Sino-India Relations
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China has emerged as one of the 21st century's most consequential nations, making it more important than ever to understand how the country is governed. Welcome to Pekingology, the podcast that unpacks China's evolving political system.

I'm Jude Blanchett, the Freeman Chair in China Studies at CSIS, and this week I'm joined by Manoj Kauramani, Fellow for China Studies and the Chairperson of the Indo-Pacific Studies Program at the Takshashila Institution. He's also a non-resident senior associate with the Freeman Chair in China Studies here at CSIS. Today we'll be discussing Sino-India relations. Manoj, thanks for joining us.

Thank you so much for having me, Jude. It's been a while. It's a pleasure always to be with you. Manoj, you were one of the first guests on Pickingology, and I think in a way you were a very important inspiration for the podcast because I had started to read your essential

excellent daily newsletter, which I hope and imagine, and if not implore all listeners to make sure that they're subscribing to where every morning, for me at least, an email comes from Manoj called Tracking People's Daily, where Manoj does an extraordinary job of a very careful, thorough read of the People's Daily and a summary of its contents. But I suspect

Because you've become so adept at doing this, you've become more efficient. And what Manoj does, which I find very helpful, is he highlights just what I should be paying attention to and what I shouldn't. So instead of commenting on every line, I notice you now are able to say, this isn't new. Don't focus on this. Here's the important part. But it is just, I think, essential reading.

So I've already asked you the bio question on that previous podcast, so I'll skip that. Instead, let me go to a question that I'm starting to ask guests now, or I have tried to since January, which is some sort of mental tool or heuristic

that you find helpful for yourself in your daily job as an analyst in making sense of China. And just for listeners who haven't heard this before, this could be anything like some people say China's not a monolith, is a sort of a heuristic, or Xi Jinping puts his pants on one leg at a time. Do you have any heuristics that you use that help you in your analytical capabilities? Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I've been thinking about this. And firstly, of course, many thanks to you for that really, really nice introduction. I'm a little overwhelmed, so thank you. In terms of the heuristic that I sort of think of, and I think it goes back to the newsletter that I do, the idea, you know, I've constantly heard this idea that China is a bit of a black box, and it's really difficult to make sense of the country, particularly given the fact that the media is so tightly controlled, information flow is so tightly controlled. And the more I have sort of engaged with Chinese discourse, Chinese scholars, to some extent Chinese policymakers, I think

the more I get the sense that it's not really a black box. Of course, there's lots of challenges with information flow and understanding what's being said, but it's more like a stained glass window.

where the party is constantly trying to project a certain image. And it's not just for the external audience. It's also because it has to communicate with now nearly 99 plus million members of the Communist Party and the 1.4 billion Chinese people. So it has to communicate. So it has to project certain messages, certain ideas, certain data. And if you can start to sort of pick up patterns or breaks and patterns in that. So if you can sort of see where the light is coming through, through the stained glass window and start to sort of make sense of some of those pieces. I

I think that really helps. You know, you obviously don't have, I don't know what Xi Jinping is thinking while he's putting on his pants one leg at a time, but I do have a sense of what the policy direction is likely to be. Of course, it can change, you know, but the likelihood of things, I think there's a far greater probability that you can understand of how events will unfold. Would you have said it was a stained glass window if we were having this conversation in 2001? Or do you think it has...

become more of a stained glass window in the Xi Jinping period? I think this is more of a Xi Jinping phenomenon, because I traveled to China on and off and lived in the country even prior to Xi Jinping taking assuming power. And it was a different country in some ways. It was easier to have certain kinds of conversations. There were much more frank conversations around, you know, particularly with people who were in business. And I think increasingly that's sort of closing down. And I think there was much more

input because from business folks, from people in the private sector and sort of trying to shape the direction of things. And there was this tussle, but at least you could get a better sense of the country. Today, just from the point of view of access and the ability to talk to people and for people to be able to honestly communicate with you in forums and conferences, I think that's shrunk quite significantly.

even significantly from 2019, which is, you know, I was in China for a conference in 2019. And I felt that post-conference, our conversations were much more robust, much more frank and candid. And subsequently, I feel that that's also shrunk. So it is much more of a stained glass window today. Maybe I'm going to change the question order here because I just stick on this idea of how to understand and conceptualize China.

from afar, let me ask a bit about the China watching community in India. I mean, you are the lodestar to me, not only of India based China watcher, but just a China watcher in general. But to put your India China watcher hat on, talk a bit about the community of China watchers in India. And I'm also curious if

If you could describe a bit the spectrum of views that exist there, is it left, right? Is it hawk dove? Is there some other way to conceptualize the spectrum?

