There was a glimmer of hope last month that China and India would pull back from their increasingly contentious standoff when military commanders concluded talks along their disputed border on a somewhat optimistic note. The hope was that these talks would pave the way for leaders from both countries to meet while they were together at the BRICS summit in Johannesburg.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi did meet briefly in South Africa but it did nothing to stall the downward spiral in relations between the two Asian powers.
Ananth Krishnan, an associate editor at The Hindu newspaper in New Delhi and one of the foremost experts on Sino-Indian relations, joins Eric & Cobus to explain why ties have soured so badly and what to expect going forward.
Show Notes:
- The Hindu: China doubles down on new map, tells India to keep calm and not to ‘over-interpret’ by Ananth Krishnan
- Rand Corporation: India Is Pushing Back Against China in South Asia by Derek Grossman
- Carnegie Institute for International Peace: A Historical Evaluation of China’s India Policy: Lessons for India-China Relations by Vijay Gokhale
About Ananth Krishnan:
Ananth Krishnan is a journalist with The Hindu based in New Delhi. He writes on foreign affairs with a focus on developments in China and India. He has reported from China for more than a decade and previously worked in leading think tanks and public policy institutes. He has proven expertise in the fields of journalism, public policy, public relations, communications, and foreign affairs. He is the author of ‘India’s China Challenge’, a best-selling and critically acclaimed book published by HarperCollins in 2020; ‘Following the Money: China Inc.’s Growing Stake in India-China Relations’, a first-of-its-kind study mapping Chinese investments in India published by The Brookings Institution India Center in 2020; ‘The Comrades and the Mullahs: China, Afghanistan, and the New Asian Geopolitics’, his second critically-acclaimed book, co-authored with Stanly Johny, and the first book to focus on China’s relations with Afghanistan, published by HarperCollins in 2022.
Transcript:
Eric Olander: Hello, and welcome to another edition of the China Global South Podcast, a proud member of the Sinica Podcast Network. I’m Eric Olander in Ho Chi Minh City, and, as always, I’m joined by China Global South’s Managing Editor, joining us today from Berlin, Germany, a very good morning to you, Cobus.
Cobus van Staden: Good morning.
Eric: Cobus, it was only a month ago, it’s hard to believe, but it was only a month ago that Chinese and Indian military commanders met high up in the Himalayas for a round of talks that went surprisingly well. This was the 19th round of joint military talks. Now, these military talks happen at a mid-rank. They’re not very high level, but they’re very important because this is some of the only communication that’s happening these days between China and India. And surprisingly, after 18 rounds where they haven’t really gone very well, the 19th round went very well. And expectations were that this was going to lay the groundwork for Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to meet when they were going to get together at the BRICS Summit in Johannesburg, which we all saw.
Now, during the BRICS Summit, we were all watching the body language of both leaders very, very closely and just to see, how would they interact with one another? Do you remember back in Uzbekistan when they did the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit, the SCO Summit, those two could barely look at each other? And so the body language was really telling about the state of relations. So, here we saw on the BRICS Summit or at the BRICS Summit that they actually were very pleasant. While Xi was polite, they didn’t avoid each other, but there was no kind of warm fuzziness. Now, while the Chinese and XI were having a number of bilateral meetings with various leaders during the BRICS, they had the photos, the tables, the flowers, the handshakes, all those different things, we never saw one with Modi. And that was what everybody was looking for.
But midway through the summit, and this took place on a Wednesday, we got word that the two leaders apparently casually met. There were no photos, no handshakes, none of the usual protocols that come with this kind of meeting. And it was only released on Thursday, just before the end of the summit that they had actually met. And that just gives you a sense of how incredibly sensitive this all was. Now everybody thought, “There you go, this is progress. At least they’re talking to one another.” Okay, we didn’t see it. There was no hugging and there was no shaking hands, there was no smiles, but at least we heard that they were talking. The summit ends and, of course, Cobus, you remember that It ended on a high note with all the new members, and this is the BRICS is finally going to challenge the West.
And everybody was really excited about it. And that kind of euphoria lasted all for, what? 48 hours, maybe. 36 hours maybe, because almost as soon as the summit was over and Modi came home, he faced blistering attacks from his oppositions that he was allegedly chasing after Xi. Now, those attacks came in response to a Chinese statement that said the Modi-Xi meeting was done only in response to a request from the Indian side for the meeting, implying that the Chinese did not request the meeting — the Indians did. They also said that the Chinese wanted a formal bilateral meeting, but the Indians didn’t. And that really then set India’s cable news TV pundits just rolling and saying, “Here you go, you see. This is the same old stuff.” And again, the mood just started souring again.
Okay, after a couple of days, things started to calm down and we kind of got back on and looking forward to the G20 Summit, and the China-India thing kind of moved off the radar for a little bit. And then China drops its new map. Now, for most countries, a map is not that big of a deal, but that is not the case with China here in Asia. China has border disputes with at least a half a dozen of its regional neighbors, and none more intense than with India over its 3,400-kilometer, very poorly defined border. The way that the Chinese drew the border on this new map just infuriated people in India. And it’s not entirely sure if the release of the map was coordinated, was intended to kind of be timed at a specific thing, but boy, it just sent everybody, not just by the way in India, but also five or six countries in Southeast Asia.
