Mint | We can expect more turbulence ahead in Indian diaspora politics

Diaspora politics is going to get a lot more complicated and recent turbulence is an indicator of the policy challenges ahead. Pro-Khalistan protests in the US, UK, Canada and Australia have descended into vandalism, arson, rioting, incitement to assassination and inter-group violence. Last year, there was Hindu-Muslim communal violence in Leicester. Hindu and Sikh communities got into fights in Australia. A parade in New Jersey featured a bulldozer celebrating Yogi Adityanath’s politics, attracting condemnation for its provocativeness and causing the Indian business association to issue an apology. Google and Big Tech companies in the US attracted criticism on being seen as insensitive to caste discrimination. This year, the Seattle City Council outlawed caste discrimination in response to advocacy by diaspora civil society groups. In May, a 19-year-old Indian-American crashed a truck near the White House, waved a Nazi flag, and declared that he wanted to kill the president, seize power and put an end to democracy in the US. Read the full article here.

The Hindu | China’s ‘developmental’ security approach

The story so far: Late in May this year, the Cyberspace Administration of China announced that the U.S. chip giant Micron, which had been under investigation by the Cybersecurity Review Office, failed to obtain a security clearance, and that its products posed a threat to national security. Consequently, business operators tied to critical information infrastructure were advised not to procure Micron products. This is the latest incident in a series of crackdowns by the Chinese government against American consultancies and domestic firms dealing with overseas clients. Read the full article here.

WION | Remembering Galwan and the China Challenge: Capabilities of the PLA Western Theatre Command

Three years on, the spectre of Galwan is looming large over India’s China policy. Amidst China’s unwillingness to back down and Indian forces’ intensifying willingness to hold their ground, we are likely to see more skirmishes similar to the one witnessed in Arunachal Pradesh’s Tawang sector in December last year, taking place. And in this light, an assessment of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) capacity-building close to the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in the past three years indicates that China is not planning to concede its strategic entrenchment beyond India’s claim lines. Rather, it is attempting to create a new status quo with increased firepower available for ready use in anticipation of such potential skirmishes. Read the full article here.

News18 | China-Taiwan Saga: Recent Developments and the Use of Force

The China-Taiwan relationship continues to develop in a dynamic fashion, with the action-reaction cycle caused by recent events highlighting the threat to global stability. Active militarisation of the Taiwan Strait has contributed to the deteriorating security situation in the region. Over the past few months, the US has approved large-scale arms sales to Taiwan, with its most recent consignment from March 2023 comprising various anti-aircraft missiles worth $619 million. Before this, in September 2022, Taiwan purchased from the US radar systems for anti-air missiles in a consignment worth US$1.1 billion. Read the full article here.

Hindustan Times | First signs of thaw in US-China ties, but road to normalcy is uphill

The freeze in Sino-United States (US) engagement, following the balloon incident, appears to be finally thawing. The signs were evident in early May in a conversation between Chinese foreign minister Qin Gang and US ambassador Nicholas Burns in Beijing. This was followed by a meeting between China’s top diplomat Wang Yi and US national security adviser Jake Sullivan in Vienna. A few weeks after that, in his remarks to the press in Hiroshima, US President Joe Biden, indicated that dialogue was expected to resume. Read the full article here.

The Hindu | China’s military diplomacy in Southeast Asia

The story so far: Due to its intensifying geopolitical competition with the U.S. and its own security interests in the region, China is expanding its military outreach to Southeast Asian countries. The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA)’s global activities and influence campaigns are part of its broader reform process initiated by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2015, and form a fundamental element of China’s overall foreign policy. In this light, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has become a priority target for the People’s Liberation Army’s military diplomacy. Read the full story here.

Hindustan Times | MEA needs more hands on deck quickly. It must consider surge hiring

March was a busy month for Indian diplomacy. The first week featured an Italy State visit, the Quad foreign ministers’ meeting, the Raisina Dialogue, and as many as 33 bilateral engagements. The pace continued in April with the visit of the King of Bhutan to India, the 100th meeting under the G20 framework, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) defence minister’s meeting, and a mammoth rescue operation from war-torn Sudan. May likely will bring more action.

Read more here.

The Quint | Is Trust a Foregone Conclusion in India-Russia Relations? It's All About China

Of late, observers in India have expressed growing concern regarding Russia’s continued drift toward Beijing, especially following Chinese President Xi Jinping’s Moscow visit where he met Russian President Vladimir Putin in late March. For instance, former foreign secretary Shyam Saran recently opined that Russia’s vulnerable position vis-a-vis China empowers the latter to restrict the former’s engagement with India. While the possibility of such a prospect should certainly inform Indian policymakers, the issue is slightly more complex than what is highlighted.

Read more here.

The Quint | A Gap in Strategic Planning: Why India Needs a National Security Doctrine

Japan’s National Security Strategy (NSS), released in December 2022, defied convention and chose to identify China and Russia by name as strategic threats. It also recommended that the country double its defence budget. Several other major powers, such as the United States, France, and Russia, also release similar documents. However, despite being the second most populous country, the fifth largest economy, and a nuclear power with one of the world’s most powerful militaries, India does not publish any such document.

Read the full article here.

Analysing China’s threat perception of India-United States relations

As India and China are engaged in continued dialogue on resolving the boundary issue, including through the recently conducted high-level meeting of the Working Mechanism for Consultation & Coordination on India-China Border Affairs, China faces a challenging theatre in its neighbourhood — the India-US alliance. Due to its threat perception of increasing proximity between India and the US, China inflates narratives of discord between the two countries, while also hyping up the nature of the challenge it faces, in order to arm-twist India into maintaining a more autonomous policy.

CPC’s tryst with private regulatory interventionism

The ‘Two Sessions’—China’s annual plenary sessions with close to 3,000 delegates participating in meetings of the National People’s Congress (NPC) and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC)—have recently come to an end, and reports from the event carry significant implications for Chinese economic policy in the months to come.

India's Policy Towards China Must Leverage Latter's Two-Front Situation

While a ‘two-front’ dilemma has posed a critical security challenge to India for quite some time, China fears a similar situation, which hasn’t received enough attention within Indian strategic circles. China first grew anxious about a developing two-front threat in the early 1950s. After the Communist Party of China won the civil war against the Guomindang (GMD) nationalist government and forced the latter to flee to Taiwan in 1949, it feared a US-backed GMD invasion from the east. On its western front along the Himalayas, China was wary of Indian interference in Tibet and accused it of colluding with the US to instigate secessionist tendencies during the 1950s and early 1960s.

‘Two Sessions’ Later, How China's Contradictory Policies Will Impact India

China’s ‘two sessions’ – the congregation of its two topmost deliberative bodies namely, the National People’s Congress (NPC), the country’s top legislature, and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), the top advisory body, recently concluded in Beijing.

China Is Eager To Change Its Diplomatic Tone To Launch A Charm Offensive

The primary aim of Chinese foreign policy in the months to come will be to “reset its economy and win back friends.” The immediate focus of this appears to be European countries.

From Beijing’s perspective, this is essential given the backlash it has faced both internally and from governments of the West over its zero-COVID policy, and the Communist Party of China (CPC’s) crackdown on the private sector which caused the bursting of its property market bubble and ripple effects for real estate and big technology firms across the globe.

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.