Opinion PM Modi-Xi Jinping meet — balancing hope and realism

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s meeting with Chinese leader, Xi Jinping and his participation in the expanded BRICS forum at Kazan, Russia are generating expectations. But realists in Delhi are cautious in assessing the long-term prospects about both bilateral ties with Beijing and heralding a new global order with the BRICS. The hopes expressed by Modi and Xi for stabilising India’s relations with China are welcome. So is the BRICS call from Kazan to strengthen multilateralism to deal with the growing challenges to international peace, security, and development that have become acute amid the two ongoing wars in Europe and the Middle East. At the same time, India must not underestimate the persistent problems on the bilateral front with China and in building up the BRICS as a major global forum.

On the bilateral front, Delhi is right to take credit for getting Beijing to relent and restore peace and stability on the border after its surprise aggression across the Line of Actual Control in early 2020. The agreement on disengagement announced earlier this week and the meeting between Modi and Xi are only the first steps on the long road to a restoration of the border status quo in the spring of 2020. The separate readouts (rather than a joint statement) issued after the Modi-Xi meeting underline the divergent emphases of the two sides in imagining their future ties. China continues to emphasise the urgency of normalising the economic and political relationship, while India’s focus is on stabilising the border first.

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Four new members — Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates — have been admitted and many others are eager to be associated with the BRICS. The real task now lies ahead, when realism takes over. If the BRICS is about countering Western dominance, it has big challenges in overcoming the imbalance within. The Chinese economy is double the size of all other members of the expanded BRICS put together. At the core of the enthusiasm around BRICS is the idea that India can promote a “multipolar world” in partnership with Russia and China. A weakened Russia, however, badly needs the US to restore a “bipolar Europe”. China has risen and sees itself as an equal to the US; it wants to build a global condominium with Washington. Moscow and Beijing want to leverage the BRICS to better bargain with the US. Delhi is no different in seeing BRICS as an instrument to widen its room for geopolitical manoeuvre. Even as they engaged with President Vladimir Putin in Kazan, Modi and Xi had a firm eye on the US elections and its impact on global politics. That Modi will be hosting the German Chancellor immediately after the Kazan meet and the Spanish Prime Minister next week — both of whom will highlight defence cooperation with India — is a useful reminder that Delhi’s stakes in building deeper ties with the West remain despite the many problems in engaging with the US and Europe.