Editorial
China-India interactions at the highest levels continue to deepen. Xi Jinping and Manmohan Singh met at the BRICS summit. They will likely meet again in early September at the G-20 summit to be held in St. Petersburg in Russia and in early October in Brunei at the East Asia Summit. Li Keqiang is due to visit Delhi in May. In addition, it is significant that the two countries will also soon be discussing the future of Afghanistan, as the shadow of US withdrawal lengthens.
On the other hand, the relationship has its challenges. The Indian press is reporting a fairly deep incursion by Chinese troops into areas in Ladakh that India claims. Apparently, the new border management mechanism between the two sides has been activated to stabilize the situation there.
A longer-term challenge is river waters. India has once again indicated its unease over the construction of Chinese dams on the Yarlung Zangbo/Brahmaputra River. Manmohan Singh raised the issue with Xi Jinping at the BRICS summit. Since then, India has proposed a joint water commission, an intergovernmental dialogue or a treaty to China, but Beijing is cool to the idea. India’s proposal came after high-level officials from the Ministry of External Affairs, the Defence Ministry, and the Department of Space among others took stock of the river water situation. China has apparently turned down the Indian proposal, saying that existing mechanisms on river waters were adequate.
China-India relations, over the past 20 years, have rested on four pillars: summit level and senior official level meetings, border talks, confidence building, and trade. Trade has perhaps been the greatest success story, going from $200 million in the mid- 1990s to $75 billion a year ago. The recent decline in trade is somewhat worrying therefore, though clearly this has to be seen against the slowdown in the world economy and in Chinese and Indian economic growth.
One of the greatest common challenges facing the two Asian giants is climate change. By all accounts, China and India will be amongst the top 10-12 countries to be affected by global warming. The two powers coordinated their efforts substantially at the climate change summit in Copenhagen in 2009. Since then, there has been little to suggest that they are working closely together. Beijing and New Delhi have called for reform of global institutions and world order. Their own lack of initiative on an issue as central as climate change is therefore disappointing. They cannot afford to take a back seat.
Kanti Bajpai, Vice Dean, Research, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy
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News Reports
Bilateral Relations
On April 20, several Indian media focuses on the Chinese incursion on Indian Territory. Chinese troops have entered the Indian Territory in Daulat Beg Oldi (DBO) sector in eastern Ladakh and erected a tented post, setting the stage for a face-off with Indian troops, as reported by NDTV. Times of India reports that Indian Army officials were, however, not too perturbed about the incursion, holding that it was a common occurrence. The incursion hasn’t attracted much attention from the Chinese media.
The Indian Express reports on March 30 that, in an obvious reference to the nature of China’s relationship with Pakistan and some of India’s other neighbours, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is learnt to have told China’s new President, Xi Jinping, that it’s important for Beijing not to allow its ties with other countries to become an impediment to advancing India-China relations.
The Hindu reports that official sources have confirmed Chinese Premier Li Keqiang’s plans to visit India in May on his first overseas tour after assuming office. The meeting could see both leaders adding to the confidence building measures that have seen a gradual step up since both sides signed a protocol in 2005 to define rules of behaviour along the line of actual control (LAC).
News Reports
China and India in the Regions
India and China today held their first dialogue on Afghanistan in a bid to evolve a joint strategy to deal with much feared possible return of Taliban and al-Qaeda after the departure of US troops next year, as reported by India Times on April 18. Global Times maintains that China and India have similar concerns on this issue.
Global Times has a report on the talks between the Chairperson of the Unified Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist in Beijing, Pushpa Kamal Dahal, and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Dahal advocates mutually beneficial economic growth for both countries.
Reuters reports on April 16 that China, India and Singapore could join the Artic Circle forum. China, India, Singapore and other countries far from the Arctic Circle could be part of a new global forum to widen discussions on the fate of the planet’s Far North, Iceland’s President Olafur Grimsson said on Monday.
The Guardian reports on April 9 that the creation of an International Development Bank by the five big emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, known as BRICS, is welcome but raises critical questions, according to the head of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
News Reports
Business
An Economic Times article reports that China-India trade has declined by 8.2 percent in the first quarter of 2013. Indian exports to China declined by 27.8 percent while China’s exports to India increased by 3.4 percent, resulting in a first quarter trade deficit of $6.31 billion. The recent declining trend in China-India trade has raised questions of whether the target of $100 billion in trade by 2015 is feasible. People’s Daily quotes an Indian analyst’s view that the two countries could expand border trade conducted along 13 routes.
Kris Gopalakrishnan, Executive Co-Chairman of IT bellwether Infosys Ltd, recently took over as President of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII). He discusses the economy and how India’s per capita income can be trebled to $5,000 from its present level and argues that in knowledge-based industries India has an advantage over China.
News Reports
Climate Change
The Indian Express reports on April 9 that Himalayan nations, including India and China, will be affected in a big way by the melting of the ice in the Arctic and the glaciers in Himalayas. This was stated by Iceland’s President, Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, as he asked parties and organisations to hold a dialogue to deal with the issue.
Analyses and Commentaries
Zachary Fillingham’s op-ed in the Geopolitical Monitor states that Sino-Indian relations make for a compelling case study, as their strategic complexity and future importance defy easy explanation. Theirs is a relationship that straddles the entire breadth of geopolitical possibility, encompassing points of conflict and cooperation in the military and economic spheres, territorial and resource disputes, dissonant domestic political systems, and perhaps most importantly, the unprecedented opportunity for two of the greatest development success stories in human history to shape the world of the 21st century.
Frank Ching’s op-ed in the New Strait Times focuses on “Indian Water Week” as New Delhi emphasizes efficient water management amid concern that China’s construction of three dams on the Yarlung Zangbo River, the name of the Brahmaputra in Tibet, may reduce the flow of water into India.
Sandeep Dixit’s op-ed in The Hindu suggests that when India and China sit across the table in Beijing on Thursday for their first-ever focused dialogue on Afghanistan, they will find two major points of commonality – shared interests in mineral extraction; preserving and increasing their influence within the country to, “enable both (China and India) to put their economic plans in motion.”
Jaswant Singh’s recent op-ed in Project Syndicate asks if China, under its new president, Xi Jinping, is undertaking its own diplomatic pivot, parallel to the United States’ “pivot to Asia”? Xi’s first significant international initiatives – making Russia his first official visit abroad, followed immediately by his attendance at the BRICS summit in South Africa – suggest that China may be seeking to place its relations with the world’s most powerful emerging countries on a par with its US diplomacy. Indeed, this possibility is supported by Xi’s recent statement about relations with India, which he termed “one of the most important bilateral relationships” for China.
Journal Articles
Arvind Panagariya and Asha Sundaram compare India’s trade liberalization efforts to China’s in a research paper for Indian Growth and Development Review. The authors find that though greater integration with the global market has created significant rewards for both countries, India still lags behind China due to labour market inflexibilities and poorer infrastructure. The authors recommend that India pursue China as a free trade agreement partner, which eventually might pave the road for an Asia-wide FTA.
Yanzhong Huang examines China and India’s participation in global health governance in a working paper for the Council on Foreign Relations’ International Institutions and Global Governance Programme. Huang outlines China and India’s participation in global health governance both through foreign aid and multilateral cooperation. He finds that though China and India are increasing their presence as global health aid donors, the two countries are still not pulling their weight and are ignoring the structural problems of their own domestic health systems.
T.N. Srinivasan’s paper on “Trends and Impacts of Real and Financial Globalization in the People’s Republic of China and India since the 1980s”, published in the Asian Development Review, focuses on real and financial integration and their impact on trade, growth and poverty in the world’s two dominant developing countries.
Rajesh Basrur’s paper “China, India and Pakistan: Models for an Intermediate Stage Towards Disarmament?” published in the Australian Journal of International Affairs highlights the minimalist nuclear doctrines and practices of China, India and, to a lesser extent, Pakistan. These offer useful lessons for the USA and Russia. But the Asian powers themselves need to iron out the inconsistencies in their approaches, which harbour elements of American cold war strategist Albert Wohlstetter’s thought, if they are to be truly useful models that the bigger powers can emulate.
Conference
The Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (LKYSPP) is holding a conference entitled “China and India: Towards Cooperation between the Giants of Asia”, which will take place in Singapore on April 26-27. The conference aims to provide a platform for debate and discussion between Chinese and Indian academics and policymakers regarding avenues of possible cooperation between China and India in the context of a multilateral, globalized world. These include energy security, environmental conservation, trade and finance, and water sharing.
Compiled and sent to you by Centre on Asia and Globalisation and the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore.
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