Will India’s UN Security Council role ripple out to China border row?

Name: India’s military sends supplies to disputed China border ahead of winter
Uploaded: 2021-01-07T01:00:20.000Z
Duration: 1 min 56 s
Description: India’s military sends supplies to disputed China border ahead of winter

New Delhi takes up a non-permanent seat on the international body with ambitions to become a leading power

China understands India’s aspirations, but can’t afford to give in to its challenges, observer says

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China and India are embroiled in their worst border stand-off in decades. Photo: Bloomberg

Shi Jiangtao

Published: 9:00am, 7 Jan 2021Updated: 9:00am, 7 Jan 2021

China’s fraught relations with India in the wake of the protracted military stand-off in the Himalayas may face fresh challenges with New Delhi taking a seat as a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council this week.

India’s two-year term on the powerful international body is expected to further embolden the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in its pursuit of an ambitious foreign policy to become a leading international power despite an array of domestic woes, according to observers.

India is stepping up to the seat as it battles a worsening coronavirus crisis and a deep economic slowdown. It also comes amid a major foreign policy shift over the past year that saw New Delhi visibly tilt towards Washington in confronting Beijing.

Sun Shihai, director of the China Centre for South Asian Studies at Sichuan University, said that while the non-permanent seat might not help India in the border dispute directly, it would serve as a proof of New Delhi’s rising strategic importance in global geopolitics.

“There is little doubt that India will become more confident going forward, with the [UN Security Council] membership giving a major boost to its long-standing aspiration to rise as a major power. But I don’t think it would have a major impact on bilateral ties with China,” he said.

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India’s military sends supplies to disputed China border ahead of winter

India was elected to the UN Security Council in June, winning overwhelming support from 184 of the 192 UN members. It came just days after the deadliest China-India border conflict in 50 years killed at least 20 Indian soldiers and an unspecified number of Chinese troops on June 15 in the Galwan Valley in Ladakh, a disputed area between the two countries.

Although both sides have agreed to avoid military confrontation along the Himalayan frontier while trying to de-escalate tensions through talks, diplomatic efforts have so far failed to break the stalemate, which began in early May.