In the summer of 2017, Indian and Chinese soldiers were arrayed against each other in Doklam plateau in Bhutan. The standoff had been going on for more than 10 weeks when the two sides decided to step back. A disengagement was announced. The reason: a BRICS summit to be held in September 2017 in China, where Beijing wanted the presence of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Nearly five years later, history is rhyming, if not repeating itself. After meeting Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar confirmed during his press conference on Friday that Beijing definitely desires the presence of leaders of all the BRICS countries at the summit to be held in China later this year.
Unlike 2017, the dates of the summit have not been announced to force a quick resolution, but the Indian demand for normalcy in bilateral ties is once again of disengagement between the two armies in Ladakh. It is not clear if India is seeking disengagement only at Patrol Point-15 (PP15) or it includes Depsang and Demchok as well. These are the three places on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) where Chinese troops continue to block Indian patrols from accessing hitherto Indian-controlled territory.
After the disengagement in Doklam was completed, the Indian forces stepped back to their routine deployment, but the Chinese soldiers retreated only a few hundred metres. Within a couple of years, as was confirmed by the Modi government in Parliament, Chinese military had constructed major infrastructure and deployed there in substantial numbers. As satellite images show, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is also constructing an alternative road to Jampheri ridge (the 2017 crisis was triggered when the Chinese construction party was blocked from building a direct route).
By insisting on only ‘disengagement’ as a precondition for return to normal ties with China — Jaishankar said ‘de-escalation’ would follow but did not make it a binding requirement — India is in danger of walking into another Doklam in Ladakh. A demand for restoration of status quo ante, as of April 2020, is not even on the table.
This can be either seen as a pragmatic move by New Delhi to find a quick and honourable end to the border crisis or interpreted as a sign of weakness of the Modi government, which finds itself devoid of non-escalatory military options to restore the ground situation to as it existed in April 2020. An Indian Army operation to take the heights of the Kailash range in August 2020, for instance, helped achieve limited gains — disengagement on the north bank of Pangong lake, by creating a buffer zone — but it also brought the two armies to the brink of full-blown war. New Delhi may not want to take that risk again.
Even if the Indian military cannot reverse the Chinese ingress in Ladakh, it has deployed in sufficiently large numbers on the LAC to prevent any further loss of territorial control to China.
Nearly 100 weeks after the crisis began, there is a danger of this unfavourable stalemate on the border emerging as the new status quo, a situation the Modi government is desperately trying to avoid by placing the border crisis at the front and centre of Sino-India bilateral ties. Over the last 22 months, the military logjam has calcified into a diplomatic impasse. Wang’s visit was an attempt to cut that Gordian knot but has ended up hardening the divergent positions on both sides.
Tempting New Delhi
Beijing’s timing of the move is significant as Russia’s war on Ukraine has caused a massive geopolitical churn, putting New Delhi under tremendous pressure to balance its values and interests. A three-point proposal made by Wang in his meetings, not revealed in the Indian briefings, was made public by the Chinese foreign ministry.
The first one is the old Chinese shibboleth, advising India to “put the differences on the border issue in an appropriate position”. New Delhi has rejected this notion outright.
The second explicitly states that China does not pursue the so-called “unipolar Asia” — referring to the Indian characterisation of the challenge from China in the past decade — and was willing to explore “China-India+” cooperation in South Asia. India has resented Beijing’s growing influence in its neighbourhood but lacking deep pockets and project execution capabilities to match China’s, has failed to counter it. Any collaboration with China on infrastructure projects in South Asia is not going to make India’s closest western partners happy. It will end up drawing India into China’s Belt and Road Initiative umbrella. However, smaller South Asian countries may see India as being unreasonable for not entertaining the Chinese offer, which would be highly beneficial for them from the connectivity perspective while keeping them out of the regular ‘China vs India’ fight.
The third proposal asks the two countries “to speak with one voice” so that the whole world will listen. An India-China G2 of sorts. This seems driven by the Indian stance on Ukraine which superficially seems no different from China’s. With an economy five times India’s size and a defence budget four times higher than India’s, China is bound to be the dominant player in such a grouping. An “Asian moment” is a catchy slogan but is unlikely to entice New Delhi, when Modi has consented to attend the forthcoming Quad summit at Tokyo.
Even though the Quad was not discussed between Wang and Jaishankar, this proposal reflects the Chinese interest in nullifying Biden’s Indo-Pacific strategy by weaning India away. In the recent past, Beijing believed that India was acting solely at the behest of the US, which may have been corrected with New Delhi’s non-aligned position on the Ukraine issue. The usually belligerent Global Times had a conciliatory editorial on Wang’s proposals, portraying it as a sincere Chinese attempt towards a rapprochement with India.
Words vs deeds
The chasm between Wang’s words and deeds however suggest otherwise. Before coming to India, Wang made two statements in Islamabad that angered India, one supporting Pakistan under all circumstances, and the other favouring the position of the Organisation of Islamic Countries on Kashmir. Neither was conducive to creating an amicable environment for a visit aiming for a major breakthrough. If China was sincere, Wang would have proposed immediate disengagement in Ladakh to create an enabling climate in which his proposals were taken seriously in New Delhi.
Notwithstanding the Chinese motivations, the latest move from Beijing has added to India’s discomfiture. Keen to quickly resolve the border crisis and avoid a confrontational relationship with China, the Modi government must engage with Beijing. If the engagement with Beijing were to happen within the framework of these proposals, it is bound to unnerve the Biden administration. Washington’s understanding of India’s position on the Ukraine issue was driven by the premise that the US and Indian interests are closely aligned against China. If that rationale comes under a cloud, we may hear very different noises from a US administration that is already uncomfortable with India’s democratic decline and targeting of religious minorities under Modi.
An outright rejection of Chinese proposals will win New Delhi plaudits in Washington and provide grist for Modi’s domestic political propaganda mills. The key, however, will be to watch for Beijing’s response. If China continues to see India through the prism of its US policy, the signs for Sino-India ties will not be good. The seeds of the 1962 war were sown much earlier, but the two sides started hurtling towards a war after Zhou Enlai’s famous visit to India in 1960. As if on cue, Global Times says that Wang’s proposal “not only shows China’s broad mind as a major power, but also is a kind reminder to India”. A threat, couched as a warning. China has weaved its web. India better be prepared.
(Sushant Singh is Senior Fellow, Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi)
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