million tourists in 2018. A significant number of them being directed towards India could boost many local economies.
Sixth, Xi called for India and China to enhance cooperation in international and regional affairs. Besides the United Nations, there was need to step up cooperation in the WTO to protect the interests and rights of developing countries. Xi also saw a positive benefit of Sino-Indian cooperation in multilateral forums like the SCO, Russia-China-India trilateral and called for a ‘China-India plus’ approach of joint cooperation in South, Southeast Asia and Africa. Without mentioning the Belt and Road Initiative, he said such cooperation should lead to better regional connectivity. In addition, the two should help push for the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) as early as possible.
The Chinese view of international relations is largely hierarchical, emphasising relations with powerful and large countries over those of the smaller. For the present, Beijing understands that there is a vast difference between the comprehensive national power (CNP) of India and China, with the latter’s GDP now nearly five times that of India and its military spending at $250 billion, while India’s remains at $55 billion.
A country like India has the geographical size, economic potential and the population to match, and even overtake, China in the coming decades. In fact, till 1987, the GDP of both countries was almost equal. Given our common, if disputed border, and India’s salience in the Indian Ocean, Beijing cannot but take India seriously. So, besides managing conflict, it feels compelled to develop ‘pragmatic cooperation’.
Prudence demands that the three ‘Cs’ of the relationship—competition, cooperation and conflict—be managed, so as not to affect China’s growth as an economic and military power. This has become all the more important in view of the intensification of the Sino-US competition.
So far, Beijing has kept India engaged, without compromising on its support to Pakistan or giving any concession on its border claims. Its one recent gesture—agreeing to naming Masood Azhar in the 1267 Committee came at the last minute, when it became clear that Modi was surging in the May general election.
China wants to ensure that the fourth ‘C’—containment—is kept at bay. It does not want India to become a formal part of the US-led system which is now gearing itself to slow down, if not block China’s economic and military growth. It knows well that the US-led system in Asia will only have heft and credibility if India participates in it.
So far, New Delhi has insisted that it will maintain a posture of strategic autonomy. Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale’s briefing noted, ‘both President Xi and Prime Minister emphasised the importance of both countries having independent and autonomous foreign policy’. But if the gap between the CNP of India and China increases even more, New Delhi may have no option but to revise its outlook.
October 15, 2019
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Terror, Kashmir & Trade: Deconstructing Modi-Xi’s Chennai Summit

Expectations were not too high from the Chennai summit between Chinese Premier Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, that concluded on Saturday, 12 October. The fact that in terms of words and gestures, at least, it appears to have gone swimmingly well, is a tribute to the fine art of diplomacy.
The reality is that both sides will continue to do what they do and have done, and not quite live up to the spirit of the fine words uttered at the summit.

Meaning of Terrorism Differs for India & China

Take the issue of terrorism which came up on the first day itself. According to briefings, the two sides shared the view that they would work together to ensure that “radicalisation and terrorism” do not affect the fabric of “multicultural, multiethnic and multi-religious societies” of their countries.
However, the meaning of “terrorism” differs for both sides.
For Beijing, what the Uighur separatists do is terrorism. While India believes that China’s “all weather friend”, Pakistan, is the fountainhead of terrorism. Both will, therefore, use their national means to deal with the issue rather than depend on each other.

Kashmir Issue Swept Under the Carpet

Take Kashmir. Foreign Secretary Gokhale said on Friday that there had been no discussion on Kashmir.
This is interesting because tensions relating to China’s position in Kashmir are one of the major issues of contention between the two sides. And they have largely arisen between the Wuhan and the Chennai summits.
Essentially, then, what the two sides have done is to sweep the inconvenient issue under the carpet. And will continue to work along the lines they have always worked – India doing what it must and China what it can.

Platitudes on Border Dispute

Or the border. According to the MEA, the Special Representatives will continue to make efforts to arrive at a mutually agreed framework on issues including boundary question for a “fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable settlement.”
This is a routine statement and in no way addresses the potential of the border dispute to derail the ties between the two countries, just as the issue of Doklam had done in 2017.
It is not clear whether NSA Ajit Doval had a formal SR meeting with his counterpart Wang Yi in Chennai.
There were reports earlier that such a meet could take place and that there could be some movement on the issue of upgrading the Confidence Building Measures which have held the peace along the LAC for the past 40 years.