Interestingly, Russia also had some disputes on the border. They didn’t say anything, but there are some folks who pointed out that even the borderline with Russia was kind of weird. Now, since the release of this map last week, things have gone from bad to worse. Just this week alone, India slapped new tariffs on certain Chinese steel imports. Really, the value of those tariffs is not the key issue here. It’s very small amount, but it’s just symbolic of the fact that the depth of frustration with the Chinese in the Indian political establishment really has not hit bottom yet. This all comes on top of a year-long crackdown on Chinese tech companies, the expulsion of journalists from both countries and efforts on both sides to further militarize their positions along the border.
So, Cobus, here we are now, lots has happened in that month since the optimism on those first border talks. After the BRICS Summit, there was this excitement that developing countries were now newly empowered and going to be able to challenge and have the muscle to challenge the G7 and some of the Western-led organizations. But if the BRICS’s two largest members dislike each other as much as the Indians and Chinese seem to do right now, one really has to wonder if the BRICS will ever be able to do anything if these two can’t get along.
Cobus: Yeah, that’s an issue that has plagued the BRICS for a long time. And one of its features has been that these countries who have beefs with each other find ways of putting it aside or siloing it for the moment in the BRICS. I think the enlargement of the BRICS is going to fundamentally change all of its dynamics. And we still need to see how that’s going to go and how all of these different members are going to work together because now, obviously, there’s a whole bunch of like other big personalities in the group as well. But I think the larger issue is we’ve had the G77 Summit, and there’s all of this conversation which was particularly prominent during the G20 of whether India is moving towards kind of a natural leadership position for the global south.
And now, of course, no one in the global south thinks that anyone is a natural leader for the global south, but there is this kind of contestation between China and India in terms of their larger international leadership role. And they’re both, in their different ways, developing countries. Obviously, China’s developing country status is controversial, but I think in lots of actual concrete ways, China still is a developing country. So, they both have kind of a claim and they both make a kind of philosophical claim for being a natural kind of center for global south; engagement with the global north, but also global activism around the reform of institutions. So, that kind of fight is very interesting. There’s clearly a lot of tension in who steps into that particular kind of leadership role. And I think that also underlies some of the tension.
Eric: Well, let’s get a perspective now from someone who follows this more closely than almost anyone out there. Ananth Krishnan is an Associate Editor at The Hindu newspaper in New Delhi who focuses on China and foreign affairs in Asia. He’s a longtime correspondent based in Beijing. He’s recently left, but he also writes the India-China newsletter on Substack and, by far, is one of the best China correspondents anywhere in the world. Can’t recommend following his coverage enough. Ananth, thank you so much for taking the time to join us today.
Ananth Krishnan: Thank you so much for having me.
Eric: You’ve been following the sequence of events that I ran through that started with the military border talks and ended all the way with the steel tariffs this week. Help us make sense of what’s going on here.
Ananth: Right. I think you summed it up pretty well where you were right in saying there was a sense of, I would put it as cautious optimism after the talks between senior military commanders that you mentioned. Because for the first time after those talks, they deputed major generals on both sides to continue speaking for an additional three days that hadn’t happened before. So, it seemed to be both sides trying to, I think, solving the LAC, Line of Actual Control problem isn’t going to happen, but at least to make some headway to create the right atmosphere for a potential Xi Jinping visit for G20. It seemed to be going then.
It’s hard to say what happened from the outside, but my sense is I don’t think things went very well at the BRICS Summit that you mentioned in Johannesburg in terms of, we can speak about this in more detail, but just in terms of what came out from both sides after this informal conversation that Modi and Xi had. They were saying very different things. And they were even disagreeing about who sought the meeting. So, it was very clear that I think things didn’t go well in Johannesburg. My own hunch is, I think, up until the BRICS Summit, there was a chance for Xi Jinping to come, but I think that there were also many reasons why Xi Jinping would not want to come to the G20, especially after Russia’s President Vladimir Putin said he wouldn’t be able to be there.
But I think that clearly there are, as you mentioned, serious problems in the India-China bilateral relationship. I think it really made itself very clearly felt in Johannesburg and the way both sides engaged. And I think it also made itself felt by Xi Jinping actually not showing up to a G20 summit for the first time, which is obviously something that New Delhi noticed. Even though I think New Delhi is quite relieved that, again, we can talk about that more, that it was able to pull off quite a successful summit even with Xi Jinping’s absence.
Cobus: I just wanted to follow up on the G20 Summit. I was wondering to which extent the success of the summit was despite Xi’s absence and to which extent it was because of his absence in the sense that him not being there created the space for India without obvious tension on the stage or complicating factors for Modi.
Ananth: Well, that’s an interesting question, and I think that, ultimately, leading into the G20 Summit, I think one of the clear indicators of how successful it would be was whether or not they could agree a declaration. I think there were real fears, even 48 hours before the summit, that there would not be a declaration for the first time in G20 history because of disagreements over a couple of paragraphs over Ukraine. There were other disagreements as well. And I think China and Russia were quite vocal in some of these points. I was told that China was also vocal in terms of issues such as climate financing but they could sort of come to an agreement on that. Finally, I think that ultimately it didn’t matter that Xi Jinping was absent. I don’t think Xi Jinping being there would have inserted any kind of tensions, only because I think India made it clear that for a multilateral summit, they would accord him all the expected hospitality.
