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“Sampark, Samvad, Parinam… “Visits, [Contact], Dialogue, Results” was Union External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj’s three-word criterion for success when she recently outlined the ministry’s achievements on the completion of one year by the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government. She also recounted how the government had connected with 101 countries. Yet, of these countries the government has interacted with — 18 of which Prime Minister Narendra Modi has visited — none was as anticipated as his visit to China last month.
Fault lines
Primarily, this visit was to repair the India-China relationship, because regardless of the optics, the past year has been a particularly bad one for the equation between the two neighbours along all the fault lines: on the Line of Actual Control (LAC), across the subcontinent, and in the South China Sea.
On the LAC, a three-month long stand-off at Chumar in Ladakh cast its shadow on Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to India in September 2014. Next came another stand-off over the subcontinent, most visible in Sri Lanka, over the issue of Chinese submarines in “India’s ocean”. Other Indian initiatives such as relief efforts undertaken by both countries, among others, in Nepal after the earthquake there in April; Mr. Modi’s visit in March 2015 to the Indian Ocean island nations (Seychelles, Mauritius and Sri Lanka); or the extension of credit lines to Bangladesh and Afghanistan were, often erroneously, played up in the public narrative as India’s way of “countering China”.
On the subject of the neighbourhood, Ms. Swaraj made it clear that India is upset with the $46 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) “through India”. That Mr. Xi made the announcement of projects in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (an 870MW hydropower project and the Havelian-Thakot highway) just weeks before Mr. Modi’s China visit was in itself both puzzling and worrying.
Finally, there was the fault line that upsets China the most — that of the South China Sea and India’s perceived shift towards the United States and Japan on the issue. Each of Mr. Modi’s references to Chinese aggression and ensuring the freedom of navigation — during his speech in Japan in September 2014, his discussions with the Vietnam Prime Minister during his visit to India in October 2014, his address at the East Asia Summit in Nay Pyi Taw (November 2014), the India-U.S. joint statement in Washington and the joint vision statement in Delhi — have all sent sharp ripples through Beijing.
Warm contact, lukewarm outcomes - The Hindu