China to Take Steps to Reduce Trade Deficit

If there is an issue where we have seen some concrete movement, it is in that of trade. India’s $ 57 billion trade deficit is the country’s single biggest one with any country. Chinese investment in India is still modest, around $ 8 billion.
The Chinese side is aware of Indian feelings on this issue and the need to provide some corrective.
President Xi told the Indian side that China is ready to take concrete measures to reduce the trade deficit. Besides, Xi assured India that China will discuss India’s concerns over the RCEP.
But this is easier said than done given the economic and trade profile of the two countries.
But the two sides have agreed to set up a new mechanism for matters relating to trade investment and services. The Chinese have nominated Vice Premier Hu Chunhua to deal with the new mechanism and the Indian side has proposed Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman.
Hu is an important figure in China, a Politburo member, who was once spoken as a potential successor to Xi.
According to Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale’s briefing, President Xi also raised the issue of engaging more on the defence and security side. Both sides reviewed that ongoing programmes and Xi called for stepping up engagement.
According to Gokhale, there was some discussion on international and regional issues and both sides stressed the importance of countries having independent and autonomous foreign policies.
Xi cannot be unaware of Washington’s pull on New Delhi and therefore, he emphasised the need for more intense discussions to promote a common Sino-Indian perspective on some of these issues.

Informal Summits Important for Both Sides

Informal summits have developed their own logic and vocabulary now. These are going to be a feature of the Sino-Indian relationship in the coming years.
They are an important means of the two countries to overcome the difficult issues in their relationship – the disputed border, the Sino-Pakistan relationship and the pull of the US-China dissonance.
In that sense Modi was right when he said there was considerable value in ensuring such “strategic communication” saying that that the Wuhan summit of 2018 had seen “increased stability and fresh momentum” in the relations between the two countries.
“We had decided we would prudently manage our differences and not let them become disputes, be sensitive to each other’s concerns and be a reason for peace and stability in the world.”
The Quint October 13, 2019
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Modi & Xi At Mamallapuram: How India Can Increase Diplomatic Clout

Beijing’s decision to drop references to the role of the United Nations in resolving the Kashmir dispute may have saved the upcoming Mamallapuram informal summit between Prime Minister Modi and President Xi Jinping. This is, perhaps, the best indicator of just how fragile the reset — promised by the first informal summit that was held in Wuhan in April 2018 — has been.
On Tuesday, when observers were getting alarmed over the lack of a formal announcement on the dates of the Mamallapuram summit, which was supposed to be held that very week, the Chinese side probably did the needful, when its spokesperson reverted to China’s position, that Kashmir was an issue best resolved through dialogue between the two sides.
Clearly, a year down the line, the lustre of the Wuhan process  seems to have faded, even before it set in.

Has the ‘Lustre’ of Wuhan Faded?

Following Wuhan, the Indian press release had mooted it as a “positive factor for stability amidst current global uncertainties”. It was driven by the need to promote “strategic communications”— high-level interactions with the view of removing mistrust, and reduce the danger of miscalculation in the wake of the Doklam incident. Before the meeting and after it, we saw a surge in the frequency of high-level ministerial and official visits between India and China, and meetings between ministers and leaders of the two countries.
Among the important achievements was the strategic guidance to the two forces to maintain peace and tranquility on the border. This has broadly ensured peace on the LAC and also given a fillip to military exchanges between the two sides. Though India and China were not able to do a joint project in Afghanistan, they did manage a joint training programme for Afghan diplomats. And in May, China did come forward to lift its hold on the designation of Masood Azhar as a terrorist under the UN’s 1267 Committee.
In the past year, the two sides have held their 6th Strategic Economic Dialogue and the 9th Finance Dialogue, and they have continued to cooperate in multilateral mechanisms like the Russia-India-China trilateral, BRICS, SCO and the G20.
Yet, the climate of relations in which the Mamallapuram meeting takes place, is more complex and difficult than at the time of Wuhan.