I think that from a community perspective, watching China has become much more lucrative as a business, I think, since 2017, I would say. I think the standoff in Doklam in 2017, in which sort of Indian and Chinese forces were sort of in a standoff over territory, which Bhutan and China claim. But then because Bhutan and India have a special relationship, India is involved in that. That standoff led to really, really vitriolic rhetoric from the Communist Party's mouthpieces, from...

the foreign ministry in China. At one point of time, there were even threats of war. And I think that that period cemented this idea, which I think was gaining traction over a few years, but it cemented this idea that, okay, we now have this massive neighbor next door, which is demonstrating hostile intent towards us. And this is a significant strategic challenge that we face going forward. That catalyzed a lot of conversations, a lot of media coverage, a lot of analysts moving towards studying China.

I think that there's still, there are these sort of traditional bastions. So there's the Institute of Chinese Studies, which is based in Delhi, which is partly supported by the government. And there are a couple of think tanks which do China-specific work. But I don't think the community is still as sort of mature, right? There's lots more work that needs to be done. There's lots more original work that needs to be done. And I think that's one of the things that, you know,

That's one of the goals that I have sort of with my organization. We have a fellowship on China. And one of the goals is obviously to do that, right? To create an Indian lens to look at China.

Now, there are obviously some really high quality people who've done that. And those are usually in the foreign service, you know, former ambassadors who've engaged with China very deeply and they bring a wealth of knowledge. So I think those people have sort of now become much more active right after they've retired. So that's created a much more robust community, but it still needs far more maturity to achieve any kind of sort of depth that we see, say, in the United States on looking at China, right? In terms of what's the spectrum, I think the

you will find a very vast spectrum. You'd find the conventional hawks, largely from perhaps the military domain, who dealt with China militarily and who, you know, handled difficult situations. And of course, the 1962 war that India lost against China is something that's imprinted on our psyche. So that I think leads to sort of hawks having the sense of, you know, and then the narrative around that war was that

this was China's perfidy. The war happened because China betrayed its promises, as much as it is domestic criticism of the government at that point of time.

But that sense of China being untrustworthy and therefore somebody that's an entity that you can't take at face value. I think that's very deeply embedded in the sort of hawkish community. Then, of course, you have the more sort of dovish community, which looks at India and China as these great civilizations, which have historically had a very peaceful engagement, actually very little communication historically, except for a little bit of Buddhism. In fact, and one of the reasons, of course, why that communication has been so limited is because we have a national barrier, which is the Himalayas.

But there's this community sense that, you know, we are these ancient civilizations, we are powers of Asia, and we've been suppressed, you know, through colonialism. And this is a moment where the Asian century can rise. So you've got that spectrum of views. And then I think you've got sort of this middle rung of people who might call sort of realists. And I think I fall into somewhere in that category where

We look at China and say, look, it's this mammoth neighbor next door. It's a significant economic partner. We have $130 billion worth of trade with China. A significant amount of Chinese imports contribute to foreign value added to our exports. You need to engage with China. And it's obviously a massive military power, which is next door in the continent, but also in the maritime domain, increasingly. You need to deal with this country. You can't wish it away. And it's a geographic neighbor. You can never wish it away.

So we will need to find ways in which to arrive at a modus vivendi.

Now, what pathway we take to that modus vivendi depends on a number of factors. Sometimes that requires you to have far more investments and deterrence. Sometimes that requires you to impose barriers. And sometimes that requires you to engage. I would recommend that in generally, we should engage much more. That's how I would sort of look at the spectrum of a set of people who would be generally deeply suspicious to a set of people who generally be somewhat romantic to a set of people who would somewhere fall in between and say, look,

It's not going to be easy, but we need to manage this challenge. You follow the debate and discussion here in the United States quite closely. Can I ask you, are there elements of the discussion here which seem as if they're occurring on a completely alien planet, either because they just don't resonate with how India is thinking about China or because they feel just too insular-ish?

Or unrealistic to you? I mean, I think that folks in the U.S. do have, again, it's because of geography in large part, but folks in the U.S. do have a certain luxury of dealing with China from a distance.

So I think the realization of what are the costs of the PLA becoming much more aggressive and what could be, therefore, considerations that, say, Indian or other policymakers in other parts of Southeast Asia might have to make because they have to, you know, and Wang Yip does this very well, right? Whenever he goes out to Southeast Asia in particular, he does make a point to say this, that, you know, those far away will stay far away and we are neighbors, you can't wish us away.

