Modi creates a legacy in China ties

All (Indian) eyes are on Hangzhou where Prime Minister Narendra Modi will meet Chinese President Xi Jinping on Sunday on the sidelines of G-20 summit. This is their first meeting after June in Tashkent. The good part is that Modi is reviving his predecessor Manmohan Singh’s practice of sustained interaction with Chinese leadership. The barren one-year interlude following the July 2015 Ufa meeting becomes a thing of the past.

In the business of summitry, everything devolves upon the agenda. Alas, Modi began treating his summits with Xi as ‘working-level’ meetings and behaved like a Foreign Secretary. A nadir was reached when he drew blank on the NSG issue at the meeting in Tashkent. Indeed, it must have been a strange experience for Xi to be treated as if he were a ‘hands-on’ president on India ties. It is simply not practical.

Xi’s counterparts respect him as a statesman and world leader, and thoughtfully prioritize their ‘talking points’. Beijing has since thoughtfully proposed a ‘mechanism’ to bury this faux pas – a platform where India’s Foreign Secretary and China’s Vice-FM could knock their heads together as often as they wished over Zakiur Lakhvi or Hafiz Masood – or NSG membership.

Thus, Modi is getting a first-rate opportunity tomorrow to hold a meaningful conversation with Xi – statesman-to-statesman. There is no dearth of topics of great contemporaneity – G20 processes, climate change, Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, BRICS and SCO, One Belt One Road, China’s reforms, Afghan situation, etc. An erudite mind like Manmohan Singh would have relished the prospect.

Indeed, it is also useful to gain clarity on the overall trajectory of the Sino-Indian relations, especially since tensions are steadily building up. Simply put, Modi should ignore the pervasive ‘anti-China’ mood among the present ruling elites in Delhi and look ahead at the future, being the visionary he claims to be.

However, the signs are pointing in a different direction. Never in recent decades has India approached a high-level exchange with China with such methodical mobilization of a litany of discords at the negotiating table. India has tried to ruffle Chinese feathers in any whichever way possible in the run-up to the meeting in Hangzhou.

With just about 10 days for the meeting in Hangzhou, the government “leaked” the sensitive top secret information that Modi chaired a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Security to clear the fourth BrahMos missile regiment – constituting a mobile command post, 12×12 heavy-duty trucks mounted with five mobile autonomous launchers and around 100 missiles – to be deployed in the disputed Arunachal Pradesh to “deter” China.

With only 5 days to go for Hangzhou, India signed the logistics agreement with the US, where the sub-text is a budding India-US alliance to contain China. Why August 29? Why not sometime October? (Unless, of course, Washington insisted on it from the slippery Indians as quid pro quo for accommodating Modi for a few precious minutes in President Barack Obama’s crowded schedule in Hangzhou.)

With 24 hours to go for the meeting in Hangzhou, Modi landed in Hanoi to announce a $500 million line of credit to boost Vietnam’s military capabilities. Although, fortunately, it is only half the $1 billion line of credit Modi had pledged to Mongolia in May last year when he traveled to Ulaanbaatar from Beijing, the symbolism is self-evident.

In sum, Modi government hopes to rub it into the Chinese psyche that:

India is preparing for the worst — war with China;

India will link up with the US to contain China;

India cannot tolerate China-Pakistan Economic Corridor; and,

India cannot accept China’s activities in its sphere of influence in South Asia.

Is China impressed? Wait for another 24 hours. To my mind, it seems highly improbable that this curious approach to China by punching above India’s weight will work. For one thing, China has a consistent history of not blinking under pressure tactic. Second, doesn’t China know that we are cruising in a fantasyland? (See Foreign Secretary’s weekend speech at the RSS think tank India Foundation on the Indian Ocean Region – here.)

The chasm between illusions and reality cannot be bridged after a point. And the point is, China does not think its policies toward Pakistan or the other South Asian countries are “India-centric”. It considers, on the contrary, that predictable and friendly relationships with the countries of the Indian Ocean region are in its self-interests. And it senses that the countries of the region too welcome China as the principal driver of growth.

The Indian policymakers are barking up the wrong tree. Such tantrums as Delhi is displaying can only make India look foolish — not only in Beijing but in the world capitals too, which take China’s rise as the most consequential event in modern history. Chinese writings increasingly have an air of condescension toward the Modi government’s policies. Worse still, a window of opportunity is closing on a potentially productive relationship that could help advance India’s development meaningfully, which ought to have been Modi’s top priority today — not geopolitics.