By Tom Fowdy
In 2020, a skirmish emerged on a disputed border between China and India on the Himalayas. The unresolved dispute, which has lasted decades, saw unarmed melee combat between the two Asian giants leading to deaths on both sides, and China seizing territory.
While this issue has blown hot and cold over the years, it is understood India deliberately escalated the matter in order to legitimate a geopolitical tilt away from China and towards the West, in line with the US "Indo-Pacific strategy" and to unleash a tidal wave of Indian nationalism against China to justify a protectionist agenda which sought to position New Delhi as a manufacturing alternative to Beijing and hub for supply chains. Indeed, after the skirmish India swiftly banned TikTok and hundreds of other Chinese applications, while also carrying out a series of politically motivated persecutions against Chinese companies.
From a strategic and geopolitical perspective, India saw Western opposition to China as a launchpad for its own economic development and rise as a great power, noting its own enormous labor force potential as the world's now most populous country, one with a much younger population as well. However, the world has changed many times since 2020, and it is with a sudden surprise that, following recent elections whereby the Hindu nationalist BJP found its majority weakened, India has decided to reset its relationship with China and re-think its entire strategy.
As a Reuters editorial notes: "India is warming up to its northern neighbor. The South Asian country's annual economic report recommends courting investment from China rather than integrating into the country's supply chains." It is no surprise that with this, the decision has finally been made to de-escalate the border dispute, as the AP notes: "India and China have agreed to work urgently to achieve the withdrawal of tens of thousands of troops stationed along their disputed border in a long-running standoff, India's government said." The message is clear, India has decided to re-engage with China. After spending years persecuting Chinese companies, New Delhi decides it wants China in again.
How did India arrive at this position? First, India is not a western aligned country and never has been, even in the days of its tilt towards the United States. India's foreign policy is self-interested and independent and owes no true loyalties, thus allowing it to pivot from one emphasis to the next depending on the circumstances, thus engaging "all sides." As an emerging great power, India ultimately sees its best chances in the formulation of a Multipolar world and this is also the underlying logic why it has continued to engage with Russia despite western disapproval.
It was, however, the view of New Delhi for some time that China's enormous dominance of manufacturing supply chains was an effective wall to India's own economic development, for India must transition into an industrialized economy in order to move forward. Thus, the strategy of the Modi government was to try and capitalize on Anti-China sentiment to woo manufacturing away from China and build up their own capabilities. Although New Delhi had some small successes, such as with Foxconn and Apple-related investments, in reality, India's infrastructure, logistics and manufacturing capabilities are far beneath China's and it is impossible for New Delhi to supply absorb the supply chain, as India's own manufacturing itself requires many goods from China to function.
It goes without saying that supply chains are interdependent and connected, as they function on efficiency, availability, and certainty. Therefore, while India has shown an ability to pull low-end manufacturing from China, it cannot in fact manufacture itself without the use of Chinese components and specialist equipment which of course becomes more readily available as China moves up the international value chain, the very thing the US wants to supress. Because of this, India has reconfigured its strategy seeing an opportunity to manufacture goods on behalf of Chinese companies, allowing them to critically bypass restrictions placed on them by countries such as the US into entering their markets.
Thus, India has finally figured out that its own rise is in fact contingent on warmer ties with China as opposed to a state of antagonism against it. This of course does not mean the two countries will not have areas of strategic friction, New Delhi hardly wants Beijing to attain dominance over South Asia and its neighboring countries, such as Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka and the Maldives, so we should expect west India engagement to continue concurrently. Yet, it has also chosen to be more nuanced than to depict Beijing as a zero-sum enemy blocking its own development. India's foreign policy should ultimately be understood as seeking geopolitical balance, and thus it will shift in any direction to achieve that. For now, China will certainly be happy to see India is no longer vested in its containment and relations can improve.
The author is a well-seasoned writer and analyst with a large portfolio related to China topics, especially in the field of politics, international relations and more. He graduated with an Msc. in Chinese Studies from Oxford University in 2018.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.
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