External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar recently warned journalists against linking present trends in India-China relations with India’s more recent frustrations vis-à-vis the US. There is a strong degree of truth in this warning. Contrary to the prevailing analysis that Trump has induced India and China to improve and repair ties, the bilateral relationship has shown little to no sign of improvement and arguably has even deteriorated under the calmer surface. Let me explain.
At present, the quantum of trends as well as indications of ‘improved’ ties in the bilateral relationship can be divided into four categories. First, a return to diplomatic and economic ‘normalcy’ such as the resumption of flights, religious pilgrimages and border trade.
Second, increasing talk of economic convergence amid a gradual return of Chinese investments. Third, growing peace and tranquillity at the border. And finally, strategic/geopolitical convergences in the age of Trump.
Across all these four domains, ‘improvement signs’ are loud but misleading or chimeral, while ‘deteriorating’ trends are getting more entrenched under the radar.
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Increasing normalisation of ties
This entails signs such as resumption (or planned resumption) of direct flights, exchange of journalists, enhanced people-to-people ties, issuing of visas for businesspersons, resumption of border trade and the sharing of hydrological data. The drip-feed of small but persistent and incremental news pertaining to these developments shapes and reinforces the idea that ties are improving over time. However, this is based on a false causal theory.
The two countries are aiming to reinstate exchanges and processes that were the norm until 2019. However, no one was ever of the view back in 2019 that relations were positive and improving because such exchanges existed. In other words, the resumption of these processes says very little about real improvement in ties. At most, they indicate that the two sides are emerging out of the Galwan impasse—during the early stage of which India sought to downgrade ties and exchanges to signal displeasure and as a form of leverage.
Hence, the above-listed resumptions mark the end of India’s ‘assertive’ approach toward China post-Galwan and a preference for peace and tranquillity at the border and diplomatic flexibility on the global stage. This does not herald a linear progress toward improvement, but the saturation of a diplomatic approach that was meant to be time-bound in the first place.
Growing economic convergence?
Until recently, there was a compelling vision of positive and win-win economic cooperation between India and China in both Delhi and Beijing.
In this view, two rising economies could engage in mutually beneficial trade and investments. This made eminent sense on paper. India needed more infrastructure-building, investments and, more recently, even Chinese manufacturing plants. China had a surplus of the same while also needing access to a growing middle-class consumer market. Calling for an alignment of respective development strategies, Ambassador Xu Feihong recently evoked the same sentiment and called for “jointly enlarging the cake of cooperation”. Even better, the promise of economic absolute gains through virtuous trade could help mitigate strategic differences; it was often reasoned and hoped.
Over the last year, this prospect has faded. China now sees trade with India less from the prism of economic gains and more as a dangerous gambit that could bolster a rival’s manufacturing, technological and strategic wherewithal. China’s newly realised fear of losing its low-end manufacturing base (much like the West) has also reinforced greater restrictions on trade prospects with India—and as envisioned by India’s Economic Survey report (2024). It is notable that the latter was a radical document that proposed an almost sweeping reset of economic ties with China as a medium of economic development and growth.
But just as India appeared to fathom such a prospect, China began resorting to a ‘gloves off’ economic coercion through export controls ranging from rare earths to fertilisers and machinery. Instead of reassuring India toward an economic reset based on tempting future economic gains, Beijing has curiously chosen to highlight India’s active, present and acute dependencies on even limited trade with China.
This indicates that Beijing is not interested in a win-win economic relationship anymore—an implication that India Inc. still has not fully processed. By heightening India’s concerns over supply chain dependencies on China in order to gain leverage over political and diplomatic issues, China has irreversibly securitised the economic relationship. These are not signs of improving relations, but of worsening economic ties based on deepening strategic mistrust.
