India’s geopolitical strategy keeps US and China guessing

Beneath the bravado, China is worried. Its economy is slowing. Its real estate sector remains stressed. The US-led West is tightening the screws on Chinese imports.Beijing has reacted by cutting interest rates on mortgages and announcing a slew of measures to reboot the economy. After months of stagnation, Chinese stocks have begun to rise.But Chinese leaders know the days of high economic growth are over. The long-term growth trajectory of the Chinese economy is 4%, perhaps lower, as the population ages and shrinks. China has meanwhile been cut off from US and European markets. Chinese electric vehicles (EVs) attract steep import duties. US sanctions have stopped the sale of advanced chips to China’s semiconductor industry.Nothing happens in China without cause and effect. The tense standoff with India at the Line of Actual Control (LAC) has thawed in recent days for a good reason. On September 26, China’s defence ministry issued an unusually conciliatory statement. It said China and India have managed to “reduce differences” on the LAC. It added that “some consensus” had been arrived at disengaging 1,20,000 Chinese and Indian troops positioned along specific friction points along the LAC in eastern Ladakh.Zhang Xiaogang, a spokesperson for the defence ministry, said at a media briefing in Beijing: “China and India through talks were able to reduce their differences and build some consensus besides agreeing to strengthen dialogue to accommodate each other’s legitimate concerns. The two sides agreed to reach a resolution at an early date acceptable to both sides.” medium nocaptionhttps://eoh.ikan3.com/3sw658_7hzteqpqoj/1kaKIWW8KBMJgK?2qxpm=1ufvOxS-FuPF2xF-XIOVjyob is the master of deception. It built its economy by following Deng Xiaoping’s famous advice to his countrymen: “Hide your strength, bide your time.”While hiding its growing strength in the quarter century between 1985 and 2010, China stole patented technology from US universities and research and development (R&D) centres by stealth. Chinese scientists and academics allied to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) worked in US institutions for decades before returning to China with stolen research in quantum computing, life sciences and advanced manufacturing technology.China’s deception fooled the US establishment for decades. By the time American authorities woke up to the threat, it was too late. The damage had been done. The US, through naivete, had created its biggest geopolitical challenger.India is no stranger to China’s deception. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was an early victim. Seduced by the Chinese leadership’s declaration of peace between the two Asian giants, Nehru embraced the Congress slogan “Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai” (Indians and Chinese are brothers). The 1962 India-China war followed.Nehru’s secretary MO Mathai had warned the prime minister that China historically was cooperative when it was economically or politically weak. At all other times, it was expansionist.It has taken the Indian political establishment decades to fully understand Beijing’s capacity for deception. That is why the ameliorative statements issued by China’s defence ministry aren’t being taken at face value. It is also why just one day after Beijing’s statement implying a thaw on the LAC, India deliberately upped the ante.An Indian mountaineering expedition scaled a peak in Arunachal Pradesh’s Tawang region that had not been conquered before. The team named the peak after the sixth Dalai Lama, sparking fury in Beijing, which claims Arunachal as south Tibet and calls the state “Zangnan”. medium nocaptionhttps://eoh.ikan3.com/3sw658_7hzteqpqoj/1kaWmzbZHs-qDW?2qxpm=2ftRJWXMXPw-Ts1Hi8zOefgze rivalFor China, India is a regional rival which could morph into a global rival. It must therefore be shown its place. But that strategy has gone off-script. The deepening relationship between Washington and New Delhi in defence technology worries Beijing. China sees the future as a G2 world order with Washington and Beijing forming the two poles. India’s rise as the world’s third largest economy before the end of this decade is a complication.The Quad’s mandate to police the Indo-Pacific with close coordination between the navies of the US, India, Australia and Japan has added a further layer of complication.India is playing its cards deftly. It knows the US needs India to counter the Chinese threat in the Indo-Pacific. No other country in the region has an economy and military of India’s size. By agreeing to share advanced aircraft engine and semiconductor technology with India, the US is signalling strong support for New Delhi in its challenging relationship with Beijing.But India knows that if China is a master of deception, the US is an exponent of realpolitik. It does not regard India as an equal partner in the way it does European allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato). To the US, India is a useful subaltern helping police a difficult region. If the China threat did not exist, the US would not share sensitive military technologies with India. medium nocaptionhttps://eoh.ikan3.com/3sw658_7hzteqpqoj/1kaOZyjeFEvbdi?2qxpm=9nqqXygF6vnOs9sCy8RJir failed summitsAs the US and India grew closer as strategic partners, Beijing tried to draw India into a tighter embrace when President Xi Jinping held three informal summits with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Ahmedabad, Wuhan and Mahabalipuram between 2014 and 2019. The summits failed to resolve vexatious border issues. Rebuffed, China’s LAC incursion followed in April 2020, barely six months after the Mahabalipuram summit.China has been weakened since. First, it mishandled the Covid pandemic. Second, Xi attacked China’s private sector, sending the economy into a tailspin. Today an ageing China, its economy caught in a deflationary trap, is weaker than it has been for decades.Mathai’s words ring true: China only negotiates when it is weak.And America? With its brutal history of slavery and displacement of Native Americans, it treats other countries with single-minded ruthlessness. India is in favour because it serves as a frontline bulwark against China, which the US regards as a bigger threat than the former Soviet Union ever was.To the discomfiture of both Washington and Beijing, India’s rise will in the next 10 years create neither a unipolar G1 world order that the US wants nor the binary G2 world order that China seeks but a tripolar G3 world where India will be the balancing pivot.It serves Washington’s and Beijing’s interests to dissuade that pivot from moving too far in the other superpower’s direction and upsetting the global balance of power. It is a unique geopolitical positioning that India’s policymaking establishment must fully leverage as this decade unfolds.Read more from the author here.