India’s China policy needs new thinking, say experts

‘A deep engagement with globalisation is good for India's strength,’ say the authors of a paper published by the Pune International Centre.

The border crisis of 2020 has brought India’s relations with China to a crossroads. A new paper, authored by a group of former diplomats, economists and scientists and published by the Pune International Centre, outlines the way forward for the relationship, both in the short-term, where India faces a stark asymmetry in power with respect to China, and in the long-term, which will decide the fate of the relationship. Excerpts from an interview with two of the authors, Gautam Bambawale, a former diplomat who served as Indian Ambassador to China, Pakistan and Bhutan; and Ajay Shah, Research Professor of Business, Jindal Global University. Thank you for posing that question. The Chinese military aggression in Ladakh, which commenced in early May of 2020, continues even until today. Even though there has been a bit of disengagement of forces in one sub-sector of Ladakh, other sub-sectors have not seen this. The starting point for our paper is what I can term as Chinese hostility towards India. That has become very, very apparent now with what the Chinese have attempted to do through their military aggression in Ladakh, where they have attempted military coercion on our borders. This clearly points to the fact that China doesn't want a balanced sort of relationship with India, and that it is happy with an unbalanced, conflictual kind of relationship. That is the starting point for our paper. Now, in the short-run, India has a bad hand of cards because of this great asymmetry, which our paper spells out. So in the short-run, the only thing India can do is to build balancing coalitions with groups of countries. We suggest there are three groups of countries with which India can build such balancing coalitions. One is, of course, the major democracies of the world. Second are those countries which are neighbouring to China. So a country like Russia, for example, is a very good country to have such a coalition with. Lastly, of course, countries in India's neighbourhood like Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. There is a group of about 20-odd countries with which India can build very strong, deep partnerships. And by deep partnerships, we mean partnerships which go beyond just government-to-government interaction. With Russia, for example, we need to have people-to-people ties, institutional arrangements across a range of subject matters. In the short-run, that is one of the ways that India can maintain not only its territorial integrity and national sovereignty, but also maintain its strategic autonomy. We are arguing that India needs to go beyond narrow definitions of strategic autonomy in the short-term.