China is unseating India at all possible places in the neighbourhood. It has been nudging Southeast Asian countries to play cool to India. It supports Pakistan, despite the latter’s export of terrorism. India has to be circumspect
It was no veni vidi vici for Chinese President Xi Jinping. He wants to conquer Indian land, but not the hearts. His $20 billion investment promise is more a show off to suggest he can conquer even the Indian economy that rides on a $40 billion trade deficit with China.
He does not even reciprocate the warm welcome extended to a Chinese dignitary after 60 years of Premier Zhou Enlai’s visit, by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Ahmedabad. Gujarati hospitality was expected to bring warmth in relationship and a cooler border. The belligerency at the ladakh border increasing with Mr Xi’s visit cause more unease.
Would the promised investment happenIJ Should India accept or allow those investmentsIJ These are the rocking questions. Mr Narendra Modi’s retort on the border issue, something an Indian premier least loves to do to a guest, was appropriate. Indians are more seized of it than being charmed by the visiting dignitary. China certainly has lost a great opportunity of winning a friend.
China has a dis-connect between its civilian administration and People’s liberation Army. But Mr Xi is considered to be the PlA’s own man and he is a part of its two crucial committees. So, he cannot feign ignorance as the Chinese Foreign Minister had done on similar stealthy incursions. The PlA incursions had coincided with Premier li Keqiang’s visit to New Delhi last year. It appears to be well-thought of design to pressure India to accept Chinese terms.
The visit has raised Mr Modi’s stature. Even the Opposition Congress finds merit in his dealing with Mr Xi. Yes, China needs a tough handling despite whatever Indian effort to engage it in international affairs like BRICS or its development bank at Shanghai. Mr Modi has hinted that India is capable of it.
Mr Modi ‘s summits with three of the world’s powerful leaders, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Tokyo, Mr Xi in New Delhi and President Barack Obama in Washington, DC this month marks a new chapter in Indian diplomacy in the post-Manmohan Singh decade.
Mr Modi’s main focus is on how and how quickly he can uplift the economy to achieving a growth rate of eight per cent every year. For his economic plan to succeed, he needs investment and technology from China, the United States, Japan, Germany and South Korea, amongst many countries. He wants manufacturing in India to go up from 16 per cent to 25 per cent in less than a decade. In the process, the Prime Minister wants more joint collaborations of items and weapons India imports traditionally. He had expected China to help India and itself by creating the greatest synergies of the largest populated countries. Mr Xi certainly has, if not belied, dampened the spirits.
There are strange mismatches. Only short while before Mr Xi’s visit, the Chinese Consul General in Mumbai said that the investments would be to the tune of $100 billion. Is it a short shrift by ChinaIJ Possibly so. Having come from a visit to Sri lanka and Maldives, Mr Xi’s focus was certainly not India. He wants to keep India engaged but his prime aim is to encircle India either through the sea silk route or the Karakoram silk route, already in Chinese-Pakistani occupation.
Those who say that China could be kept tied down by its large investments in India have to think. China knows that even without investing its dollars, it has not only been able to capture Indian markets, but also erode its manufacturing base through silly exports of toys, mobiles, electronic goods and photo frames. China has no illusion. It has least interest in ‘making’ in India. Howsoever, India might like to do so.
Its investments are restricted to Gujarat and Maharashtra, the western gateways, and one high-speed rail corridor. African countries have seen that Chinese investments opened up floodgate of jobs for Chinese nationals. Africans have not benefitted much.
There are also talks of some television and Bollywood joint ventures. But we have seen in the past that such ventures, even with culturally more compatible Bangladesh, have had limited success.
China promises India greater market access, something not difficult to do but not easy to ensure. Moreover, it has almost thrown a spanner in ONGC explorations in the Vietnamese waters. It has bagged the Maldives airport contracts that had been earlier awarded to an Indian firm. In Sri lanka, it is going beyond building the Hambantota port. Sri lankan markets that thrived on Indian exports, have more Chinese goods, textiles and fruits.
China is unseating India at all possible places in its neighbourhood itself. It has been nudging Southeast Asian countries to play cool to India, and it supports Pakistan, despite the latter’s export of terrorism. Given these realities, India has to be circumspect.