By Brett Daniel Shehadey
Special Contributor for In Homeland Security
This past week Chinese President Xi Jinping toured India and met with the newly elected Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Xi put a wedge between India’s consideration of its interfering in the Pacific disputes and considering Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s vision of a “Security Diamond” designed to contain China.
Xi’s offer was a sell to India: please buy China, not Japan. The pitch was economic as well as political and comes at a timely need for China to venture out into the seas, dislodging itself from containment. The offer was to increase trade with India and to invest a more than $20 billion dollars into its infrastructure over the next five years among others. China is already a top trading partner with India that reportedly is increasing $70 billion per year and with this a growing trade deficit in China’s favor; and in spite of political tension. This deal is meant to be a strategic gesture to win China a landmark regional political footing.
Japan fired the first political and economic salvo at India Last January of this year. Modi recently accepted $35 billion infrastructure investment offer from Japan in early September at a Tokyo summit, just weeks before Xi’s visit to India. Abe courted the previous cabinet in New Delhi and pushed economic ties after India brushed off security commitments. It seems that Modi has done the same with Xi as both Japan and China try and court India’s favor. Japan maybe winning the diplomatic wooing contest by accepting some defense and security agreements but without a formal military alliance. But it was China that drove these two states closer together.
Can such a sincere or happy relationship really work between Xi and Modi? Both of them are ethnonationalist conservative leaders in their respective states. Both are pushing for strong national gains of territory, in which they have multiple land disputes with each other in Ladakh Pradesh (e.g. Chumar). Even while President Xi was visiting Modi’s hometown in Gujarat, there were Chinese soldiers who had advanced there. Modi stated: “Even such small incidents can impact the biggest of relationships just as a little toothache can paralyze the entire body,” according to an India Times English translation).
Beijing extended an olive branch, so to speak, in the recent visit this past week, but New Delhi feels the pressure on its borders and is still very much aware of China’s strategic activity within Pakistan and Sri Lanka which seek to encircle it or support its rivals. A strong objective has been to maintain a presence within the Indian ocean, where some 80 percent of China’s oil is estimated to pass through.
It was previously thought that India would walk a fine line between relations with China in terms of separating economic activity with political and military spheres but they cannot stay separate forever and they are coming together in competing visions of regional leadership under China or Japan.
India may someday soon have to make a choice day regarding which side it is on in the regional political landscaping battles. What is China really willing to give up and offer India? Modi’s response might have been as blunt as, “Sorry, China, but it’s going to take more than one trip and one offer. Please refer to previous Japanese visits and offers.’
Most importantly, Japan does not have the territorial battles and a long history of tensions or a previous war in memory with India. Modi asked China for an established line of control for Sino-India territorial land disputes using strong nationalist language not seen in previous leader’s attempts. Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, who came before him, was seen by many to be too weak on China and Pakistan and the border crises. Singh was criticized by Modi’s controlling BJP faction with a political placation disorder.
Xi is hard-pressed in this case being squeezed from the South and East; especially with Modi being such a hardline Hindu nationalist. Largely, Xi’s effort to involve a greater political friendship failed while his economic overtures were welcomed. New Delhi missed the point of the visit and Xi underestimated Modi’s ideological and political convictions for money. To solidify an assured defeat of China’s recent attempt to purchase Indian neutrality in the Asian hemisphere, and to buy influence to China’s South, Washington might offer India a better deal, utilizing economic and military assistance, while at the same time offering a ‘helping hand’ to India’s Prime Minister a subtle push in the right direction of promoting human rights, stronger democratic as well as physical infrastructure and better strategic relations at this time.
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