External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar met his PRC counterpart Wang Yi for the second time in a month on the sidelines of the 17th ASEAN Summit held in Vietnam, the present chair of the group. Both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and External Affairs Minister Jaishankar have been realistic about the intentions of China under Xi Jinping, especially after the Galwan clash in 2020. The Tibet-India border has been reinforced in an unprecedented manner, with new border roads being constructed and airfields across the border being made ready for action, should another attempt be made by the PLA to repeat the mistake it made in 2020. Until now, the CCP leadership has not understood the extent of folly it committed over several decades of not understanding that a stable, peaceful India-Tibet border would have been in its best interests all along. Instead, the CCP leadership has sought to wean away other South Asian countries apart from Pakistan from India. As a consequence, South Asian neighbours of India such as Nepal and Sri Lanka find themselves in a debt trap, because China gives loans that have much higher interest rates than those offered by India, and take away strategic assets in compensation for such debt. Whether in South Asia or the South China Sea, PRC bases are vulnerable to attack by a determined alliance of adversaries, and the time may be approaching when such a kinetic response to PRC expansionism would become essential in order to roll back illegal expansion of land, sea and air spaces through the hostile actions of the PLA, PLA Navy and PLA Air Force. The CCP leadership looks at numerical comparisons, when the reality is that what matters is morale and motivation, not to mention actual combat experience, all of which the PLA, PLAN and PLAAF have a deficiency of, in contrast to the fighting spirit displayed by the Indian military, honed by frequent experience of actual combat.
EAM Jaishankar knows full well that the friendly face of his PRC counterpart is designed to camouflage the actual intentions of the CCP towards what is now the world’s most populous country. Never one to sugar coat his words, always open and direct in private conversations with his counterparts in other countries, the EAM would have reiterated to Wang Yi that unless the status quo ante before the Galwan clash was restored, there would never be the type of relations that Wang Yi offers to his counterpart, a stable, peaceful co-existence along the border. It took an economic crisis to jolt CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping away from the Wolf Warrior language his officials used in interactions with foreign counterparts.
As can be seen on the ground, while the language may have softened since then, the posture has not. Illegal expansion remains on the agenda, which is sought to be realised over several doses, none in the opinion of the CCP on a scale sufficient to provoke a kinetic response. A point will come when such transgressions provoke a kinetic response, and India will be ready, as will other Quad partners Australia, Japan and the US. Wang Yi needs to go back and convince CCP General Secretary Xi that in the interests of a stable and peaceful relationship with India, the status quo ante prior to 2020 needs to be restored.
EAM Jaishankar under the guidance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi would have made this clear to FM Wang Yi, who is unlikely to say such a truth to Wang Yi. The CCP leadership always looks for a softening of stance of its target countries, a unilateral concession made by them to China that will be reciprocated only by more of the same toxic actions, as distinct from words. Which is why Modi 3.0 is concentrating on faster, fairer economic growth while ensuring that India remains secure from external threats on its borders.
MDN