Former Indian foreign secretary calls for immediate resumption of political dialogue between India, China

The national flags of China and India in Mumbai. Photographer: Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg

Amid news of fresh clashes between Indian and Chinese soldiers in the Tawang sector of the Line of Actual Control (LAC), former Indian foreign secretary Vijay Gokhale has called for immediate resumption of a political dialogue that has been suspended since November 2019.

“It is untenable that two major Asian countries that are also neighbours, as well as nuclear weapons states, refrain from a conversation about the state of their relationship,” Gokhale said in a recent scholarly document.

Dialogue between India and China at the highest political level was suspended since the informal summit between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping at Mamallapuram in Tamil Nadu in October 2019.

A month later, the two leaders met briefly on the sidelines of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) summit in Brazil.

But China’s unilateral attempt to change the status quo on the LAC in April 2020 and the subsequent standoff between the troops of India and China at the frontier broke down an engagement at the highest political level.

Though Modi shook hands and exchanged greetings with Xi on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Indonesia’s Bali in October, there has been no dialogue between the two leaders for three years.

But Gokhale says the resumption of dialogue is essential.

The Indian political establishment has insisted that unless China restored the ‘status quo ante’ or withdrew its troops to positions where they were before the standoff in 2020, normal relations between the two countries are not possible.

“The dialogue needs to be resumed at the earliest possible time, notwithstanding China’s obduracy in fully defusing the crisis along the LAC by reversing its actions,” the former foreign secretary said.
Gokhale, India’s best-known China hand, argued that “though it may be difficult for both sides to make the first move in this regard, it is nonetheless a prerequisite for the risk management that is so essential in this decade when their strategic rivalry will likely grow.”

As a non-resident Senior Fellow of Carnegie India, Gokhale made these observations in a paper titled, “A historical evaluation of China’s India policy: lessons for India-China relations.

How Galwan changed things

According to Gokhale, the violent clash in the Galwan valley in eastern Ladakh in 2020 fundamentally altered the India-China relationship, putting the boundary question at the centre.

He felt the geopolitical backlash to China’s actions in 2020 has been “greater than in previous instances.”

Indian policymakers and the strategic community are no longer willing to give Beijing the benefit of the doubt.

The ambiguity that prevailed about whether China is a partner or a rival has been replaced by strategic clarity--its behavior is now perceived as adversarial.

In addition, the idea of strategic restraint has now been redefined.
This has involved a change in risk-taking appetite among the political class.

Therefore, the Chinese assumption that there will be no immediate backlash to low-level coercion on the LAC because India is risk-averse, may no longer be valid. They should be weighed against the changes in Indian strategic thinking since 2020.

Deeper relations with the West

Gokhale felt the vestiges of nonaligned thinking that restrained India in the past from pursuing deeper relations with the West have now evaporated.
Delhi may not seek a treaty alliance with the United States, but there are means for it to impose backlash costs on China.

Gokhale said India’s capability of using its geostrategic location in the Indian Ocean and its leverage with the littoral states has the capacity to complicate China’s strategic environment as it seeks to move closer to the centre of the world’s stage.

China now recognizes that the Quad and other plurilateral arrangements that India has entered since 2018 are not “sea foam,” as Foreign Minister Wang Yi once termed this.

The Quad may not result in an alliance, but it is a step toward credibly signaling that India’s future foreign and national security policy should neither be judged by its past record nor taken for granted.

Fresh approach may improve things

There is therefore a case to be made that China should make a fresh assessment of the future direction of its relationship with India and to adjust its policy.

Gokhale pointed out that the People’s Republic of China has always treated its India relations as subordinate to its relations with great powers such as the United States and Russia.

“India has been treated as an unequal and inferior competitor for security and status in a global context, and therefore its refusal to look at the relationship through a bilateral lens,” he said.

In order to change this, India could engage in dialogue with China to emphasize the bilateralness of relations and their power dynamics in the regional context of the Indo-Pacific.

According to the former Indian foreign secretary, though China never referred to India as a major global power, it has begun to recognise it as a major power in the Indo-Pacific.

A 2017 Chinese document recognises that the Indo-Pacific region has the strongest potential and the necessity for China to enhance mutual political trust among the major powers, India, Japan, the United States, and Russia.

India may have to accept that its national power is not yet sufficient to persuade China to treat it as a global equal.

China may have to accept that there is a different great power triangle in the Indo-Pacific.

The United States and its regional allies are the strongest corner of this triangle, China is the second corner, and India is the third.

In the foreseeable future, no other country or grouping will be able to combine economic heft and military capability to replace any of these players.

The Indo-Pacific is likely to be the geoeconomic centre of the world for the next several decades, and China’s prosperity and future global status are intrinsically linked to it.

Thus, Beijing would be wise to adjust its worldview and accept that there is an important subset of great power relationships in the Indo-Pacific and to treat India as a necessary interlocutor in this regional context.

This is more likely to lead to a situation in which the two countries do not see competition as a zero-sum game.