New Delhi Will Deal With China By Displaying Resilience

Prime Minister Modi goes into the meeting with an even larger mandate than in 2014. The Indian economy may have weakened, but the global climate against China has turned far more adverse than it was in April 2018.
New Delhi seems to have decided that the best way to deal with China is by displaying its resilience.
Just how this will play out remains to be seen. The first move here was the action in Jammu & Kashmir which China objected to, and took the initiative to organise a UN Security Council meet on the issue, the first since 1971.  Subsequently, in its joint statement following his visit to Islamabad and in his UNGA speech, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi kept up the criticism, and referred to the need to take into account the UN position on the issue.
The result was the cancellation  of Wang Yi’s visit to New Delhi on 9-10 September for another round of Special Representatives talks with his Indian counterpart, NSA Ajit Doval — allegedly because of “scheduling issues” from the Indian side. The Wang-Doval meeting had also been aimed at laying the grounds for the Mamallapuram meet.
Two Indian military exercises, one held on September 17 in eastern Ladakh on the border with China and another which began on October 3 to test mobilization and assault tactics in Arunachal Pradesh were the unmistakable signal of India’s decision to signal its tough posture.

What India & China Are Likely to Focus On At Mamallapuram

Finally, at the sidelines of the UNGA in New York, foreign ministers of India, Australia, US and Japan met under the Qualdrilateral Dialogue framework. This upgradation of the Quad, which formerly consisted of officials at the level of Joint Secretary could be consequential. Three of the four members of the Quad are military allies of the United States, and the grouping is seen as a means to work out a military containment of China.
Whether or not Modi and Xi can reverse this slide is something that will be keenly watched.
Both countries are likely to focus on trade and economic issues in Mamallapuram, but the overhang of the growing political dissonance in their relationship cannot and should not be discounted.
Both are likely to arrive at the meeting with a wish list, with issues big and small to discuss. As in Wuhan, some of the fairly trivial ones relating to trade barriers can be dealt with. There is a lot of pressure on India to go ahead with the RCEP, while New Delhi is seeking to redress the issue of the USD 60 billion trade deficit in China’s favour.

Cooperation with China Will Enhance India’s Diplomatic Clout in Washington

However, the political issues are more tricky. What we may see is an effort to push the issue of joint projects in third-world countries in a bigger way. In the past year, China and Japan agreed to cooperate in 50 infrastructure projects, without their coming under the rubric of the Belt and Road Initiative. A similar formulation could be used for cooperation between India and China in Afghanistan, Myanmar, Nepal and even Sri Lanka.
Notwithstanding the run-up to the summit, both India and China still have a lot to gain and a much more to lose in allowing their relations to deteriorate. 
Cooperation with China, whether at the BRICS or SCO level, enhances India’s diplomatic clout in Washington DC. Likewise, bonhomie between the US and India ensures that Beijing behaves well. But if you push either envelope too far, you run the risk of the other partner feeling that it’s simply not worth the effort — and letting go. In that case, India is the loser. In many ways, both need each other and stand to gain a great deal through cooperation.
The Quint October 10, 2019
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Saturday, November 30, 2019

India-China Talks: Who’s Calling The Shots — Jaishankar Or Doval?

Besides dealing with the fallout of India’s decision to make some constitutional changes in Jammu & Kashmir, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar’s meetings with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi in Beijing were cordial and purposeful.
On Kashmir, both sides said what they had to say. Wang Yi expressed China’s concerns over the situation and its fallout on India-Pakistan relations.

He repeated the Chinese position, that the change in Article 370 could change the status quo and cause regional tensions, and as such, they affected China’s sovereign rights and interests.
Jaishankar reassured Wang that the constitutional changes were domestic and did not alter issues relating to sovereignty, neither would they affect the Indo-Pak Line of Control (LoC) with Pakistan, nor for that matter, the Line of Actual Control (LaC) between India and China.