So I think that that's one thing that, I mean, I wouldn't be critical, but I would say that I think there's an increasing appreciation of that, not just in the US, but also in Europe. I think in the aftermath of the Ukraine war, there was a lot of friction in 2022. And I think that there's been effort put by all sides to try and understand these positions. I think that some of the discussion in the United States around blocking all engagement with China, to me, seems, if you pardon the phrase, it seems foolhardy, right?

You need to engage. It's the second biggest economy in the world. It's a key trading partner for you. You will need to engage with China, even for strategic issues like climate change. I think that the Biden administration has done a good job in trying to balance this

friction between the need to engage economically, but to de-risk. It's always going to be very ungainly to do this because there's no clear, simple mathematical model that you can follow. You know, it has to be case by case, sector by sector. But I think some of the discussion that you hear in particularly among lawmakers in the United States seems absurd. I think that in comparison, if I was to make a comparison, I think that in India,

We've had our moments of craziness. So there was this moment after in 2020 when the violence erupted in eastern Ladakh and in Galwan and 20 Indian soldiers died. Yes, there was a moment of outrage and howling and, you know, people coming on the streets and throwing their television sets, which are apparently made in China, from their windows as a mark of protest. I would never advise people to do that. But, you know, doing some of these things...

Fair enough. But I mean, you see that sort of sense of craziness, but also I think you see that the public debate, the serious debate, has subsequently come down to the fact that we need to de-risk, but we need to de-risk ourselves.

while keeping into account the fact that we can't decouple. And I think we hear this even in government. And that, to me, is encouraging. So I think that amongst policymakers, there's far more nuance because you're hearing this from businesses. So I don't see necessarily Indian policymakers sort of going off, like, say, when I hear people in the U.S. Congress. I think that is one distinction that I would draw.

And I completely take your point on the luxury of distance. I would say though, it feels like while we are far away, there are issues like the Taiwan Strait or Second Thomas Shoal, where of course, we're very, very close. But I completely take your point. And I think we've seen that it's actually been some of China's immediate neighbors, India, Japan, certainly, who have been clear-eyed on China much earlier than we are. But on the same hand, as you say, your neighbors...

And so that permanent tension with China comes at a great cost. Manoj, let me, again, there is a substantive part of this podcast where I want to ask you about Chinese views on India to try to stay within the mission statement of this podcast. But again, because I find you such a keen observer,

contemporary events. I wanted to ask you, we're recording this on July 10th. Modi was seen hugging Vladimir Putin in Moscow just yesterday. So can you describe what the calculus of Modi here in going to Moscow, bear hugging Putin, which Xi Jinping, of course, did on his last meeting with Vladimir Putin?

I think, of course, in the United States, there's this hope that India will be a key strategic partner in the long-term competition with China. And in many ways, it is and has been and will be. But in other ways, we keep being reminded over and over and over again that India has a very independent foreign policy that does not neatly align with US expectations or values. So can you talk a bit about the strategy for Modi in this trip to Russia?

So firstly, on the hug, I think he hugs everybody. I don't think he makes distinctions between hugs. So I wouldn't, I wouldn't be too much of a hugger.

Yeah, so I wouldn't read too much into the hug. I think that that is part of his style of diplomacy more than anything else. Of course, it plays horribly on TV screens, you know, on CNN, when you've got a missile hitting a children's hospital. So of course, it plays horribly. And I don't think there's any way to get around that. I think that it's been a case where India has looked at Russia, India looks at Russia from two or three sort of lenses, right? The first is that

There is this historical proximity that we've had, you know, the legacy of the Soviet Union at a point of time where India needed support. And I think that that exists, but it's increasingly faint. There's this sort of warm and fuzzy sense of that, but it's increasingly faint.

What has increasingly happened is that India has looked at the world and said, if we need to be multi-aligned, if we need to have that strategic autonomy that we're talking about, we need to have multiple sources of different kinds of support, right? We need to have different kinds of partnerships. And I think that over the last 15 to 20 years, there has been an effort,

to try and reduce your military dependence on Russia. Russia is one of India's biggest suppliers, not just in terms of, say, missile defense systems, but also your basic guns and ammunition and things like that. So there's been this increasing effort, tanks, guns, ammunitions, jets,

There's been an increasing effort to sort of diversify on that. And I think that's happened with, as over the last 20 odd years, partnerships with the United States and France and Japan have improved. So you've seen some of these things start to take place. And our dependency on Russia has started to reduce. Now, it's still not going to go away anytime soon. So that's one important factor that India needs to keep in mind while it maintains a close relationship with Russia. That's what the policymakers tend to think about.