And I was kind of watching carefully the body language between Prime Minister Modi and Chinese Premier Li Qiang, who attended. And I could tell that Modi was trying to go out of the way to kind of be friendly in terms of his body language at every point where he interacted with Li Qiang. So, I don’t think that would’ve been the case if Xi showed up. Ultimately, I would say the success was quite very clearly a result of the West kind of at the last minute caving after putting out these really strong statements on its expectations for a condemnation of Russia and finally agreeing what Russia and China wanted, which I think many people didn’t expect.
I think what Xi Jinping was doing, this is just my reading of the situation, so I’m speculating a little bit here, but I think the message was very clear that by not attending, for one, I think there was a real concern that if there was a failure to agree to a declaration and with Russia’s Putin being absent that everyone would blame Xi Jinping. And I think he did not want to be in that position. And I think secondly, by sending Li Qiang, I think they made it clear that I think China had nothing to lose. It was kind of either the West agrees to China’s expectations and formulations, which Russia also wanted, or there wouldn’t be a joint statement. And I don’t think China would’ve lost sleep on that. And it was clear that Beijing wasn’t going out of the way to make the G20 an easy matter for India.
Thirdly, I would also say the factor about bilateral tensions and the fact that there wasn’t a meeting in Johannesburg as China, I think, expected a formal meeting. I think all this gave Xi many reasons to not show up. But to go back to your question, I think ultimately it was more about the negotiations, the very hard negotiations between the West and the Russia, China combined and how many of the global south countries, I think India along with Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia played a very key bridging role between the two camps. For me, that was one of the more interesting takeaways from the G20 was the emergence of this non-West, non-China, Russia grouping that made its voice felt in a very interesting way.
Eric: Just a couple of points there, just to follow up, Ananth, what you were talking about, not only did the body language between Prime Minister Li and Prime Minister Narendra Modi be very different than it was with Xi, there was actually a picture with smiles, and that is probably something we wouldn’t have seen had Xi gone there as well. Also, just to put in context, to remind everybody that Xi also did not attend the ASEAN Leaders Summit in Jakarta, sent Li Qiang there, and Xi will not attend the upcoming United Nations General Assembly meeting, and neither will Wang Yi. Instead, Vice President Han Zheng will be going. And Chinese vice presidents generally are more of a ceremonial role. So, that speaks a little bit to how Xi may be repositioning his participation in some of these major fora.
In terms of the relationships with the West, I’d like to get your take, Ananth, on this quote from Wang Yiwei, who’s a professor at Renmin University in Beijing. He’s very well known. He said, “In general, I think the West wants to put India as the leader of the global South and make India the world’s factory and replace China. In this post-COVID era, China sees India as becoming part of the U.S. plot against China.” We’re seeing that more and more coming out of the Chinese and analyst community and the scholarly community that India now is no longer impartial. It is part of the Western coalition. Of course, India is a founding member of the Quad Security Alliance, but I think everybody in India, and I’m sure you’ll agree with this, believes that India is partisan to the West or to China is foolish.
India is the pioneer, in many ways, of strategic autonomy in their foreign policy. But speak a little bit to this anxiety in China about this perception that it’s now aligned with the West.
Ananth: No, I think I agree with you that it’s very clear that in the last I’d say a couple of years, this argument has become very widely prevalent in the Chinese media. I think that they’re also, kind of coincides with the reemergence of the quad. And I actually found it interesting that President Biden, on the press conference that he gave in Vietnam right after landing from New Delhi, he actually kind of revealed that Xi Jinping had asked him about the Quad saying that, “Why are you putting this group together?” And Biden replied, saying that he had assured him that it was not about one country. But, of course, it’s not how it’s seen in China. But I think the fact that Xi Jinping raised it with Biden was quite revealing in of itself. And I think it has kind of cemented this perception in China of what you just said.
And I think that probably one reason for that is the fact that India-China relations have reached such a low point since April 2020 because of what’s happened on the border. I think if you look at the situation in the 2017 to 2020 period, while there were sort of individual minor, not on the same scale, but there were border incidents, and India was deepening relations with the U.S. and the Quad, the fact is that India and China were also working on balancing ties and keeping things stable with the two informal summits that you had. So, it was quite interesting that at that period, even though India was doing many of the same things it’s doing with the Quad and the U.S., these kind of arguments weren’t that widely prevalent.
And to me, it more speaks to this remarkable downturn we’ve seen in bilateral ties since 2020. And many sort of former Indian officials that I speak to think it’s probably the worst phase we’ve seen since India and China normalized ties in the late 1970s after the freeze, after the 1962 war. So, I think that there’s no doubt that the bilateral ties are in a very worrying space right now, and I haven’t seen anything in the last few weeks of engagement, whether at BRICS or whether at the G20, to suggest that we are going to see a, a big change in that situation in the near future.
Cobus: Over the last while, there’s been many announcements of new infrastructure being built on the Indian side of the border. And I saw, I think this week, I think, 90 projects inaugurated. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about what kind of infrastructure that is and what the thinking is around that.