Sino-Indian Relations Amid Turbulence: “Differences Shouldn’t Become Disputes”

That said, they got down to business—to do the ground work for the forthcoming second informal summit between Modi and Xi to be held in October this year, and trying to provide shape to Sino-Indian relations in a period of great turbulence.
The agenda for the 2nd informal summit is huge—besides the “legacy” issues relating to the Sino-Indian border and India’s NSG membership, are those related to trade, and India’s approach towards the Belt an Road Initiative (BRI). Added to this are the potential fallout of the Kashmir, Hong Kong, and Afghanistan developments.
In his remarks to Wang, S Jaishankar recalled a phrase he had, as Foreign Secretary, picked up from the meeting between  Prime Minister Modi and President Xi at Astana on the sidelines of the SCO summit in 2017.
This was that, that though the two countries had differences, it was important “that differences should not become disputes”.
In this era of turbulence, both sides are keen not to rock the Sino-Indian boat. India needs to focus on J&K, and China on Hong Kong. Things going south in both areas is a very live possibility, and let’s not kid ourselves, the Chinese are capable of making things difficult for us via Pakistan.

This Time, Jaishankar Took The Lead, Not NSA Doval

The Indian view was encapsulated in another phrase that echoes Jaishankar’s term as Ambassador in Beijing: both sides should show “mutual sensitivity to each other’s core concerns.” The Chinese have for long signalled their “core concerns”—Tibet, Taiwan, Xinjiang, and the political system of the country. Jaishankar is turning this around to tell Beijing that others, too, have red lines.
An important angle in Jaishankar’s visit to Beijing was that it was he who is leading the charge, rather than his colleague, National Security Adviser, Ajit Doval who hithertofore anchored China policy.
The visit gives us a new picture of the dynamics of the foreign and security policy of the Modi 2.0 government.
This is a government which has seen the induction of two new and key actors—Union Home Minister Amit Shah and EAM Jaishankar, as well as the promotion of NSA Doval. All these individuals have the ear of the PM and are hence powerful, but they are also having to readjust the equations of Modi 1.0, where neither the Home Minister nor the EAM had an inside track.
Further, their boss has now, in political terms, not just gathered greater political authority in his hands, but has also, the experience he did not have in his first term.

Ajit Doval’s Time As Special Representative on Sino-Indian affairs

It is a fact that Doval is currently preoccupied with developments in Jammu & Kashmir where he has been camping for the past week.
But in recent decades, it was the NSA, who also doubled as the Special Representative on the Sino-Indian issues, who had the overall charge of the China policy, which is naturally run by the PM himself.
Doval handled the key aspects of the Sino-Indian relations prior to this. It was he who met with his Chinese counterpart Yang Jichei in Beijing in July 2017, at the sidelines of a BRICS event, even as the Doklam confrontation was going on.
Whether or not it was because of this meeting, a month later the two sides disengaged. And that September, when Modi met his counterpart Xi at the sidelines of a BRICS Summit, the two sides could declare that henceforth they would take a “forward-looking approach” and ensure that incidents like Doklam did not recur.
We have no direct confirmation, but more likely than not, by this time, both leaders  realised that their ties were becoming hostage to minor incidents and issues, and required higher-level strategic attention and better high-level communication.
Three months later, in December 2017, Doval and Yang met for their 20th round of Special Representatives talks in New Delhi.
These talks were held 20 months after their previous round, the 19th, that had been held in Beijing.  Yang did meet his ministerial counterpart, Sushma Swaraj during the visit, but the real business was conducted with Doval.

What Matters Is The Equation Jaishankar & Doval Share With Their Boss

Doval met Yang again on the sidelines of an SCO meeting in Shanghai in mid-April 2018 when the finer details of the Wuhan summit, held at the end of that month, were ironed out. It was just after this that Wang was promoted to the position of State Councillor, and became SR for the talks with India.
As of now, Jaishankar and Wang represent one level of the Sino-Indian discourse, and Doval and Yang represent the other.
What needs to be noted is that though Wang has been promoted as a State Councillor and designated SR, his predecessor Yang was promoted as a member of the powerful Communist Party of China Politburo in the 2017 Party Congress.
In fact, when it comes to foreign policy, Wang is not a member of the apex Chinese Foreign Affairs Commission which is headed by Xi Jinping. Its other members are Premier Li Keqiang and Vice President Wang Qishan. Yang Jichei is both member and the member secretary of the Commission, which is where the real power to make Chinese foreign policy resides.
In India, Jaishankar is a member of the Cabinet Committee on Security and Doval is not. But in the Modi government that means little by itself, and Doval is, after all, the SR for China and much more else. However, what really matters is their respective equation with their boss.
Quint August 13, 2019
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