Why Modi should forge ahead on China despite flak

China has become too important a nation for India to brush aside. Modi is doing the right thing by ignoring domestic criticism and developing a robust but pragmatic engagement with it.



Raj Chengappa 


With the Opposition taking wisecracks about his frequent trips abroad, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his team appear to have gone on the defensive. Especially with Modi all set to fly on another round of foreign visits — this time to China, South Korea and Mongolia between May 14 and 19. Team Modi need not be. As Modi completes a year in the saddle later this month, if there is one area that he has done well in, it is foreign policy. Even BJP leader Arun Shourie, who in an interview to Karan Thapar last week castigated Modi for his lack of clarity on the economy, gave the Prime Minister high marks for the focus and energy that he has brought to India’s foreign policy.

In all his trips abroad and interactions with world leaders so far, whether it be the US, Japan, France, Australia and a host of other countries, Modi’s primary objective has been boosting trade and inviting foreign investments. The hard focus on the economy has had a positive impact with many countries, including the US, doing a rethink on India as an investment destination. The outcome of Modi’s foreign peregrinations though would take a while to register. It has not helped that his government has had a tough time pushing the economic reforms agenda, including amending the controversial Land Acquisition Act that had stifled industrial investment.

What Modi has been careful not to do is to play a zero sum game while conducting foreign relations. So, while bringing India closer to Japan than ever before and re-energising Indo-US relations, he wisely chose not to do it at the cost of antagonising China. When he took over as Prime Minister, Modi seemed to be an unabashed admirer of China, frequently citing how Chinese leaders had wooed and feted him when he was the Gujarat Chief Minister. He went out of the way to greet Chinese President Xi Jinping on his first official visit to India last September, including hosting a lavish reception for him in Gujarat. But Modi got his first lesson of China’s duality (some call it duplicity) when there was a major border violation by Chinese troops in Ladakh even while he was posing for photographs with Xi in Ahmedabad.

It was during the visit that Xi talked about rapidly implementing China’s grand economic strategy called “One Belt, One Road”. Through it, China sought to revive trade and cultural links with nations on the original Silk Road, including those in Central Asia, West Asia and Europe, apart from establishing a 21st century Maritime Silk Road belt of nations spanning two oceans — Indian and Pacific. India saw it as a new name for the old Chinese gameplan of developing a string of pearls to contain India’s ambitions. What Xi was doing was clearly asserting China’s emergence as the world’s second most powerful nation, next only to the US. Modi floated a counter through Project Mausam to revive the old trade routes India had between the Middle East and South East Asian nations, which were also heavily dependent on the monsoon. China is now trying to cleverly merge Project Mausam with its Maritime Silk Road plans and in doing so willy-nilly get India on board with its larger gameplan.

When Modi meets Xi later this week, he would be far more prudent and calculating about what he can achieve on his first visit to China as Prime Minister. By reigniting relations with the US, Japan and Australia, Modi has ensured that China would view him with respect and wariness. But, by engaging with China, he is reassuring them that his intentions are far from being confrontationist. So while there would be no breakthrough on settling the border dispute, what Modi could push for is a series of Confidence Building Measures that would ensure that border intrusions and the tensions that result from it would be minimised.

Modi should come down hard on the negative trade balance between the two countries. While the total trade between the two countries is currently around $70 billion, Indian exports account for barely $12 billion of that and instead, in recent years, it has become a net importer of Chinese goods. Modi, therefore, must insist that Xi gets China to lower its trade barriers, particularly in the pharmaceutical and information technology sectors, so that Indian companies can push their products and boost exports. He should also tell Xi to act more swiftly on the promise he made on his visit last September for China to invest a total of $20 billion in the next five years to boost manufacturing in India. Apart from these, Modi should use the opportunity to discuss important global issues such as climate change and Afghanistan. China has become too important a nation for India to brush aside. Modi is doing the right thing by ignoring domestic criticism and developing a robust but pragmatic engagement with it.