India Snubs China: No, It Can't Be Business As Usual - Full Transcript

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on his visit to Delhi said the two countries should get along with "business as usual" but India is having none of it.

Hi,

This is Hot Mic and I'm Nidhi Razdan. India has been getting a steady stream of foreign visitors since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Americans were here. The Brits are coming. The Israelis will follow. The list is pretty endless. And then there was the Chinese Foreign Minister in one of the most bizarre visits in recent memory. It was supposed to be a hush-hush visit. The first to Delhi by a senior Chinese leader since the Galwan Valley clash in Ladakh at the Line of Actual Control two years ago. In that clash, 20 Indian soldiers and several Chinese soldiers were killed. Neither side announced Foreign Minister Wang Yi's visit which is very unusual. But the secrecy was blown through media reports and journalists who tracked the Chinese Foreign Minister's flight on apps like Flight radar. Over the last two years, China and India have held 15 rounds of talks at the military level but they have had little success. 

China has brazenly transgressed into Indian territory and continues to occupy parts of it. There has been only some disengagement, but today also around 50,000 troops are amassed on either side of the LAC even now. On the eve of his India trip, New Delhi strongly rebuked Wang Yi for comments that he also made on Kashmir while attending a meeting of the Organization of Islamic Conference in Islamabad. In an unusually strong statement, India even said that it refrains from making public comments about China's internal matters. But Wang Yi flew to New Delhi anyway. And it begged the question - why? If China was serious in creating an enabling environment for better ties with India, these provocative statements wouldn't have been made in the first place. More importantly, they should have come with a serious proposal to disengage their troops at the border. But they didn't. India had already made it clear, only days earlier, that it cannot be business as usual with Beijing until the status quo is restored at the border. In fact, that message was strongly reiterated by the Prime Minister in his virtual summit with the Australian PM.