Ananth: I think to put it quite simply, India’s playing catch up. There’s a huge gap in terms of infrastructure on both sides of the Line of Actual Control. And I think, for many reasons, in terms of just China’s extraordinary capabilities in the way in which it’s built roads and railways in Tibet, right up to the border, I actually had the opportunity to see some of this firsthand in 2015, which was one of, I think, the only time that I managed to go to Tibet when they were opening a new road back when relations were warming. They were opening a new road that would allow Indian pilgrims to cross over at Sikkim and enter Tibet to go on to visit Mount Kailash. And at that point of time, I think that some of the Indian officials who would visit were also taken aback by the speed at which they’re actually building railways up to the border, right up to Sikkim and Yadong in Tibet.
I think it’s just about India trying to close that gap, which is a very, very difficult thing to do because China is by no means slowing down what it’s been doing in Tibet. And I think that, unfortunately, the current dynamic, because of the fact that the Line of Actual Control remains un-demarcated, the fact that even though both sides agreed as long as in the early nineties to commit to clarifying their varying perceptions of the Line of Actual Control, that’s something that never happened. I think that’s something India wants, but it’s something that I think that Chinese feel will kind of impinge on their territorial claims. So, they’re reluctant to actually spell out where their claims are. And this ambiguity of the claims is what’s really fueling all these problems that you’re seeing.
And this ambiguity is also pushing both sides to improve their capabilities at a very rapid speed to deploy more and more closer to the LAC. And I think that’s what’s been feeding this kind of tensions we are seeing. And as you said, as you asked the question, I think there’s no signs of either side slowing down. So, what you’re going to see in the next few years is both sides having the capability to deploy closer to the LAC and more frequently, which means you’re going to have more run-ins at more areas along the LAC, which are going to make it even more complex to manage than it already is.
Eric: So, the LAC that Ananth is referencing is the Line of Actual Control, and that’s the language they use to define this very ambiguous border that’s there. Ananth, you were there, but there’s been a lot of coverage about the build-up on both sides. I think this is something that people who don’t follow this story don’t fully appreciate that we’re not talking about a few guard posts on the border looking at each other. We’re talking about tens of thousands of troops backed by heavy artillery and Air Force incursions. The Indians have complained over the years that the PLAAF, the PLA Air Force has made incursions right up to the border, maybe not crossing it, but they feel that they are very menacing. The Chinese complain that the Indians have been harassing them. Paint a picture for us so we can start picturing high up in the Himalayas here, what does the military infrastructure look like and the setup that they’ve got against each other?
Ananth: As you said, it’s extremely complicated and it’s a really, a huge area that we’re talking about that’s almost 4,000 kilometers in the way that India counts it. And it’s also, as you would imagine with the Himalayas and the Tibetan plateau, that it is some of the most inhospitable and difficult-to-access terrain, I think, anywhere on the planet. I think just taking a step back, given the situation that you had this Line of Actual Control that was so ambiguous, I think both sides actually did fantastically well to keep it as peaceful as it has been. I think from the time that they signed the first agreement in 1993 to maintain peace and tranquility, and then in 1996, they actually signed a second agreement which actually lists some really detailed practices that both sides follow.
It’s almost, they don’t call it a code of conduct, but almost is like a code of conduct with a kind that some of China’s neighbors want in the South China Sea. And often I hear from Chinese officials who say that most of the world doesn’t know that the conference-building measures and the kind of codes that India and China have agreed are the only kind that China actually has with any country in the world. And I think from those early agreements until 2020, which is quite a long period, for almost 30 years, the fact that they were able to keep the peace in this extraordinary difficult context, I think, in hindsight, it seems quite remarkable. But I think that the pressure that was building, I think the structural dynamics that we were talking about in terms of the gap of infrastructure, I think, that was started by China’s extraordinary infrastructure building in border areas in Tibet, which I think fed anxieties in India and pushed India to try to catch up, I think the fact that this enabled soldiers on both sides to access areas more often.
Just to put it very, very simply for listeners to understand, in some of the areas where both sides had clashes in April 2020, I would hear that often they would run into each other once a month, and now they’re running into each other once a week. So that’s the kind of dynamic that you’re looking at and which has had a breakdown of all these arrangements that were in place. Now I think what both sides are looking at is a very, very long and difficult process to try and revive some of those arrangements and try and come up with new ones. So far they’ve been able to set up buffer zones, which I think is a very practical, even if perhaps a temporary arrangement just to make sure there aren’t face-to-face encounters.
So, it’s just an extraordinary difficult challenge for both sides to manage this peacefully, especially because in the last three years, as you mentioned, there’s been a build-up of more than 100,000 plus deployed in forward areas. I think the first step right now is to disengage. There’s still two other friction points where they’re in very, very close proximity. I think the first step is to disengage there and then to look at how to pull back some of those additional 100,000 soldiers who’ve been deployed in total by both sides. I think it’s going to be a very difficult process ahead, and I don’t think that there should be high expectations of… You often sort of read pieces that expect a big turnaround or approach form between the two countries. To me, it seems like a very, very difficult and long road ahead.
Cobus: So, key and central to many of the disputes are the actual leaders, Narendra Modi and Xi Jinping. And they’re both singularly central to these kind of big projects of national security. They’re both very hostile to or quite hostile to domestic criticism. So, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the personalities involved.