The other thing is that when India looks at Russia, it looks at a state with which it has no fundamental conflicts of interest. Yes, the West and Russia have this conflict of interest. They have a conflict of values. But it looks at Russia and says, look, it's not a territorial neighbor, really. I have no fundamental historical conflicts of interest with it. And in most cases, there has been a supportive partner that I have found in Russia. And I think that is something that sustains Russia.

The third, increasingly what we see right now is that if India looks at Central Asia, Afghanistan as domains of competition and domains where it needs to expand its influence,

In the continental sort of domain, it sees Russia as a valuable partner, particularly as China makes increasing inroads. And that also sort of stokes some degree of anxiety for Russia, where China has become a more significant player in Central Asia. I mean, there's a reason why India and Pakistan joined the Shanghai Cooperation Organization at the same time. The Russians want India to be in that grouping, to act as a balancer. At the same time, I don't think the grouping is necessarily terribly beneficial to India. And

And I think that that sort of re-evaluation needs to happen. So for an example, a couple of years ago, once after the US exited Afghanistan, there was a SEO foreign ministers meeting, which took place, I can't remember in which country in the Central Asia. And at that meeting, you had a subgroup meeting on Afghanistan, which basically had all SEO foreign ministers except for India.

So I think that there is a certain sense that we know we're not necessarily fitting here well, but we feel we need to be here because we need to be at the table for some of these conversations. Now, the question is, are you going to be at the table? But I think you need to be at the table because you feel that these are influential actors in this region.

I think that's predominantly where India looks at Russia from. I think there is some growing unease. Of course, the war in Ukraine has created unease. And I think that's evident. Soon after the war, there was a discussion in the Indian parliament where they talked about not just support for Russia. And you saw Indian parliamentarians, the Congress Party's Shashi Tharoor, who served at the UN previously. He was quite categorical that if we have friends and if we can't be honest with our friends about the mistakes that they're making, then what's the point of this?

of this. Likewise, you had members from the BJP who were quite critical of Russia, maybe not blunt, but fairly critical. And you had lots of members of parliament who raised questions about

Well, how long can we rely on Russia, particularly given the drain on its own resources with the war, particularly its military resources and its proximity to China? So you see that these conversations and stressors are happening in India, right? You're having these stressful conversations in India around the relationship. But I don't see a fundamental break in the relationship anytime soon. Where does, in Modi's calculation...

of how to position the partnership with Russia. Where does the relationship with the United States come into play here? Are there things Modi would like to do with Russia that he is not because he is thinking about the relationship with the US or does the US just not factor in?

No, I think the US factors in significantly. And I think this was evident as soon as the Ukraine war started. And we had visitors from the US, from the Biden administration talking to India about its oil purchases. And you ended up with some sort of a modus vivendi between the United States and India, where the United States was okay with India purchasing oil and then refining it and then eventually selling it back to Europe. There are these conversations that are happening. And there is significant consideration given to American interests and American concerns. I think that

I mean, if I was to put the sort of public rhetoric aside, I think that there is a far deeper conversation that the US and India have been having on India's relationship with Russia and generally the concerns that India might have with regard to an isolated Russia and what that might mean in terms of Russia's dependence on China and what then that means for India's security.

So I think that there is some of these conversations that are taking place. And I think Secretary of State Blinken has, in several meetings with the Indian foreign minister, actually acknowledged some of this fairly obliquely, but he has acknowledged this. So I think that I would put the India-Russia relationship in a very different bracket than the India-US relationship.

I think the India-US relationship is the most significant relationship for India's developmental, political, international rise and all the objectives that it has for India as a developed economy and developed country and an influential international actor. It's a critical relationship. The Russia relationship, to me, increasingly, is a bit of history, but also a lot of convenience.

One final current event, and then we'll shift to talking about Sino-India relations, which is your assessment of how Beijing is processing the recent trip to the DPRK by Vladimir Putin. Well, I mean, I think they didn't say much. And I was not the earliest reporter from Bloomberg asked a really interesting question at the Foreign Ministry's press conference that, you know, you don't have a problem, but you have a problem with NATO and other Cold War alliances, but not with North Korea and Russia engaging, reviving a Cold War alliance.

