India-China rapprochement: Another season of thinking?

This is a massive policy shift in a relatively short time. Just five years ago, Chinese and Indian soldiers were fighting each other on the frozen heights of the Himalayan border they dispute. They stayed eyeball-to-eyeball while New Delhi slowly cut connections with Beijing—banning Chinese investment, throwing out TikTok and cultivating an independent constituency in the Global South. 

Indian diplomacy presented the country as looking outward to the ‘Indo-Pacific,’ a vast maritime area defined to include the US, rather than to a ‘Eurasia’ dominated by continental powers like Russia and China.

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If Modi now wants to reach out a hand to the leaders of Eurasia, one might assume it is entirely because India has been insulted and rejected by the US — laden with higher tariffs than almost all its peers and continually needled by President Donald Trump’s advisors and officials.

But that isn’t the entire story, nor is it the main reason. An attempted rapprochement with China has been likely for a while. Officials publicly argued, well before Trump’s re-election, that India’s hard line on Chinese investment and trade was hurting its attempts to attract manufacturing investment. Supply lines, skilled trainers and subcontractors—of the sort that Apple, for example, would need—could only relocate to India with Beijing’s co-operation.

India’s shift marks the end of a hopeful period, during which some expected that reducing China’s hold over the global economy could be accomplished unilaterally through wholesale trade or investment cuts. Nobody attempted to go further down that path than New Delhi, and now it has been forced to reverse course.

Even if there was no solid economic rationale for warmer ties, Modi might have tried anyway. One of the hallmarks of his tenure in office has been his [apparent] hope that China will be kinder to its neighbour. Beijing has given little encouragement, but nevertheless New Delhi persists.

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Even in Tianjin, the official read-outs of the leaders’ meeting had noticeable differences. Beijing stressed the countries should “work together for a multipolar world." New Delhi noted it asked for a multipolar world and a multipolar Asia. The Chinese leader is happy the two countries are talking again, but not happy enough to give an inch on anything substantive. Those soldiers in the Himalayas may have stepped back from each other a bit, but they haven’t returned entirely to their pre-confrontation lines. 

This will not have deterred India. It has attempted resets with Xi several times already: In 2018 there was talk of the ‘Wuhan spirit’ of conviviality shaping relations following a meeting there. These moments of good cheer have never lasted. Days, months or years later, the People’s Liberation Army pushes on the border just enough to make further normalization impossible. Sometimes just hours later: The first time Xi and Modi met, in 2014, news apparently came of a Chinese incursion while the two leaders were at dinner.

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But where, in this delicate dance of elephant and dragon—in Xi’s words—does the Russian bear fit? Modi and Putin also held hands, after all. Was that, at least, a message to the West? Perhaps. But, from New Delhi’s perspective, Russia’s aspirations serve to control China’s aspirations, not enhance them. There are areas—northeastern and Central Asia, for example—where Russian and Chinese interests may not perfectly coincide. Putin and Modi may both hope that the presence of the other serves to render Xi more an equal.

There is a great deal of wishful thinking all round. The Russians must have been led to believe that the coolness with which they have been treated by Indian officialdom since their invasion of Ukraine is now a thing of the past. But New Delhi’s attitude reflects hopes for a ceasefire; if Moscow remains intransigent, then this warmth may fade even before Putin’s scheduled visit to India in December. 

The Chinese, meanwhile, expect that Trump’s stepmotherly treatment of India has shown them their true place in world affairs, but there’s no sign that India has moderated its aspirations. Indian officials just hope that, this time, they will not regret this détente.

History says that friendly clasps between India and China do not last. India always reaches out a hand, but it is eventually dashed away. ©Bloomberg

The author is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist.