China and India relationship

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antiterror13

Brigadier
The relationship is getting more and more interesting. Modi is a very interesting leader

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In his first meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping here on Monday evening, Prime Minister Narendra Modi sought to up the stakes and project India-China ties on the global stage, stating that if the two countries “could amicably resolve the boundary question, it would set an example for the entire world on peaceful conflict resolution”.
Also read: India gets Presidency, Shanghai the Bank
Within three hours of arriving in Brazil’s northeastern city of Fortaleza, Modi drove a kilometre from his hotel to the Gran Marquise, where Xi is staying, for a meeting that stretched from the scheduled 40 minutes to an hour and 20 minutes. Xi too headed to the meeting shortly after his arrival, indicating the importance the two leaders attached to the relationship.
With the two countries sharing a 4,000-km long border, periodic incursions by China and its claims over Arunachal Pradesh have long been an irritant to ties that have expanded in multiple spheres, particularly economic. India’s economy too has grown at a rapid pace over the last decade, and it has found its place at the global high table, becoming a member of the G20 that came into existence after the 2008 financial crisis.
Given the size of the two countries, with a combined population of over 2.5 billion, Xi is learnt to have said during the discussions that “when India and China meet, the whole world watches”.
The meeting, described as “substantive, warm and cordial”, touched on several regional and international issues besides almost all aspects on the bilateral agenda. Modi invoked the civilisational linkages between India and China and their shared heritage to reinforce people-to-people ties.
Both sides emphasised the need to find a solution to the boundary question. The two leaders observed that India and China had enormous opportunities to not only forge mutually beneficial partnerships, but also serve as catalytic agents of Asian and global prosperity.
Modi also stressed on the need to work together to tackle terrorism and extremism in the region, ensure greater economic cooperation and pare trade deficit. He invited Chinese investment in industrial corridors and other infrastructure sectors.
In a gesture that acknowledges India´s rise, Xi invited Modi to participate in the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) meeting on partnership and connectivity that China is hosting in November. APEC, which has 21 member countries including China, Russia, Australia, USA, Korea and Japan, is a grouping that promotes trade and investment in the Asia-Pacific region.
“This is the first time that India has been invited. It is a significant gesture. We will follow it up now,” said MEA spokesperson Syed Akbaruddin.
Xi accepted Modi’s invitation to visit India in September. “We are finalising the dates,” Akbaruddin said. Xi also invited Modi to China. Referring to his earlier visits, Modi
 

antiterror13

Brigadier
And China seems prepared to play win-win game.

China insisted the HQ to be in Shanghai and let India gets the presidency

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After two days of hectic negotiations at the BRICS Summit India on Tuesday got the presidency of the BRICS New Development Bank. A senior government official involved in the talks said the bank will be headquartered in Shanghai.
China and Russia were in close coordination during the negotiations, after their recent multi-billion dollar gas deal.
“The BRICS Bank is an idea originally conceived by India. Every BRICS member is certain that such a bank is the need of the hour, particularly with the Bretton Woods institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF failing to give adequate representation to developing nations over the last many decades,” said the official.
modibrics_475
The four issues that were open for discussion on the BRICS Bank were its name, location, presidency and shareholding. The bank has been formally named BRICS New Development Bank.
South Africa, which was originally pitching for the presidency, withdrew its bid and backed India instead. South Africa sees in India an ally at the World Trade Organisation talks, particularly in areas of agriculture, concessions to LDCs and non-binding issues.
bricsmodi2_475
India has ensured that all countries have equal shareholding in the bank, with equal contribution to the capital.
“Equal shareholding is a fait accompli now. Nobody wants BRICS Bank to end up like the Bretton Woods institutions,” said the official.
The project costs would be based on a formula depending on the economic weight of the member countries. “We have a large number of new big projects. We will gain,” said an official.
The bank will be capitalised at $ 50 billion, with each country chipping in $ 10 billion over the next seven to eight years.
Under the earlier UPA government, India had agreed to China’s demand for locating the bank’s headquarters in Shanghai. “We fought hard for the presidency, and we got it,” said the official.
 

solarz

Brigadier
The relationship is getting more and more interesting. Modi is a very interesting leader

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In his first meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping here on Monday evening, Prime Minister Narendra Modi sought to up the stakes and project India-China ties on the global stage, stating that if the two countries “could amicably resolve the boundary question, it would set an example for the entire world on peaceful conflict resolution”.
Also read: India gets Presidency, Shanghai the Bank
Within three hours of arriving in Brazil’s northeastern city of Fortaleza, Modi drove a kilometre from his hotel to the Gran Marquise, where Xi is staying, for a meeting that stretched from the scheduled 40 minutes to an hour and 20 minutes. Xi too headed to the meeting shortly after his arrival, indicating the importance the two leaders attached to the relationship.
With the two countries sharing a 4,000-km long border, periodic incursions by China and its claims over Arunachal Pradesh have long been an irritant to ties that have expanded in multiple spheres, particularly economic. India’s economy too has grown at a rapid pace over the last decade, and it has found its place at the global high table, becoming a member of the G20 that came into existence after the 2008 financial crisis.
Given the size of the two countries, with a combined population of over 2.5 billion, Xi is learnt to have said during the discussions that “when India and China meet, the whole world watches”.
The meeting, described as “substantive, warm and cordial”, touched on several regional and international issues besides almost all aspects on the bilateral agenda. Modi invoked the civilisational linkages between India and China and their shared heritage to reinforce people-to-people ties.
Both sides emphasised the need to find a solution to the boundary question. The two leaders observed that India and China had enormous opportunities to not only forge mutually beneficial partnerships, but also serve as catalytic agents of Asian and global prosperity.
Modi also stressed on the need to work together to tackle terrorism and extremism in the region, ensure greater economic cooperation and pare trade deficit. He invited Chinese investment in industrial corridors and other infrastructure sectors.
In a gesture that acknowledges India´s rise, Xi invited Modi to participate in the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) meeting on partnership and connectivity that China is hosting in November. APEC, which has 21 member countries including China, Russia, Australia, USA, Korea and Japan, is a grouping that promotes trade and investment in the Asia-Pacific region.
“This is the first time that India has been invited. It is a significant gesture. We will follow it up now,” said MEA spokesperson Syed Akbaruddin.
Xi accepted Modi’s invitation to visit India in September. “We are finalising the dates,” Akbaruddin said. Xi also invited Modi to China. Referring to his earlier visits, Modi

It's good to hear that India is willing to move forward on this issue. Hopefully, a resolution satisfactory to both parties will be able to settle the rancor of the 1962 war.
 

Blackstone

Brigadier
Comment removed. No offensive comments. No need to be gloating over war.:D

Indian soldiers fought hard, but were poorly supported by their government, so the defeat shouldn't be pinned on the Indian army. Also, there were no reports of Chinese troops mistreating POWs or civilians, so there shouldn't be much bad blood. Maybe both sides could look past the conflict and move forward.
 
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clone7803

New Member
It's good for both side.The two sides need to sit dowm and solve the border issure.Plus the 1962 war was a tragedy to both sides,and China-

India shared a thousand years peaceful border,there's no need to break it in our generation.I am only afraid if Modi will accept China's offer

since India has a well known low efficency goverment,they will discuss the issure for years without conclusion.
 

montyp165

Junior Member
It's good for both side.The two sides need to sit dowm and solve the border issure.Plus the 1962 war was a tragedy to both sides,and China-

India shared a thousand years peaceful border,there's no need to break it in our generation.I am only afraid if Modi will accept China's offer

since India has a well known low efficency goverment,they will discuss the issure for years without conclusion.

Modi seems like the first Indian leader in years who has both the will and means to make real breakthroughs, so there's good reason to hope for positive outcomes for all parties here.
 

Equation

Lieutenant General
Modi seems like the first Indian leader in years who has both the will and means to make real breakthroughs, so there's good reason to hope for positive outcomes for all parties here.

Although Modi just started his term in office he seems to me to be more decisive and diplomatic to take on more challenging issues than Singh does.
 

delft

Brigadier
The next step. Ambassador Bhadrakumar on the changing position of India one day before Xi's visit:
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What draws Modi to China
By M K Bhadrakumar

What readily comes to mind are the lyrics of the famous Frank Sinatra song. Watching the "falling leaves drift by the window … I see your lips, the summer kisses/The sunburned hands I used to hold …"

These wistful lines of infinite longing tinged by nostalgia would characterize the American feelings as India's dalliance with China gets seriously under way on Wednesday afternoon on the banks of the ancient Sabarmati river in the western state of Gujarat where Chinese president Xi Jinping arrives and India's prime minister Narendra Modi is at hand to receive him personally.

Wednesday also happens to be Modi's birthday and Gujarat is his home state and the symbolism of what Xi is doing cannot be lost on the American mind.

The widespread expectation in India and abroad had been that the government led by Modi would maintain "continuity" in India's foreign policy.

That was expected to be in the direction of galvanizing further India's tilt toward the United States through the past decade of rule under Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's leadership, who was acclaimed to be the most "pro-American" leader India ever had since it became independent 67 years ago.

As recently as end-July, the new External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj affirmed, "We think that foreign policy is in continuity. Foreign policy does not change with the change in the government."

Indeed, India's political culture seldom admits abrupt policy shifts. Maturity and sobriety are synonymous with continuity in the Indian culture, imbued with respect for the past.

However, one hundred days into the Modi government, it is becoming impossible to maintain the fa?ade.

Navigating through three high-level exchanges in rapid succession through September - with Japan, China and the United States - Modi is casting away rather summarily the lingering pretensions as if dead leaves in an autumnal month.

Modi's compulsive innovation is self-evident. Some of it may be organic, seasonal, locally sourced and even ethnically produced, but the pride in making the events stand out from the past is unmistakable - such as the stunning decision to receive Xi Jinping at Ahmedabad airport.

It seems those who spoke about 'continuity' didn't know Modi's mind, while he himself has not cared to present a doctrinaire foreign policy.

But then, this is still work in progress and Modi cannot be faulted for not explaining his road map. Besides, he's taciturn by nature - except when inspired by the sight of India's teeming millions.

Modi has gleefully inherited the two key anchor sheets of India's foreign policy - primacy on economic diplomacy and strategic autonomy.

On the other hand, under him, there has been a discernible shift in deploying strategic autonomy no longer as a 'stand-alone' pillar but as purposive underpinning for economic diplomacy.

Second, Modi has sifted the locus of economic diplomacy - and India's leanings toward the Western world that went under that rubric through the past decade in foreign policy domain - away from the West to Asia.

Modi is due to visit the US in exactly twelve days from now. But there is nothing of the American rhetoric that used to mark a Manmohan Singh visit to the White House.

An idea was thought of initially to propitiate Modi by granting him the privilege of addressing the US Congress. But it has been quietly shelved.

All this certainly needs some explanation.

The heart of the matter is that there had been a pronounced 'militarization' of India's strategic outlook through the past 10-15 years, which was a period of high growth in the economy that seemed to last forever.

In those halcyon days, geopolitics took over strategic discourses and pundits reveled in notions of India's joint responsibility with the United States, the sole superpower, to secure the global commons and the 'Indo-Pacific'.

The underlying sense of rivalry with China - couched in 'cooperation-cum-competition', a diplomatic idiom borrowed from the Americans - was barely hidden.

Then came the financial crisis and the Great Recession of 2008 that exposed real weaknesses in the Western economic and political models and cast misgivings about their long-term potentials.

Indeed, not only did the financial crisis showcase that China and other emerging economies could weather the storm better than western developed economies but were actually thriving.

The emerging market economies such as India, Brazil or Indonesia began to look at China with renewed interest, tinged with an element of envy.

Suffice to say, there has been an erosion of confidence in the Western economic system and the Washington Consensus that attracted Manmohan Singh.