I think that there is anxiety and I think that there is concern. And why would there not be? North Korea engages with another benefactor, which is to whatever its capacity might be today, but it is engaging, it is providing a certain commitment. It potentially allows the DPRK much more room to maneuver. I'm sure that there's a certain amount of annoyance with

that. Just like I think that there must be a certain amount of annoyance in Moscow around Chinese engagement with Central Asian countries. The fact that Chinese energy linkages with Central Asia might reduce their dependence on Russia and has potentially reduced some of the dependence on Russia impacts Russian influence. So I think that there is a lot of

frustration and there must be a lot of frustration and annoyance on either side. Yet, as long as the broad goal and the strategic objective aligns for both of them, as long as those T's are crossed and I's are dotted, I think the relationship remains stable. I mean, I think the one thing that I think about Russia and China is what happens to this relationship of Xi Jinping and Putin? Sergey Lavrov visited Beijing, I think a month or so ago. And

And in one of his comments to Wangi, he talked about how the public opinion foundation needs to be strengthened, you know, and he talked about how this is essentially leader driven. You know, the implication of what he was saying was that. And I think that it's a bit telling that the foundation of the relationship, while there are lots of alignments of interest, might not be as strong as one assumes. I agree.

I have to say that Putin's trip to DPRK and especially his trip to Vietnam as a part of that have caused me to reevaluate some of my mental map of the China-Russia relationship. And I think I come down where you are, which is

There is a high degree of broad strategic alignment in the relationship. I think the deep shared cynicism and frustration with a global order that in many ways was created and still largely controlled or defined by the West, deep hostility towards US quote unquote hegemonic power.

I also shared interest in, as the Chinese say, being back to back with Russia. We no longer have to think about, as long as our relationship goes well, that relieves a great amount of strategic pressure on our very long border. So I think that's true, right? That framework and the close personal relationship between Xi Jinping and Putin matters. That being said, I feel like something is happening now, which I'm not sure I'll know the broad implications for a while. I

I think China prefers to manage its relationship with the DPRK and Russia distinctly and separately. I don't think it wants to be managing this new amorphous partnership between the two. I think Putin's trip to Vietnam was very interesting. Vietnam, not exactly a close partner of China's. And Putin on that trip talked about creating, quote unquote, sustainable security architecture.

China doesn't want another power coming into Asia and talking about building security architecture. That's China's monopoly, or it sees it as its monopoly. And so I think Putin and Kim were saying to China, we have options here.

You don't determine our fate. And so to me, it's high level strategic alignment, but jockeying for interest at a lower elevation in ways that are going to create these moments of disalignment. So yeah, it feels like this has just entered a new, more interesting chapter, not one that's going to lead to a Sino-Soviet split 2.0, but certainly highlights some of the limitations in the relationship.

Yeah, I agree. Okay, let me, I want to go to more directly Sino-India relations. Let's just start with your assessment of where we are now. You've already mentioned Doklam 2017. We talked about Eastern Ladakh 2020. So these big significant moments putting a lot of downward pressure on the relationship. Have things recovered or are we still at a new structural low? I think that we're still at this new structural low. We are still working to try and find out

what a new modus vivendi will be between these two sides. And I don't see, even if we end up with some sort of an agreement in Eastern Ladakh, so just for people who might not know what's happened in Eastern Ladakh in 2020, May 2020, the PLA came in for drills in Tibet and then they sort of occupied certain domains, certain areas,

which were across the line of actual control between India and China. The line of actual control is something that is fuzzy because it's never been demarcated or delineated. It's sort of customary in some ways. Also, neither side has publicly put out what their actual territorial claims are. There was a process of this conversation of trying to share maps 12, 13 years ago. The Indian side, from what I understand, had shared a map with the Chinese side. And the Chinese side looked at it and said, no, thank you, we're not going to be doing this.

So we don't really have public claims. China has a 1959 claim line that it talks about. But again, think of a map in 1959 and lines drawn on that. What do they actually mean on the ground, given the scale of the map also? So I think that when the PLA sort of came into certain areas, it came into areas which it said were sort of its domains. And they blocked Indian patrols where they used to customarily go.

That led to friction, that led to a standoff. There was negotiation over trying to disengage because both forces were eye to eye. And in one such disengagement, you ended up with a situation where 20 Indian soldiers and at least publicly acknowledged four Chinese soldiers died.

This was the first death on the boundary between India and China since 1967. So it tells you a little bit about how, despite a war in 1962, both sides have managed the boundary without necessarily deploying significant resources. Part of the credit for that goes to just the terrain. It's horrendous terrain, mountainous, cold, very rough. And in some parts, it's marshy, horrible to get to.

But of course, infrastructure has been developed over the decades, particularly from the Chinese side, which has made these encounters much more frequent. So that's where 2020 took place.

