Act 3 Sc 2, Re-Enter India?

Context: India needs to play itself back into lead position in the China game.

Contours of China threat

• Indo-Pacific is the theatre where the tectonic plates of Chinese authoritarianism clash with world democracy.
• China is indulging in economic coercion with other countries by weaponising trade and investment.
• China has taken advantage of the Covid-19 pandemic to aggressively pursue its political goals, while staunchly resisting more detailed investigations into the origins of the virus.
• China has managed to acquire control of multilateral bodies like the ITU that are involved in identifying standards and making rules for new technologies like 5G.
• Global supply chains, across sectors, are dominated by China, resulting in dependencies that tend to be exploited.

Revisiting 2020 Galwan valley skirmish

• Blood spilt for the first time in over four decades on LoAC: Twenty soldiers laid down their lives in bitter hand-to-hand combat inflicting a rare military casualty on China.
• Immediate policy shift: Working dictum of the past three decades that differences on LoAC will not impact progress in the rest of the relationship was set aside.
  • Recalibrated economic relationship: Banned Chinese apps, identified areas where it will regulate Chinese investments.
  • Took a larger political call to strengthen its capacities to stand up against China.

Chinese threat – A global phenomenon

• Shedding of strategic ambivalence towards China:
  • The US Innovation and Competition Act paves way for $250 billion funding to enable US tech industries, especially in sectors where China has gained at America’s expense.
• Widening concurrence at 2021 G7 summit: From US, Canada, Australia, Britain, France and Japan.
  • Germany and Italy still maintain a degree of ambivalence towards China due to increased economic dependence.
• Growing gap in EU-China relations: European Parliament has put on hold all discussions on ratifying EU-China investment agreement and imposed first-ever cyber sanctions on China.

Way forward: India needs to play itself back into lead position in the China game.

• India should rebuild faster, inspire confidence through better preparedness against future Covid spread, and demonstrate that it can breathe life back into its economy.