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Journalism of Courage
The last week saw much activity on India’s international relations front, with a picture of Prime Minister Narendra Modi with Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping making headlines globally. US President Donald Trump first wondered if he had “lost India and Russia to deepest, darkest, China”, before putting out a more cheerful post about US-India ties.
While Trump makes no secret of his often rapidly changing opinions, China is more difficult to fathom. What has been the view in China about the recent warming-up with India? An analysis of academic and journalistic articles, and social media chatter, throws up three clear camps.
A major factor contributing to suspicion against India in China’s strategic affairs community has been the growing strategic understanding between Washington and New Delhi.
But Trump’s public criticism of India and the USA’s imposition of “punitive tariffs” have surprised and even shocked a section of Chinese IR scholars and analysts. They have been wondering what the actual reasons for the USA’s trade pressure on India are, and how India will respond. Other questions raised have been if the new India-US equation will mean better ties between the Asian neighbours, and if India will now give priority to the SCO and BRICS over the QUAD.
The softer on India camp
With the Modi-Xi hour-long meeting in Tianjin, the pro-India scholars in China are not only applauding “Modi demonstrating New Delhi’s independence from Washington” but also India’s return to its “strategic autonomy” foreign policy. More importantly, these scholars are now more hopeful New Delhi will join Beijing in opposing the US hegemony.
To many Chinese analysts, it was a welcome “change” to see a section of the state-run media carry positive “India coverage” on the front pages. A popular English language newspaper, China Daily, welcomed PM Modi’s remark made in Tianjin that both India and China pursue strategic autonomy and an independent foreign policy, and the bilateral relationship is not subject to the influence of any third party.
Citing an influential voice on China-India relations, Professor Liu Zongyi, Director of the Centre for South Asian Studies at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, the newspaper said that “strategic perception remained crucial for sustained growth in ties.”
A widely read newspaper, China Youth Daily, published a column by a German scholar Evan Feigenbaum, an Asia expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Feigenbaum observed, “Trump’s attitude toward China now appears friendlier than toward India… From India’s perspective, the rapprochement between the United States and China has become a nightmare. On the other hand, Indians are aware of the US President’s (Trump’s) capriciousness. Consequently, they are actively cultivating ties with other actors.”
The ‘Asian neighbours must get together’ camp
Some scholars have been relentlessly advocating for the past several years that China and India both need to be vigilant against the Americans, who, both covertly and overtly, are working to sow discord between the two Asian neighbours and incite anti-China sentiments in India.
“Their [the Americans] aim is,” Professor Lan Jianxue and Lin Duo point out in a joint commentary, “to tie India firmly to the US chariot of containing China.” Lan Jianxue is the director of the Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies at the influential Beijing foreign policy think tank, China Institute of International Studies (CIIS).
The ‘constant vigilance’ camp
On the other hand, there are scholars in China who do not want the government to give India the benefit of doubt. In a recent article, Li Guangman, a popular foreign affairs columnist on Chinese digital and social media, warned the nation to be “highly vigilant” and “strengthen precaution” against India. Li’s article was headlined “Are we stupid to help India develop infrastructure and industrialisation?” Li went on to add that India had done more harm than good to China, and that since Russia recommended India’s SCO membership, the group had become essentially useless.
On the day PM Modi arrived in Tianjin, Xie Chao, a professor specialising in China’s relations with India at the prestigious Fudan University in Shanghai, wrote a strongly worded column in a popular digital daily. “A major external factor driving India’s shift in China policy is the complete failure of India’s ‘US-China alliance’ strategy,” Xie said. Previously, India had cooperated with the US’s Indo-Pacific strategy in exchange for technological support and international status, but Trump’s transactional diplomacy completely disrupted this model, noted Xie Chao.
Finally, it is significant that the popular opinion in China, especially on the vibrant Chinese social media, has been turning hostile to India. Many seem to believe that India intends to use this sudden “rapprochement with China as leverage to counter US tariff pressure on India.”
On WeChat and Weibo – China’s two leading social media platforms – a dominant trend has been to be cautious about improving relations with India. Many Chinese hold the opinion that “if the United States makes some concessions, India may turn to it again.”
In the comment section of the Shanghai-based digital guancha.cn, widely circulated among the urban intelligentsia, a Chinese reader commented: “Modi is not visiting China but attending the SCO summit. China should not be fooled into thinking that India will become friendly towards it just because it has been bullied by the United States.”
Hemant Adlakha teaches Chinese at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. He is also Vice Chairperson and an Honorary Fellow, Institute of Chinese Studies (ICS), Delhi.