Now, where we are today is that there were a bunch of friction points where both forces were eyeball to eyeball. All of them, you've had disengagement, except for two friction points where the Indian side has claimed that you blocked our access to customarily where we used to go. There is dialogue going on for disengagement at the military level. At the military level and the foreign ministry level, where they have a mechanism called the Working Mechanism for the Bounties, or WMCC, which has been talking. There's been no political dialogue.

So Narendra Modi and Xi Jinping have not really spoken formally since October 2019. Since then, there's been just a couple of sort of exchanges of letters during COVID and during the 70th anniversary of the bilateral relationship. And a couple of informal conversations at the sidelines of the G20 in Bali and the BRICS, I think, last year in South Africa.

which have not yielded any substantive outcomes. So dialogue essentially at all levels is frozen, except for at multilateral levels. India and China meet and talk at the SEO, they talk at BRICS, they talk at the UN, but they don't necessarily engage bilaterally in that sense. Also, visas, people-to-people engagement, there are no direct flights between India and China anymore. So you're not really engaging with people anymore. The Chinese constantly complain that they're not getting visas to visit India. Indians constantly are increasingly complaining about hostility.

when Indians visit China. There's also a sense that India, I think after the Galwan Valley clash, which led to the deaths, India took sort of a series of steps which targeted Chinese technology firms, Chinese apps, which are functioning in India, increasingly Chinese fintech companies, also Chinese mobile phone companies, which manufacture in India. So a lot of them have been sort of either banned, restricted,

Or there is investigations against them on money laundering and things like that, or fraud. So that's a range of things that's going on. At the same time, India has been open to, say, India's keen to attract the Apple supply chain in India. So we've been open to giving green lights to Chinese suppliers of Apple who come and set up shop in India. So it's been very selective sort of effort at de-risking. There's also an acknowledgement that, yes, you need to be, trade has still grown despite all these restrictions. Like I said, we're at about $130 billion. The trade is growing.

incredibly skewed in China's favor. The trade deficit is around $100 billion. So it's a significant relationship, but it's also a relationship which is deeply skewed in China's favor. So that's where we are at currently, where I think India looks at China as a strategic challenge, as a threat.

but also as a partner that you need to engage with economically because you need to have access to intermediate goods in particular if you are going to become a manufacturing powerhouse potentially in the future. So I think that that dichotomy, I think, still exists in the system. But on the boundary, there is still talk of disengaging finally from the remaining friction points.

After that, the process has to entail de-escalation. What that means is that when the conflict started, when the standoff started, both sides brought up about 50,000, 60,000 troops to the front lines who still remain there. You need to send them back to their bunkers. It's a difficult process to do all of this because the terrain is very different on the Indian side and the Chinese side. So if your agreement for disengagement is that, okay, from this friction point, you're going to go back 20 kilometers, I'm going to go back 20 kilometers.

When tensions rise, the Chinese can deploy much faster through those 20 kilometers than we can. So you need to have different mechanics for that. That's where the conversation is currently. If you get full disengagement, then potentially you get de-escalation. And then you need to renegotiate new protocols because our established protocols from the late 80s to the 90s to the 2000s have essentially been violated by Beijing. So you will need to have new protocols.

You've mentioned engagements at multilateral domains. Can you talk about two prominent ones that both China and India are members of, or Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which of course just met in Kazakhstan, and then the BRICS. How should we think about the trajectory of BRICS and SEO

as it relates to having both China and India inside of them? Does that magnify the influence and potential of these, or does that actually act as a natural break? I guess it depends on who's looking at it. I think the way I look at it,

The SEO is fundamentally meaningless. It has certain utility in terms of security for China and its periphery, terrorism, and perhaps some degree of trade linkages. From an Indian point of view, it opens certain doors into Central Asia. But I don't think that it's necessarily an effective security organization or cooperation organization. I don't think it achieves that much.

Yet it has a narrative amplification that I think because of the presence of India and China and Russia, there is a certain narrative application, particularly in the West. BRICS, I wrote about this last year when the BRICS was expanded. There was a certain, there's very little that the BRICS has achieved apart from providing again, a certain philosophical narrative sense that there are alternate models and alternate power centers in the world apart from the West.

I think that it has done relatively successfully with actually investing very little resources. You know, the BRICS, the Contingency Reserve Fund, the New Development Bank, these are some of the achievements that it has had. But if you consider what the New Development Bank does in terms of investments, visa, visa, established multilateral institutions in the West, it's very little, right? It's not necessarily significant. It does potentially, and the expansion did bring Iran, Saudi Arabia. If we can see something new on energy, perhaps the BRICS might have more momentum.

