Deccan Herald | Quad partners can boost India’s biomanufacturing policy

Biotechnology is going to revolutionise the global economy and many countries recognise the need to optimally develop bioresources. According to an OECD report, more than 50 countries have adopted specific policies designed to shape their bio-economies.

In the recent past, the United States and China have also published plans for spurring their bio-economies. India’s Department of Biotechnology has released the 2021-2025 National Biotechnology Development Strategy, which envisions India as a global biomanufacturing hub by 2025.

Taiwan Strait: Are US-China gambling or guardrailing?

At a press conference on 11 January 2023, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan was not imminent. The statement conforms to a pattern where China and the US are prioritising engagement to dial down the heat. But at the same time, given that the US and China are locked in a security dilemma over Taiwan, a new modus vivendi between the two sides appears unlikely. 

India's PLI vs China’s PLA: Can Delhi’s Strategic Use of Trade Thwart Beijing?

The past three years have witnessed the emergence of a new pattern in the India-China relationship. With tensions along the disputed boundary escalating, New Delhi has increasingly chosen to respond with actions in the economic domain.

For instance, even before the standoff began in Eastern Ladakh in April 2020, the Indian government made prior approval mandatory for investments from the countries sharing land borders with India. Following the Galwan Valley clash, decisions were taken to ban Chinese apps on national security grounds and exclude Chinese vendors from India’s 5G ecosystem, and there has also been an intensification of investigations into Chinese enterprises.

Pain & gain: Deterring China requires us to change Xi’s cost-benefit calculations

This month’s clash between Chinese and Indian troops at Tawang is yet another reminder that New Delhi must ratchet up military, diplomatic and geopolitical pressure on Beijing until it changes its strategic calculations. At this time the Xi Jinping regime’s calculation runs something like this: the global balance of power is such that China can change the territorial status quo in its neighbourhood on its own terms through the use of military force. This approach succeeded in the South China Sea, and to some extent in Doklam and Galwan.

Quad Needs a More Near-Term, Outcomes-Focussed Approach

Ever since its revitalisation, the Quad grouping, comprising India, the US, Japan and Australia, has evolved an ambitious agenda. Over the past two years, the Quad has established six leader-level working groups, covering domains like the COVID-19 Response and Global Health Security, Climate, Critical and Emerging Technologies, Cyber, Space, and Infrastructure. These are long-term agenda items that have primarily focussed on establishing frameworks and standards, boosting sharing of information and best practices, identifying vulnerabilities and discussing pathways to address them. The two most visible products of the Quad’s engagement so far have been the COVID-19 vaccine partnership and the Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness (IPMDA). These also underscore a desire to be near-term outcomes-focussed, while working on longer term challenges.

Red China blues by Dikotter: an account of the country’s developments during Xi Jinping era

Ensuring strict control over the historical narrative is a key aspect of the Communist Party of China (CPC) toolkit to maintain legitimacy. One way in which the party has done this is through the adoption of official resolutions, which argue that “both the facts of history and the reality of today prove that without the CPC, there would be no new China and no national rejuvenation”. 

Frank Dikotter’s China After Mao: The Rise of a Superpower, however, punctures this narrative. The book offers a granular and engrossing account of the key economic and political developments in China, starting from 1976 till the era of Xi Jinping. In telling the story of over four decades of tumult, the author primarily relies on over 600 documents from China’s municipal and provincial archives along with newspaper reports and unpublished memoirs of key party members, such as the diary of Mao’s personal secretary Li Rui.

What unrest and anger in China’s cities reveal

Cities across China have witnessed protests over the past week, as people have demonstrated their anger and frustration with the persistence and costs of the zero-Covid policy. What triggered the protests was an apartment fire in Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, which led to the death of 10 people. Reports of the Covid-19 lockdown in the city hampering rescue efforts ignited widespread anger on social media. Soon, this anger, fuelled further by official denials and online censorship, spilled onto the streets of major cities in the country. In Shanghai, hundreds gathered along Wulumuqi Road, named after Urumqi, demanded the lifting of lockdowns and basic human rights, and carried blank pieces of paper to protest the lack of freedom of expression. Similar protests have since been seen in cities such as Wuhan, Chengdu, Beijing, and Nanjing, among others. In some instances, protesters have gone beyond simply demanding an end to lockdowns and mass testing to call for freedom, respect for universal values, and for Xi Jinping to step down.

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s biggest strength lies in its weakness. That’s tempting for army

On 3 November 2022, when I first heard that Imran Khan had been shot, my instinctive conclusion was that the Pakistan Army must have orchestrated it. When it was quickly followed up by an assurance that he had suffered only minor bullet injuries to his leg, my instincts discounted the involvement of the Pakistan Army as the attempt did not reflect its professional competence in such matters. Later, as details trickled in, the attempt seemed amateurish. Accusations toward the Shehbaz Sharif government and the Inter-Services intelligence by Khan and his party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, followed, while a few in the ruling coalition described the incident as staged.

Results of the US midterm elections and what it means for India

With only a few seats left to be declared, the 2022 US midterm election is like the cliffhanger scene from the penultimate episode of a thrilling whodunnit. The predicted red wave did not lash America, but the Republicans did manage a ripple, and flipped some seats in the US House of Representatives, the lower house of the American Congress.

Should India look closely at these elections from a foreign policy lens? Not generally, but there will be some specific impact as we shall see in a while.