Ananth: I’d say more than the personalities to me, as you said, I think for sure in both cases, perhaps in very different ways. You can’t divorce the domestic context, which I think in many ways limits what either side can do in terms of having a big change in the situation along the borders. I think there’s no denying that. I think on the Chinese side, you’ve seen, in the Xi Jinping period, a lot of moves in terms of border security. You’ve seen, in early 2022, a new border law that was passed, which raises expectations on how, even at the local level, at the local level of governance, at the provincial level, things that are expected in terms of whether it’s building civilian settlements closer to the border to reinforce China’s claims, whether it’s in terms of infrastructure.
And you even mentioned it at the top of the show, the new map that was issued, probably a needless new map given that it didn’t really change China’s claims, but what it did was inflame passions in many of China’s neighbors. But I see even the frequency of issuing new maps as part of the border law, which one of the articles calls for greater public awareness of China’s territorial claims. So, you’re seeing these dynamics in China where territorial disputes are being framed very clearly as matters of Chinese sovereignty, rather than I would say, say 10, 15 years ago, where there would be a public awareness of the fact that these were disputes that two sides had to meaningfully negotiate.
And we should remember that these are also disputes where China has legal commitments as it has at least four agreements with India. But by redefining these matters of sovereignty, the message seems to be that these things are secondary to a priority for China, which seems to be guarding its territory and sovereignty. And likewise in India, very briefly, I think that the governments, the fact that it’s been so secretive and not very transparent about what’s been happening on the borders the last two, three years in terms of what’s the state of play, how much territory it has lost, I think it points to how I think nervous they are in terms of opposition criticism that they’re being soft on China.
I think it also explains why Narendra Modi has been reluctant to meet Xi Jinping in a structured meeting, which I think China isn’t very happy about which I don’t think is really an ideal situation when the leaders don’t want to meet publicly. And I think it is limited how India would approach the LAC situation and broader relations with China as well because of fears of opposition criticism.
Eric: There are some very interesting parallels between the situation in India and the United States where there’s no room for concession or compromise because the opposition will say, “You’re just appeasing.” And so it forces the leaders into these more extreme positions. And that’s certainly the case in the U.S. And we see the Congress Party hitting the BJP and also Modi very hard anytime it’s seen to be trying to negotiate. Similarly, in China, there’s no room for concession or compromise either, because if it makes a concession in India, it’s then going to be called on to make concessions maybe on the 10-Dash Line in the South China Sea, or maybe in some of its other territorial disputes. And so it takes this very hard line that says no concessions under any circumstances. And that kind of gets me to where, I just want to start wrapping up our conversation about where do we go from here?
The Chinese have tried to approach the Indians with the mindset that says, ‘We need to separate the border issue from the rest of the bilateral relationship.’ And they want to make it so that we can solve these trade issues, we can solve these investment issues, we can do other things, and then table the border issue. S. Jaishankar, the external affairs Minister of India, has said, “Uh-uh, this is central to the relationship. You can’t separate the border issue from the broader bilateral relationship.” Talk to us a little bit about the different approaches in those two strategies.
Ananth: Yes, I think they’re kind of caught in this stalemate in how they define the relationship and the way to get out of this current situation. The Indian argument is that when they normalize relations, there was an agreement by both sides, and that’s been repeated many times in agreements, bilateral agreements, is that the foundation for ties is the maintenance of peace and tranquility in the border regions. And India’s argument is that by ignoring those agreements and severely weakening that foundation, China has reopened the entire sort of premise on which both sides have been engaging for the last 30, 40 years. So, the argument is, until you restore the situation as it was and follow those agreements which you don’t give both sides patrolling rights, that is very difficult to look at a return to normalcy in other parts of the relationship.
And what do we mean by normalcy? Of course, it’s a bit of a nebulous concept, but I’m not sure many listeners would be aware of the extent to which ties have really been disrupted. Just to give a couple of examples, as we speak, there isn’t a single direct flight between India and China, which is extraordinary given the population and the trade that happens between the two countries. Flights haven’t resumed, which they were originally stopped for COVID, and then India hasn’t sort of given the green light to resume since then, although they’ve been requesting the Chinese side. There’s almost a complete moratorium on visas. No tourist visas are being issued by either side. And I think that was such a key way for people to know more about the other country. You had growing numbers of Indian tourists coming to China and growing numbers of Chinese tourists coming to India pre-COVID. Now it’s near zero because no visas are being given. So it really is an extraordinary situation.
Eric: And no journalist, no ambassador either, right? No Chinese ambassador in New Delhi.
Ananth: That’s a peculiar one because I’m sure India would immediately approve. I think India hasn’t been given a name yet by the Chinese side for 11 months. Whether that’s signaling from China because of its displeasure with the current state, I think that’s it’s a possibility, but it is unusual that they haven’t offered a name for 11 months after the previous ambassador Sun Weidong finished his term and was promoted as a vice foreign minister. I think it’s a very unusual situation. But you’re right that in terms of journalists, there’s been expulsions by both sides. As we speak, there are no Chinese journalists in India. There’s only one Indian reporter left in China.