From a security-standpoint, this slowed down the India-US 'strategic partnership'. The blame for stagnation has been unfairly put on the shoulders of a "distracted" and dispirited Barack Obama administration and a 'timid' and unimaginative Manmohan Singh government.

Whereas, what happened was something long-term - the ideology prevalent in India during much of the United Progressive Alliance rule, namely, that the Western style institutions and governments are the key to development in emerging economies, itself got fundamentally tarnished.

What we in India overlook is that the 2008 financial crisis has also been a crisis of Western-style democracy. There has been a breakdown of faith in the Western economic and political models.

In the Indian context, the growing dysfunction of governance, widening disparity in income and the rising youth employment combined to create a sense of gloom and drift as to what democracy can offer and it in turn galvanized the demand for change.

Curiously, through all this, it became evident that the mixed economies and 'non-democratic' political systems, especially China, weathered the storm far better. Indeed, Modi visited China no less than four times during this period.

Image and reality

Something also needs to be said in this backdrop about Modi's intriguing political personality. He is not really the one-dimensional man that he is made out to be.

The mismatch between image and reality is creating problems for his detractors and acolytes alike in this past 100-day period of his stewardship.

And as time passes, it may become increasingly difficult for the Left to demonize him, or for the Far Right to perform liturgical rites to this celebrant.

Modi's non-elitist social background, his intimate familiarity with the ugliness and humiliation of poverty and ignorance, his intuitive knowledge of the Indian people and above all his keen sense of destiny ("God chooses certain people to do the difficult work. I believe god has chosen me for this work.") - all this comes into play here, setting him apart from his predecessors in India's ruling elite.

By no means was it accidental that he highlighted human dignity as a vector of development in his famous Independence Day speech in New Delhi on August 15.

Nor is it to be overlooked that his emphasis is on attracting as much foreign investment as possible for projects that could create large-scale job opportunities for the people while pointedly ignoring the WalMart as India's pilot project for attracting foreign investment.

One of the early foreign-policy decisions taken by Modi - interestingly, soon after his return from the BRICS summit at Brazil in July - was to draw the 'red line' on how far India would go in accommodating the West's desperate full-throttle push for a new WTO regime.

Modi has so far held on to the firm line that India cannot be party to a trade regime that doesn't adequately safeguard India's food security. The fact is, the lives of several hundreds millions of Indians hang by this slender thread of the government subsidy for food distribution.

The Americans were stunned, because he was meant to be a darling of the multi-national companies and corporate industry and not a 'populist' leader catering to the masses. But Modi remained adamant.

The bitterness comes out in the blistering attacks since then in the Western media about Modi. The Financial Times wrote in the weekend that the MNCs' "honeymoon" with Modi is over.

In sum, Modi visualizes Asian partners to be much more meaningful interlocutors at this point in time for meeting India's needs. Modi believes what he said in Tokyo recently, "if the 21st century is an Asian century, then Asia's future direction will shape the destiny of the world."

China seizes the day

China has shrewdly assessed Modi's national priorities and sees in them a window of opportunity to transform the relationship with India into one of genuine partnership.

In comparison, Japan stalks China wherever the latter goes, but its actual capacity to match China is in serious doubt. Also, in the ultimate analysis, Japanese businessmen go only when conditions are perfect - unlike his Chinese or South Korean counterparts.

As for the US and the European countries, they are yet to figure out a way to catch Modi's attention span with an idea that is attuned to his development agenda.

In any case, the Western economies are still on recovery path and their interest in the Indian market has traditionally devolved upon boosting their own civil or military exports, rather than help India build its manufacturing industry or develop its infrastructure.

In sum, neither the Western countries nor Japan can hope to match the scale of involvement that China is offering - setting up industrial parks, making the creaking Indian railway system work and so on.

The Chinese offer to invest US$50 billion in the first instance for the upgrade of the Indian railways speaks for itself.

Put differently, Modi has redefined India's strategic autonomy.

In the changed circumstances, strategic autonomy goes far beyond a matter of India's aversion toward 'bloc mentality' or, specifically speaking, its diffidence in the authenticity and sustainability of the US rebalance in its Asian strategy.

