Bullying US Sends India Talking to China on Russia Watch
Image credit X.com @MFARussia
Mutual Compulsions Warm Modi-Xi Handshake in US Shadow
By Manish Anand
New Delhi, October 24: Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping held a business-like meeting, shorn of warmth, on the sidelines of BRICS in Kazan in Russia yesterday. Xi was cold-faced to a smiling Modi as the two leaders green-signalled special representatives on border to begin talking after a gap of five years.
On the watch of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Modi and Xi held the first bilateral delegation level meeting after Brasilia in 2019. The last such meeting also took place on the sidelines of BRICS Summit.
Modi-XI meeting trended globally. The world diplomatic community sought cues to decode significance of the consequential event.
Sana Hashmi, a strategic affairs commentator, believed that China had made the initiative for the bilateral with India. “It was more initiated by China than India, with Xi needing to bring Modi to the table to demonstrate reduced adversarial tensions,” Hashmi posted on X.
China stuck to the old script to open space for Modi to meet him. That came with agreement on resolving the pending issues concerning patrolling of areas in eastern Ladakh. Similar episode had taken place around the Brasilia bilateral in 2019 between Modi and Xi.
The US is fast losing the trust in New Delhi. By spotlighting the Gurpatwant Singh Pannun failed murder plot and egging on Canada to roil relations with India over the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, Washington is slipping into the class of unreliable partners.
That Rashtriya Swayam Sewak Sangh (RSS) supremo Mohan Bhagwat spoke of “deep state” in the context of Bangladesh reveals growing distrust within the ruling establishment in New Delhi about Washington.
China and Russia have been facing the heat of an insatiable hunger of the US for enlarging its imperialist influence in far east. The two Communist regimes smelt the foul air in New Delhi for Washington to work up Modi-Xi meeting.
Bloomberg in a report said that the “Indian CEOs had also been pressuring” for melting of the ice with Beijing. The news report argued that New Delhi had been more aggressive than the US in blocking the Chinese firms and their investments in India.
Union Minister for Commerce Piyush Goyal this week expressed concerns at the rising trade deficit with the UAE and ASEAN. India has freed trade agreement (FTA) with the UAE and the Southeast Asian bloc.
Experts in New Delhi have long stated that Chinese goods are flooding India through the FTAs. The headline grabbing move of New Delhi to hurt China on economic fronts practically stood negated due to the pulls of trade.
Also, Xi is more eager than ever to repair the domestic economy. A month ago, Xi presided over a key plenary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to ask the regional satraps to take risk and back businesses. Stimulus packages followed the CCP plenary.
Modi reiterated the Subrahmanyam Jaishankar doctrine for China by telling Xi that “mutual trust, mutual respect and mutual sensitivity” will steady the bilateral relations. “The India-China agreement on border control on the eve of the event and the successful meeting between Xi and Modi on the sidelines in Kazan was important takeaways this year,” said diplomat Eric Solheim on X.
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