That’s the kind of change that we are looking at. And I think the Chinese argument, for me, they are right in so much as saying that one of the key enablers of the relationship, the last 30, 40 years, has been separating the border from the rest of the relationship. But what they aren’t actually saying is that separation was made possible by both sides keeping the peace on the border in that period. So, it’s difficult to kind of expect that kind of separation when the boundary situation has been disturbed. And I think that it would really, as I see it, to me, it’s pretty obvious that it suits both sides. The big irony in all of this is I don’t think neither Modi nor Xi are happy with the current state of affairs. I would think that both of them would like to see a restoration of relations. But then again, the problem is now working on a way to find both sides to do that and claim victories at home, which is always going to be hard to do.
Cobus: I wonder if you could reflect a little bit on the role of the United States and other Western powers in this. Obviously, they’ve been really kind of trying to build up relationships with India. And as was mentioned before, that then ends up kind of playing into the relationship between India and China.
Ananth: Yeah, I think it’s pretty clear there always have been strong influences to how India-China relations unfold by third countries. And I would say the United States-India relationship on this side and the China-Pakistan relationship on the other side have always been seen by Delhi and Beijing as major irritants respectively. However, to me, the Chinese sort of commentaries that you see, which blame squarely the United States for the current state of affairs, it doesn’t quite sort of make sense to me, only because I see it as such a clearly bilateral problem. And that’s a bilateral problem deriving from actions taken on the boundary. And that’s something that you don’t see acknowledged much in the Chinese press. And obviously, that would be the case, given that in India’s view at least, it was China that moved into all of these gray zones and decided to occupy them and deny India’s patrolling rights.
I think blaming the U.S. for that is something that you see very widely in the Chinese press, but to me, doing that doesn’t really help understand the nuts and bolts of the problem, which is a fundamentally bilateral problem of how India and China manage the LAC. I don’t think there’s a huge role that the U.S. has played or is likely to play in the LAC situation which I think is the sort of key fact that’s determining the state of relations as we speak, and also the biggest problem that needs to be resolved or at least managed better if they’re going to look at restoring ties.
Eric: Ananth Krishnan is an associate editor at The Hindu based in New Delhi, formally in China for a long time, and now he covers China and foreign affairs all throughout Asia. Again, one of the sharpest minds in the China watching space. Thank you so much, Ananth, for joining us and for sharing your insights and helping us to better understand this incredibly complex situation. If people want to follow what you are reading and writing these days, what’s the best way for them to stay in touch?
Ananth: Well, thank you so much again for having me. It’s always a pleasure to speak with you both. I write for The Hindu newspaper, so you can check out our website for coverage that we have, not just by me, but my colleagues as well on India’s foreign policy and India-China relations. As you mentioned, I also have a Substack, but to be honest, in the last few weeks I haven’t been very regular with it, but you can check out past writings on it. And I endeavor to be more regular with the newsletter which kind of tries to keep people up to date with some context on what’s happening on India channel relations beyond the headlines. That’s something that I’ve been trying to do as well.
Eric: I’ll put links to that, to the newsletter, also to your links at The Hindu, and also to your feed on X. I don’t know if you’re still posting on X these days, but it’s still a way to kind of stay in touch with everybody. So, thank you so much for taking the time. We really appreciate it.
Ananth: Thank you so much.
Eric: Cobus, I had no idea that there are no flights, there’s no tourists. I mean, I knew the situation was bad, but I didn’t know it was this bad. And when we talk about an emergence of a cold war between China and the United States, I think we’re already there with India. I mean, this is what the first Cold War kind of looked like, where there was just such deep suspicion, no contact. This situation is far more serious than I think most people outside the region appreciate. And it’s interesting because the Chinese discourse oftentimes focuses on what the West is saying about China and the debt trap narratives, all of these predatory lending, all this stuff, but a lot of it is coming out of India. And this really complicates the suggestion that we’ve been hearing about this emergence of a new non-aligned movement or how the BRICS is going to be this force that is going to challenge the G7, and all this euphoria, again, about how there’s going to be a leveling of the playing field between the global south and the global north.
And one has to think that if the two largest countries in the world are where they are today, is any of that possible? To me, I don’t think the BRICS can do anything until we see some type of reconciliation between India and China.
Cobus: Yeah. I mean, there certainly seems to be the emergence of some kind of multipolarity, a kind of a messy multipolarity. But we also have to point out that this was a very similar situation in the Cold War too. During the Cold War, like if you read old leftist theory from the Cold War, there was a lot of talk about how if the real problem in the world is a power imbalance between the West and the rest, then these two massive non-Western powers should work together. But they’re not. We see that discourse in the 1960s and we’re seeing it now. It’s a very interesting kind of weird loop back through history.
Eric: I think the Chinese framing of the issue that India now is on the side of the West is also highly problematic and flawed.
Cobus: Yes.
Eric: That again, I think to assign India any role is foolish. They find their interests occasionally aligned with the West, but they’re still very, very loyal to their ties with Russia. They are really the masters of strategic autonomy. And again, this presents problems for Biden as well because Narendra Modi has a number of human rights issues that he has to contend with. And this whole mantra of democracy versus autocracy that we’ve been hearing about from the Biden administration really comes into challenge with Modi. I mean, there’s no doubt about it. He’s controversial when it comes to human rights and the treatment of minorities, particularly Muslim minorities in India. Again, this gets messy very, very quickly. I’d like to shift gears a little bit here and talk about the IMEC. Now, that is the latest acronym that you need to add to your growing list of U.S.-inspired acronyms. This is the India-Middle East Corridor. Did I get that right?