But I don't think it necessarily is. I think the expansion makes it more incoherent. And I think during the expansion, there was a lot of friction. There was a lot of friction from what I understand in terms of who would be entering the grouping. For example, why on earth would Bangladesh not be an emerging economy that should be part of the BRICS? It is probably one of the best economies in our region right now.

now. And it wanted to be part of that, right? There is no clear parameters. I mean, India had talked about the fact that, and I think this was a nice stalling tactic when the expansion discussion was going on, that we need to have clearly defined parameters, knowing fully well there are going to be no clearly defined parameters. This is a creation of Banker's imagination, which has then sort of had some political life breathed into it.

So I don't necessarily see the BRICS as that coherent, a big challenge or anything like that. I also think that the expansion and particularly friction between India and China makes it far more incoherent. India and China are the biggest economies in the BRICS and they are at odds. And India is, and both, I mean, increasingly even in China, you've seen from India a significant signal of downgrading the SCO. Last year, India was a chair.

And that was the only summit that was held virtually. And this year, the prime minister chose not to travel. So I think there's a significant effort in trying to signal that this is not a priority for us. You've been looking at a lot of the Chinese...

expert assessment of Sino-India relations and just looking at India and India's foreign policy. Could you summarize? I know there's a lot of views out there and a lot of different academics and institutions that are looking at this, but what strikes you about Chinese expert commentary about either Sino-India relations or just India's foreign policy? I think there are two things that I'd say. One is that, and this is not surprising because it's the worldview that seems to be existing in Beijing. It's very US-centric.

You're looking at India traveling through DC. You're not really looking at India as an autonomous actor, which has its own sets of interests. Predominantly, the argument is that China needs to construe of its relationship with India in the context of its competition with India. That's really China's big shortcoming, isn't it? And this is one that's so blatant when you see them look at Japan, when you see them look at Europe, when you see them look at Philippines, as they just

cannot disentangle these individual countries from great power competition with the US. Yeah. I mean, increasingly, the more research one does in Indian-China's diplomatic engagement, the more you see that this has been historically one of the challenges, even in the 50s, given the US's engagement with Tibet. This was one of the sort of senses that Beijing had, that I have this framework when I look at how Chinese discourse talks about India. There are sort of seven imaginations of India in Chinese discourse. And of course, there can be more, but

I sort of take it seven. You have this sense of India historically being this inheritor of imperial power. You know, the Indian state, modern Indian state was sort of the inheritor of the British Raj and its legacy. The Indian, first Indian Prime Minister Nehru was popularly known in Beijing and in the People's Daily as the running dog of the imperialists.

You have this concurrent sense of India being this great historical civilization and, you know, Buddhism and so on and so forth. The sort of colonial inheritor today aligns with some degree of this idea of India being a vassal of the United States or an appendage of U.S. power in the Indo-Pacific and potentially a tool for the U.S. to sort of contain. There's one discourse around India potentially being a strategically autonomous actor, partly because

It's a non-Western power. It's an Asian power. It has unique views and it's a historic, it's a great civilization. So you have that sort of combining together to say that, yeah, there is a certain amount of strategic autonomy, particularly when the restriction between India and the United States around Russia, you will see some conversations in China that, hey, look, India does act independently. Although then immediately that pivots to concerns around what is Putin doing by engaging with India so closely.

Then, of course, you have a couple of more, which are like, you know, the idea of India being this developing world partner, this global South partner. And that, I think, is increasingly diminished. And you see far more competition in Chinese discourse around that. And finally, the idea of, you know, and this, I think, has died its peaceful death, the idea of both countries being emerging economies that can potentially shape a new world order. I don't think that you hear that as much anymore. I mean, there was a point of time in 2007, 2008, where the

The phrase chindia used to be quite popular. We'll no longer hear it anymore. So I think that that's sort of a nutshell of how Chinese analysts view. But I think the two big things that I take away is one is that there's a predominant perspective, which is rooted in competition with the United States.

The second bit is increasingly with this current government in India, which has been in power since 2014, Hindu nationalism in India makes it somewhat aggressive and expansionist and therefore it's challenging Beijing's red lines. I don't agree with that. I don't think if tomorrow, you know, if we had another election, today we have an election and we have the BJP as a minority, although the NDA, the alliance is a majority. We're unlikely to see even if the Congress party or their alliance comes to power, Indian policy fundamentally change with regard to China.