It may seem a paradox but under Modi, strategic autonomy increasingly presents itself as the key underpinning to create a level playing field for India's partnership with China.

Make no mistake, the opening up of sensitive sectors like railways or ports for the Chinese companies demands a certain security mindset and Modi is surely taking a leap of faith.

The best outcome will be that as India and China get engaged deeply and extensively, they realize that they indeed have so very much in common by way of shared interest while clawing their way up on the greasy pole of the world order, where the lessons of history amply testify that established powers do not easily concede space to newcomers.

On the other hand, an irreducible minimum would also be that India and China settle pragmatically for maintaining peace and tranquility at all costs on their disputed borders without which a smooth and steady expansion of fruitful cooperation becomes problematic.

Therefore, Modi is justified in calculating that either way India is a net beneficiary in this historic gambit to break fresh ground with China. It is, actually, a 'win-win' gambit.

To be sure, there are obstacles. The Indian bureaucracy, the defense and security establishment, right wing nationalists and a public weaned on official propaganda regarding the border dispute - these constituents look startled and disoriented.

But then, on India's political horizon if there is any leader who can force-march them, it is Modi. What gives hope is that his own leadership is vitally linked to his capacity to deliver on the economic front.

Indeed, if he succeeds, India's foreign policies will have changed beyond recognition.

Audacious expectations

The new stirrings already speculate on a border settlement with China in a conceivable future. Up until four months ago, this would have seemed audacious, given that the border dispute is a highly complicated backlog of past and current history. Bold ideas are often born that way.

Evidently, all this will not mean that history has ended. The Indian and Chinese models of development will forever present a fascinating study in comparison and contrast.

The modernization of India's military can be trusted to remain a continuing priority even if the country faces no danger of external aggression.

Equally, India will continue to diversify its external relations and will not put all its eggs in the Chinese basket in the Asia-Pacific.

Most certainly, India's belief that it has a leadership role to play in its region is not going to be bartered away.

However, the bottom line is that these templates of foreign policy could become truly relevant only if the country got rid of the curse of poverty. India's influence in the region and its standing as a global player would ultimately depend on its comprehensive national strength and the example it sets as a peace-loving emerging power by creating a just and fair society.

Thus, through a corridor of time spanning a decade or two at any rate, the development agenda should get unquestioned primacy. This is where Modi is far-sighted in reorienting India's foreign policy.

A big question remains: Will Modi be allowed to get away with his road map for India? The history of the modern world is replete with instances of predatory capitalism by the Western world interfering, if need be, to enforce course correction in developing countries that show signs of deviation.

India, again, is a very big fish in the pond and cannot be allowed to get way easily.

Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar served as a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service for over 29 years, with postings including India's ambassador to Uzbekistan (1995-1998) and to Turkey (1998-2001).

(Copyright 2014 M K Bhadrakumar)
 

Zool

Junior Member
Should be interesting to see if any big developments come from this weeks Xi/Modi meeting beyond economic pledges and the standard strengthening of mechanisms to deal with boarder issues.

India I would say, has the largest independent & free Press Corps in the world. The downside is that most of it is formatted along the style of British Tabloids; Sensational Headlines to grab attention and not always good with the fact-checking.

I think the biggest disservice and challenge to China-India relations are the inflated 'China Threat' articles and editorials that are posted regularly in the Indian Press. It's been like that for so long now that it has polarized much of the Indian Public against true partnership with China and would be difficult to claw back, even if there was a concerted effort to do so.

Additionally many Indian's read of a China that betrayed their friendship in the 1962 war. What does not follow in that narrative is the lead-up to the war and India's attempts to change the status quo and roll back the boarder on China, in what was known as the 'Forward Policy'. So today we see this added strain in the relationship based solely on a misrepresentation of historical facts.

It will be a long road for these two Asian Giants to reconcile. But I think the effort would be immeasurably worth it. True partnership/alliance between India & China would make the current tie up between USA & China on the historical stage seem tiny in comparison.
 
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