Watch it on NIICE Nepal Youtube Channel

The China Factor in South Asia: An Indian Perspective

August 7, 2020

The webinar was held by NIICE, Nepal in collaboration with Nirupama Menon Rao who is a retired Indian diplomat, Foreign Secretary, and ambassador. She was India’s first woman spokesperson in the Ministry of External China factor in South Asia.

The webinar begins with a visionary statement that South Asia is an integer and is meant to be integrated. However, today we are at the crossroads in South Asia today. The tensions between India-Pakistan and India-China have inscribed a deepened disparity in the region. The strategic initiatives of BRI and CPEC by China have been the cherry on the cake and are more politically driven for Pakistan and China.  The times of COVID-19 highlighted the dis-jointness of the South Asian region. In spite of a meeting of the SAARC leaders held by Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, there was no unity in tackling the subject of regional connectivity and integration in the times of havoc all over the world.

China’s impact in South Asia is to a vast extent dependent upon its relation with India. Relations between India and China is a story of promise denied and potential unfulfilled. The Galwan incidents in Ladakh represents watershed in Indo-China relations. Distrust for China in India and in Indian psyche was embedded since the 1962 war, and the bloodshed along the LAC deepened it. It is visible that most of the connections that China is building and trying to build with South Asia is an extension from China’s periphery, Tibet and Xinjiang. China has extensive resources and deep financial pockets and so the extension of its influence in South Asia is a real factor in understanding the situation in South Asia today. Its growing relations with Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan can also be a concern for the West as well as India who see China’s diplomacy as a “debt trap diplomacy”. Big countries have a duty to reassure smaller countries and China has singularly performed the task being a major power in the South Asian region. Instead, China has been promoting a hierarchy of world regional order with Chinese leadership at the apex.

The reason behind this behaviour of China could be its aim to restore Chinese greatness in the world. Chinese foreign and security policies today are rather opportunistic and obsessively intent on the defence of national security which are not an issue until it turns to China’s assertive reinforcement of its claims along the LAC. Chinese policies and strategies seem to pay very little attention to the factor of sensitivity which has led to the erosion of trust among South Asian nations for China. According to a survey by ASEAN, China emerged as the most distrusted country.

The vision of South Asian arena as seen by its natives is of a free and independent Indo Pacific as against a battlefield for US and China. This vision is seemingly possible owing to the comprehensive global and strategic partnership between India and US and to the rise of Quad security dialogue. We are faced today in the region of South Asia with the very palpable assertiveness of a powerful China. This signifies the replacement of US unipolarity by multipolarity in the region with a binary preoccupation arising out of the strategic competition between US and China. Multipolarity is a healthy trend that promotes greater maneuverability in the region particularly for smaller nations. The need of the hour would be to define an agreement and a shared, mutually beneficial vision of how to achieve a better South Asia, steeped in greater integration, connectivity across sectors, stressing open democratic values, and respect for diversity.

Prepared by Shriya Mishra, NIICE Intern