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Peace and tranquillity at the border
The non-occurrence of a significant skirmish at the LAC since December 2021 is indeed a very welcome development and testifies to the strategic maturity of both countries. However, the border issue that emanated when the PLA advanced through stealth and deception toward key vantage points in May-June 2020 is far from resolved still. India continues to await Chinese cooperation in moving forward to the remaining two stages that were envisioned back in 2020 – de-escalation and de-induction. Meanwhile, buffer zones that were meant to be temporary (as they could have implications on sovereignty if allowed to persist) remain in place – perpetuating limits on Indian rights to traditional patrolling points.
Meanwhile, peace and tranquillity at the surface have not seeped into a more relaxed view of the security dilemma, as Beijing’s strategic infrastructure construction (as well as enhanced military deployments) continues. Most notably in the form of the Hotan-Shigatse railway line that parallels the friction areas in East Ladakh, as well as a planned extension to Yadong (near Doklam Valley). India and China may have talked more ambitiously regarding the need to delineate and demarcate the long-disputed boundary since June this year—marking yet another sign of improvement. But the latest resort, of adopting a piecemeal sector-by-sector approach focusing on ‘early harvest’ (easily resolvable and less disputed areas), suggests the lack of confidence in a politically-guided swap arrangement—the consensus in the early 2000s, as well as the implicit basis for the Special Representative talks since 2003. If anything, talk of demarcating the boundary risks de-prioritising the yet-to-be resolved dispute over the LAC – the bulwark of border stability and mutual understanding since 1993. Yet again, it is hard to identify signs of real improvement over the border issue—which is the most fundamental aspect of the bilateral relationship.
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Strategic and geopolitical
Do India and China share a strategic or geopolitical alignment? Are there signs of improving relations in this aspect? Yet again, the evidence points in the other direction. China’s nurturing of the China-Pakistan-Bangladesh trilateral is aimed at India. China’s focused and systematic (and increased) beefing up of the Pakistan military suggests an increasing willingness to counter-balance India within South Asia.
President Trump’s callous approach to India regarding the purchase of Russian oil has given an opportunity to Beijing to provide rhetoric and diplomatic support to India, which Delhi appreciates. However, the same is not being done out of positive regard or admiration toward India. Beijing logically sees India as the frontline state on the issue of secondary sanctions on Russian energy exports. It makes eminent sense for Beijing to resist Trump via India on this issue. It’s a diplomatic buffer for China, and it also deepens the growing wedge between India and the US. Hence, the short-term appearance of a convergence at the moment suits both Delhi and Beijing. But it is hardly an abiding sign of improved relations.
This aspect was briefly on display when Beijing sought to extract (through likely misinterpretation) an explicit Indian statement regarding Taiwan being part of China in the immediate aftermath of Wang Yi’s latest visit. India has been refraining from reiterating the One China principle since 2008-9 on the basis of China’s increasing claims over the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh since 2007. Beijing’s move was an attempt at ‘resolving’ the ambiguity over Taiwan without addressing any of India’s concerns over Chinese claims on Arunachal Pradesh.
Instead of prizing an opportunity to earn Delhi’s goodwill and trust during its period of near-unprecedented crisis vis-à-vis the US, Beijing chose to exert its leverage at an opportune time to score a diplomatic/strategic victory over India—through the serving of a fait accompli on Taiwan. This is not a criticism of China, but merely an attempt at correctly identifying its strategic approach and priorities vis-a-vis India.
Hence, contrary to widespread speculation of a growing rapprochement or thaw in ties, India-China relations are arguably worsening under the surface.
Oft-touted positive markers tend to grab headlines more easily, obscure or gloss over below-surface contradictions and are overblown via linear progression due to framework errors. Substantive divergences, on the other hand, continue to deepen below the surface and are underplayed by both sides in order to maintain a very complicated and delicately held ‘peace and tranquillity’.
Hence, the real danger of Trump’s growing salvos against India is not a growing closeness between the Asian giants—an easy misnomer to disregard. Instead, the more realistic danger consists of weakening India’s ability to resist Chinese growing multi-domain coercion over the short to medium term, and with real consequences for the future balance of power in the Indo-Pacific.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)