Beyond Doklam: how long can China and India’s kiss-and-make up act last?
Standoff in Bhutan was just one marker of the changing nature of engagement between India and China at the military, government and – worryingly – popular level, too
The Chinese government has sought to sell the deal as a case of the Indians having blinked, of bowing to Chinese threats and coercion. It is doubtful the line has much purchase even within mainland China, where the netizen community might have constraints on their conversations but are not stupid and not entirely without access to information from the outside world.
It is a little-noticed reality that ordinary Chinese view India somewhat differently than they do other major global powers. While there is a template of nationalist rivalry with Japan and another of a larger, geopolitical rivalry with the United States, neither template fits the relationship with India.
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India’s influence is also evident in other, perhaps, more important ways, in China. Notably, these include its identity as the world’s largest democracy and in the popularity of Mahatma Gandhi among intellectuals and civil society activists. The interest in Gandhi’s methods of non-violent struggle specifically, is not surprising given the constraints on civil society and on political activity in China.
To their credit, many Indian analysts have been very sober in assessing the outcome of the Doklam standoff, refusing to crow about the apparent victory. They are well aware that China found itself in a difficult location in military terms at Doklam and that elsewhere on the long disputed boundary between the two countries, the Chinese have locational and logistical advantages that can put the Indian military under pressure.
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Doklam will count only as part of the initial series of incidents – alongside those at Depsang in 2013 and Chumur in 2014, both along the Line of Actual Control in the western sector of the disputed boundary – that mark a change in the nature of engagement between the Indian and Chinese militaries and governments. This is the result of the rise in economic strength, military capabilities, and regional and global political ambitions of the two countries. And it calls for a re-evaluation of existing bilateral agreements as well as negotiations on the boundary, if bilateral ties are not to deteriorate.
Many ordinary Chinese know India to be a democratic country but also point out that it is ‘chaotic’, ‘dirty’ and ‘poor’. But if such a country can also grow faster than China, its citizens also possess political liberties, and, to top it all, is also now capable of standing up to it militarily, then the consensus about India being democratic but ‘ineffective’ or unable to catch up with China will eventually crumble.
India, of course, cannot change its identity as a democracy, something Indians are justifiably proud of, but New Delhi must understand the implications of Beijing’s actions and work doubly hard to prevent a fraught security relationship with China from also turning into one where suspicion and prejudice dominate also at the people-to-people level. And Beijing, if it knows what is best for its own standing in Asia and the globe, will do likewise. ■
Jabin T. Jacob, PhD is Fellow at the Institute of Chinese Studies, Delhi, India