#

#

hits counter
चैत्र कृष्ण पक्ष, शुक्रवार, चर्तुथी

News

Surge in Sino-India warmth Economy, elections & Trump  


Date:- 15 May 2018


The two days that Modi and Xi spent together at a countryside retreat in Wuhan were perhaps as momentous for the region’s geopolitics as the day’s show-stealer: the first-ever summit of the Koreas. Clearly, like the two Koreas, both India and China have arrived at a new modus vivendi to coexist peacefully. The trajectory of the turnaround is clear: it all began in February with Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale and rapidly escalated into a flurry of high-level visits, significantly all of them to China. Some were unavoidable diplomatic obligations in the run-up to the BRICS Summit in China. But PM Modi’s extended tête-à-tête with China’s permanent President Xi Jinping, preceded by security czar Ajit Doval’s confabulations in Shanghai, suggests the worm has turned in the Sino-Indian relationship.

It will be facile to characterise the Sino-Indian bonhomie as a coincidence of agendas though there are clues to suggest that is also the case. US President Donald Trump’s trade wars and his security policies for the region have fostered confusion and strategic mistrust even among close US allies, forcing them to define their interests at variance with the US. It was natural for India and China to coordinate their national interests as well as reconfigure other estranged relationships in the neighbourhood such as Indo-Pakistan and Sino- Japan. Beyond that much of the ballast is provided by their respective national interests.

The pact on better management of the border suggests that PM Modi is insuring against a Doklam kind of misadventure during the last summer before the 2019 elections. The South Block’s narrative after Doklam had managed to prevail but a bad press from a future Sino-Indian border standoff has the potential to significantly dent PM Modi’s strongman image. Equally important is the need to jump-start the economy which is possible if China is coaxed into reactivating its earlier promise of massive investment. Beijing too has considerable interest on the economic side, especially after the recent Communist Party conference admitted that China’s principal contradiction was unbalanced and inadequate development. A promising beginning has been made. But its contours will be more sharply defined when the two leaders meet next in June for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit.

Courtesy: Tribune:  Apr 30, 2018