The future as foretold by Xi: Chinese citizens have to brace themselves for tough times, Indians for a more aggressive PLA

In many ways, the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of China has been a somewhat anticlimactic event. Prior to the quinquennial meeting, there was a general sense among scholars and watchers of China that the congress would largely signal political and policy continuity. It has indeed largely reaffirmed the direction in which China was already heading. That said, the past week has shed greater light on what we can expect going ahead.

China lowered the gun for Modi-Xi Uzbekistan meet. India can’t take its eyes off the barrel yet

Breaking the military deadlock at Gogra-Hot Springs in Ladakh has been touted as paving the way for the Narendra Modi-Xi Jinping meeting on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit scheduled in Uzbekistan on 15-16 September. The military commanders had probably arrived at a consensus when they met for the 16th round of negotiations on 17 July. But political approval by both sides seems to have taken nearly two months. The delay conceals more than it reveals about the contemporary dynamics of China-India relations and the role of the military confrontation on India’s northern border in the context of power shifts leading to geopolitical competition at the global level.

The Coming Battle for Taiwan

A very good way to get a handle on the geopolitical developments in the Indo Pacific—and the current Taiwan crisis—is to pay attention to what the Communist Party of China’s leaders have been declaring for decades. They want to reunify the country both to recover from two centuries of humiliation by Western powers and to finish the civil war that started nearly a hundred years ago. China will then retake its rightful place as a global power. Presumably, this will be within an international order where it is the peerless Middle Kingdom surrounded by tributaries whose fortunes depend on Beijing’s goodwill.

Xi’S Power Base in the Communist Party Central Committee

Mao's often-quoted expression “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun” remains as critical to understanding the dynamics of power in China today as it was in the late 1920s. Xi Jinping, soon after assuming the position of Party General Secretary in late 2012, moved quickly to exert his control over the ‘gun’ — i.e., the People's Liberation Army (PLA). He has spent the past decade reshaping the PLA and forging loyalty, from the military-political work conference in Gutian in 2014 and an anti-corruption campaign (which targeted some of the highest-ranking PLA officials), to initiating major structural reforms.

India has to Step Up Engagement in the Pacific

As Washington and Beijing attempt to woo countries in South Pacific, Washington's partners in the Indo-Pacific will have to step up. To strengthen its position in the Indio-Pacific through the Quad, New Delhi should step up economic, diplomatic, and and other engagements in the Pacific region. China's engagement in the Pacific and last month's Pacific tour of Wang Yi point to three trends.

Modi said Neighbourhood First. Sri Lanka crisis is India’s chance to prove it

Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled for his life after being driven out by the people of Sri Lanka. Meanwhile, Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’, Nepal’s former prime minister on a three-day visit at the invitation of the BJP, said ‘issues left by history’ must be addressed in order to realise the full potential of the bilateral ties. This perspective is often mirrored across India’s bilateral ties with all its subcontinental neighbours – Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Bangladesh, and the Maldives. Each of these relationships carries the weight of history that continues to both bind and rupture the spirit of friendliness.

There are cracks in BRICS & trouble for India

Last week’s BRICS summit was bookended by some excitement over the possibility of the group expanding by accepting new members and reports that Argentina and Iran had applied for membership. What this obscures, however, is the fact that amid the evolving geopolitical situation, the BRICS mechanism appears to be undergoing an identity crisis. There is a deepening contradiction at the heart of the grouping, which is likely to result in extremely difficult choices for Indian foreign policy.

For Delhi, new Xiopolitics

Two years ago, the Galwan valley clash came amid a period of intense Chinese People’s Liberation Army activity across different theatres. In March 2020, as WHO declared Covid a global pandemic, Chinese jets intensified drills along the Taiwan Strait. The Liaoning carrier conducted take-off and landing exercises in the Bohai Strait and would later sail past Taiwan. The PLA Daily hailed the drills, boasting about war preparedness amid the pandemic.

The US Must Provide Concrete Benefits to IPEF Signatories

At the recently concluded Quad summit in Tokyo, India joined the United States (US)-led Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF), created to provide an alternative trading arrangement and counter Chinese dominance in the region. While the scope is broad enough to provide an inclusive platform, the ambiguity, vagueness, and the lack of specific agreements can render it toothless.

100 Days of Russia-Ukraine conflict: How China's Choices have Damaged its External Environment

Earlier this week, a lengthy front page commentary in the People’s Daily, the Chinese Communist Party’s flagship newspaper, bemoaned the deterioration of China’s external environment. The author warned that following the war in Ukraine, “instability, uncertainty and insecurity” were on the rise, and that the West, led by the US, was doubling down on policies aimed at “containing and suppressing” China. Although the author called for focus on running internal affairs well and dismissed external factors as not being “decisive” in China’s pursuit of its goal of national rejuvenation, the assessment does reveal how deeply the war in Ukraine has adversely affected China’s strategic interests.

Why Xi Jinping’s Iron Grip on Power is Intact

The past two months have seen intense speculation about the political churn within China. There have been reports of unhappiness and factional contestation around Xi Jinping’s policies on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Covid-19 containment, and the direction of economic policy. This has fuelled rumours of a deeper pushback against Xi, heading into the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CPC). While there is evidence of policy contestation and frustration, there is little to suggest that Xi’s political authority is diminished.