Cobus: India-Middle East-European Corridor, I think.
Eric: Oh, okay. India-Middle East-European Corridor. Okay, there we go. That does make sense. So, the ME is Middle East and Europe. Okay. So, if you’re playing bingo at home, add this one to the chart because here we go again with another massive major infrastructure initiative by the Western powers that’s writing the obituary of the Belt and Road. How many articles I’ve seen over the past week that says, “This is going to be the one that kills the Belt & Road,” and you’re like, “Oh, Lord.” Okay, so here, try to picture this. It starts in India. Now, originally, it was supposed to start at a port on the west coast of India, but now India said they want it to start more inland so that there’s railways inland. It then kind of transcends through 14 countries in the Middle East, through Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, all the way to Israel, interestingly.
And then from Israel, it goes up and into ports of Piraeus in Greece. Evan Feigenbaum at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace took a little bit of joy in pointing out that this whole adventure ends in a port that is operated by a Chinese state-owned company. So, there’s certainly a little bit of irony there. I personally don’t think this will ever see the light of day, and it will never happen. I was trying to think back, has there ever been an infrastructure project, as ambitious as this, across multiple continents, more than a dozen countries, tens of billions, possibly even more of dollars of investment, coordination at a level we have never seen before? Think of the project management to do this kind of thing. And then think about the fact that the Biden administration has less than two years left in office and we don’t know if the Trump administration will come in.
The amount of uncertainty that awaits here. Honestly, the people who put this together, namely the U.S. and the Europeans, do not have exactly the best track record in building large-scale infrastructure in the global south. So, what makes anybody think that they’re going to be able to build something as ambitious as this across all of these different countries? I don’t know. I think it’s more vaporware, to be honest with you.
Cobus: Yeah, I mean, I have my doubts too. The Belt and Road was this historical anomaly, among other reasons, because it was happening in a moment where the state in China became much more centralized and centralized around one person. The main thing for me is who is going to be running it and coordinating it? Because-
Eric: Well, that’s it. I mean, that is a big thing. And capital, too. The money.
Cobus: I do see for the U.S. wanting to, or like insisting on having a central position there, but I have doubts that the other partners would necessarily be so willing to do that. To have it be a kind of, in some way, a U.S.-centric situation. And if it’s not, then they need to set up some kind of governing organization, and who knows what that will be. So, yeah, I’m not sure.
Eric: Also consider the fact that the Ho Chi Minh City subway here, and I’ve brought this up many times because I think it really is representative of the challenges and the difficulties of building infrastructure in developing countries, they are literally just running the first test runs on this subway built by the Japanese. Now that’s very exciting because I think loyal listeners of the show will know that earlier this year I didn’t see anything happening, and you’re like, “Oh my god, what’s going on?” Now they’re finally running test runs. Take into account that it took 12 years for them to build this two-line subway. In Lagos, the new Blue Line is also starting to do test runs. That, too, took 14 years to build. Now, these are light rail subways and it’s taken them more than a decade to build. How long do you think it’s going to take to build railroads all the way across the Middle East to the Port of Haifa? Decades.
Okay? So, this is a meaningless academic debate that we’re having about this is going to compete with the Chinese in the short term. It’s not. It’s going to take them decades to get all this done if they’re ever going to get it done. Secondly, the fact that the Chinese were able to do what they were able to do is because it was in these piecemeal things. It wasn’t a coordinated thing. As we’ve talked about, there is no office of the Belt & Road in Beijing. There is no grand strategy. They just kind of make this thing up as they go. And it’s ambiguous and amorphous and it’s kind of like an amoeba that just changes shape depending on the time and the circumstances that it’s in.
The Belt & Road can be anything you want it to be. That allows it an enormous amount of flexibility. Here we have set specific targets for this massive infrastructure initiative across all these countries. Again, I don’t think there’s a precedent for this type of infrastructure project on this scale. I’d be interested if anybody could show me something comparable to this. People have sent me a couple of things, but nowhere near as complex as this one is. I’d be interested if there’s ever been anything as complex as this to be able to be done. And I couldn’t think of anything.
Cobus: Yeah, me too.
Eric: And again, I think the United States right now is not in a position that it can deliver these kinds of infrastructure projects. When you look at the politics that we have in our country today are so toxic, so divisive, so consumed with punching each other that the ability to take on the Chinese with projects like this requires an all-of-government approach. And when your government is so divided and your society is so divided as we are today, I don’t understand how you can pull it off. And let’s be very clear, there is zero appetite in the American body politic today to ship tens of billions of dollars to build railroads in places like Saudi Arabia.
Now, maybe they won’t have to build it in Saudi Arabia because the Saudis will pay for it, but parts of this are going to have to be financed by the Americans. And that’s a hard sell today when you have the crime rates what they are, when you have schools in the conditions that they’re in, and I think in Europe it’s the same thing. The politics do not support these kinds of initiatives. And so, in some ways, we might have the foreign ministries and the State Department and the foreign policy class talking about all this stuff, divorced from the current political realities that make it almost impossible to execute.