Final question, Manoj, and I maybe weave this into also Chinese assessments as well as your own. India as a replacement for China in terms of global supply chains, you see companies casting about as they think about de-risking from China as advanced economy governments try to nudge companies into

and investors to de-risk. India comes up again and again. You've looked at this yourself, plus you've looked at how Chinese analysts are looking at the prospect of India as replacement or alternative. What is your assessment and what is their assessment?

I think my assessment is that India is not going to replace the scale that China has anytime soon. It's just not likely. India has certain advantages. It has a massive scale population, increasingly a large workforce, which is likely to remain significant for the next 20, 30 years in comparison to China. There is government focus on boosting manufacturing and there is a large market.

Right. There's a significant consumer class in India, which needs to grow and which will likely grow much more in the years to come. So those are sort of points of attraction. India is, of course, a good relationship with the West. So as it looks to de-risk, India can become and particularly companies can look at India as an alternative. So those are sort of the plus sides, the geopolitical wins, along with certain factors economically and politically that favor India. But I think that just the scale of what

you need to do and the speed at which you need to do and bring changes domestically in terms of domestic policy, I find that challenging. I think it's been challenging. I think some of the, if you come to India, you'll see infrastructure has changed quite significantly, yet it seems like a country which is a work in progress. There's construction everywhere. So that's great, but that's also, it tells you there's lots that need to be done. So there are obviously tremendous opportunities, but I don't see the scale of replacing China. I don't see that's going to happen.

What is much more likely, and I think this is also what the government is trying to do, is if you can get one or two big use cases. So if you can get the Foxconn semiconductor fab in whichever way, at whatever capacity, or if you can get Apple's supply chain to move to India to significantly, it provides you with a sort of

pilot case of success, which can potentially then catalyze a lot more companies coming to India. So the apprehensions about, oh, the bureaucracy and, you know, the slow process of the politics can sort of go away. And I think that's what the government is trying to do.

I mean, with Apple, I think there's been some success. With Foxconn, let's wait and see how things play out. But I think if we can crack that in the next, the window is short, in the next couple of years, perhaps it opens doors much more than one would assume. But I don't think that from a whole scale perspective, you're going to replace China. How Chinese analysts view it, I think they view it as a threat and a challenge, while constantly deriding the potential for India to sort of take over some of the supply chains.

But I think the one interesting take that I read among Chinese analysts is there's a lot of writing around how India is unfriendly to foreign investors in Chinese discourse. And obviously the idea is that, hey, look, this is a terribly unfriendly country to foreign investors. And look, X has exited, Y has exited. And yet the Americans seem to be invested in this country to try and sort of support it. Whereas, you know, and that's it's all political. There's no economic logic. So you'll read a lot of that.

But I think the interesting bits are around calls to try and block investment flows from China to India, particularly intermediate product manufacturing. Those calls to me are not necessarily being made. I mean, they may be made by some folks with Kickr and a couple of other think tanks. It hasn't reached a crescendo. You've not seen any investment restrictions per se that I've seen.

But I think once we start to hit that is when you know the relationship is going down south. I think that thus far, it is India which has been much more cautious about Chinese investment. And to my understanding, to its own detriment. For example, there was a point of time where BYD wanted to invest a billion dollars in India to set up an EV plant. And I cannot see a reason why we should not do that.

It generates employment. It brings in a new, it's not a new industry, but it brings in a big player and it brings in $1 billion of Chinese money. And the more Chinese money you have, potentially the more leverage you can generate also in your relationship. I see Turkey imposing tariffs and getting a billion dollars from BYD. I don't see why India should not be looking at that investment. And again, politically, it's sound given that this election that happened in India, employment was probably the biggest political issue. Big investment generates employment.

So I think in many ways it works, but the politics of India and China today is such that it's not happening. Yeah, eerily similar to some of the discussions and concerns about inbound investment from China into the United States. Manoj, as always, just a real pleasure to listen to you, to learn from you. Want to thank you again, both for your labors on a daily basis in putting out just an extraordinary series of

commentary and analysis. And we just advise listeners not only to look at Minoja's newsletter on the People's Daily, but the Takshashila Institution is just putting out great stuff in general on a range of

China-related and China-adjacent issues, whether that's Sino-India relations, whether that's exploring developments in the People's Liberation Army, you name it, Takshashila Institution is just doing really fundamental and foundational work to help us understand China. So recommend all listeners look into what Manoj and his colleagues are doing. So Manoj, thank you as always, and hope one of your trips to the United States actually comes to fruition so we could see each other in person. Thank you so much. Pleasure always being with you.

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