A Finer Balance

Context: India is seeking strategic equilibrium with an increasingly aggressive China.

India’s China Policy

• Seeking equilibrium with China and has been confronting a face-off in the Himalayas.
• Building creative, issue-based alliances with the US and Asian majors like Japan, Korea, Vietnam and Indonesia, and Australia.
• Economic de-coupling with China in the name of “Atmanirbharata”.

China’s India Policy

• Not interested in equilibrium with any of its Asian neighbours, least of all with India.
• Trying to build a hierarchical Asian order, with itself at the top.
• China wants India to occupy a slot in such a hierarchy, commensurate only with its power status.
• Conscious of India’s low economic and military strength, which is far below its own.
• Ruthlessly resisting India’s access to global governance bodies, such as the UNSC and NSG. 
• Objecting to India’s growing strategic proximity to the US. 
• Encircling India strategically and economically through its strategic and economic corridors — BCIM, CPEC and the Trans-Himalayan Connectivity Network. 
• Internationalising the Kashmir issue at the UN and establishing footprints in the Indian Ocean.

Way Forward

• Establish alternatives to equilibrium through mutual give and take based temporary and strategic adjustments with China.

• • • As China had done with the US in the 1970s-80s
• Identify critical priority areas to build an approach. 

• • • For India, priority could be the resolution of the border dispute. 
• China should be asked to prevail over Pakistan to resolve the Kashmir issue.
• Formalise the LOC issue to make India-Pakistan borders redundant 

• • • Jawaharlal Nehru: then called Ceasefire line
    • Indira Gandhi’s Simla Agreement
    • Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s Lahore visit

• Offer access to Chinese commercial cargos to sea, through the Nathula pass, and join China’s BRI on mutually acceptable terms and actively move on the BCIM.
• Link up its infrastructure projects in Nepal, as it is already working on them.
• Show its strategic willingness to tactically join CPEC.
• Revisit its Tibet policy: address the core irritant for China
• Relocate the Tibetan Political Administration to a suitable location (Europe, Australia/New Zealand, or the US) while continuing to host Tibetans with dignity and respect.

Conclusion: India should make a bold diplomatic initiative and a huge tactical move to display that it can undertake risks to pursue its long-term national interests.