It wouldn’t be the first time. Remember we’ve had B3W. I think PGII is starting to add up to what B3W was. I mean, we haven’t seen anything really tangible. In many ways, the Development Finance Corporation in the U.S., yeah. Congress built the DFC to punch China in the nose on building infrastructure. It hasn’t really moved the needle on that. So, all of these efforts to challenge the BRI, challenge the Chinese, to me have fallen dramatically short.
Cobus: Yeah. I think it also, increasingly, is a pattern, I think, in Western power is just a love for a big announcement and then nothing. That is increasingly the way that Europe and the U.S. is doing business in the world. But then one can then I immediately rush to be like, “Oh, they’re so ineffectual,” which I don’t think is actually the issue. I think the issue is a divorce between the corporate sector in the West and Western governments.
Eric: There you go. That’s the issue. That is the core issue. And then, by the way, that’s not just Western governments, that’s also Japan as well. And so we’re seeing Japan now in places like the Democratic Republic of Congo saying, “We’re going to set up our own supply chains for cobalt and critical minerals.” The problem in Tokyo is the same problem in Washington, Brussels, and London, is that these democratic governments have no way to compel their companies to do anything. So, these foreign ministries, these ambassadors, these special envoys can make all the announcements they want, okay? But they cannot force Mitsubishi to go invest in the DRC.
And again, they’ve proven to be wholly unsuccessful in doing that over the past five to 10 years. So, when we see these announcements from the governments, I think, Cobus, your point is really well taken. You got to see what the corporates are doing. And when you look at what companies like Ivanhoe Mines, a Canadian major mining company are doing, they’re actually partnering with the Chinese in places like the DRC. That’s what the data shows. And then we see Tesla partnering with Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt in Indonesia for nickel. We see LG in Korea partnering with CATL. So, more and more, the corporates do not see their interest to be at all aligned with the national priorities of their governments. Final thoughts to you.
Cobus: Yeah. I mean, it is always fun to see the announcements. But I think, to a certain extent, Western leaders, they make this calculation that they get a certain bump from a big announcement and then if they move on and it doesn’t happen, then it’s not necessarily such a big problem. But I think it kind of becomes a problem because that becomes the thing that they do. It’s just the big flashy, empty announcement. So, it becomes increasingly defined by that, by, “Oh, they’re going to be making announcement, I guess.” Maybe they’ll be building a bridge to the moon. So, there’s a creep there. Well, one of the things that Western leaders, I think, are very, very anxious about is not to lose their norm-setting ability.
They’re really obsessed about maintaining the role that they’ve played in setting out how things should work. For example, what pollution standards should be, like those kind of things. So, the combination of that, and then the big announcements mean that, increasingly, those government’s powers just lives in this kind of weird discursive space with other rules on the ground. That is not a very healthy place to be leadership-wise.
Eric: Just to leave you with this one little factoid — Reuters reported this week that in the six months since they announced the development of the Lobito Corridor, that’s this corridor from the copper and cobalt belts in Zambia and the DRC, all the way across Angola on the Benguela railway to the Port of Lobito on the Atlantic coast, they’ve only had one — only one company has signed a non-binding MOU and showing any interest in this. So, there is no guarantee that if the U.S. and the European Union, through their PGII and their Global Gateway Initiatives, build this infrastructure, then anybody will even come to it. So, this is another challenge facing these governments in doing that. So, only Ivanhoe Mines has signed a non-binding agreement.
The head of the PGII program at the State Department, she held a press conference this week and she said, “Don’t worry about it. We’re all good, everything’s fine. Keep looking forward.” So, we’ll see. But it just, again, I come back to these infrastructure projects are incredibly difficult. And in many ways what the Chinese have done to be able to build large-scale infrastructure, as much as they have, deserves quite a bit of praise because it’s not easy to do. It’s not easy to do. The Chinese are flawed in many other ways with the BRI. We can talk about debt, sustainability, ESG, all these other things, but on actually executing the projects, they’ve done okay on those relative to others in many respects. And I think the U.S. and Europeans are going to find out how difficult it is just as the Japanese have here in Saigon. Let’s leave the conversation there. We want to thank Ananth for joining us. Thank you for listening to the show.
We also want to give a huge shout-out to all of our Patreon supporters for their generous contributions to help make this show possible. Without your support, it really wouldn’t be possible to help produce the work that Cobus and Geraud and Jony and Antonia, and this group of wonderful editors in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. And we’re going to be expanding this year with new climate editors and a new managing editor out here in Asia. And so we’re just so grateful for everybody’s support who helps make this happen. If you would like to support the work that we’re doing and get some of the best reporting anywhere in the world on what China is doing in the developing world, go to chinaglobalsouth.com/subscribe. Sign up for a free 30-day trial. You’ll get full access to our website. You’ll get the transcripts and you’ll get the newsletter that’s delivered every day into your box at 6:00 AM Washington time. Let’s leave it there. I’m Eric Olander in Ho Chi Minh City, for Cobus van Staden in Berlin — thank you so much for listening.
Outro: The discussion continues online, follow the China Global South Project on Twitter @ChinaGSProject and share your thoughts on today’s show, or head over to our website at chinaglobalsouth.com where you can subscribe to receive full access to more than 5,000 articles and podcasts. Once again, that’s chinaglobalsouth.com.
