StratNewsGlobal | Limelight On Nobody: Qin Gang’s Removal

On July 25, at the fourth session of the 14th Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (China’s top legislature), a major portfolio shuffle was announced in the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA)—Qin Gang, who was promoted to the post of Foreign Affairs Minister as recently as December 2022 was ‘removed’ from the post. In his place, Wang Yi, the Director of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Foreign Affairs Commission and former Foreign Affairs minister, was re-appointed. Read the full article here.

The Diplomat | China’s Draft Criminal Law Amendment Eyes Corruption in Private Firms

Amid the controversy surrounding former Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang’s disappearance and subsequent dismissal from office, discussions by the Standing Committee of China’s top legislature, the National People’s Congress, on draft amendments to China’s Criminal Law seem to have escaped the public eye. These draft amendments, which are open for public comments until August 24, propose the inclusion of private sector enterprises operating in China under the ambit of the Criminal Law’s anti-bribery and anti-corruption provisions. Previously, said provisions were applicable only to state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and public institutions. Read the full article here.

WION | The ASEAN's tryst with US-China contestation

On July 13 and 14, Wang Yi, the newly re-appointed Chinese Foreign Minister visited Jakarta to attend the 56th ASEAN Regional Forum and the 13th East Asia Summit Foreign Ministers' Meetings. During these meetings, Wang held several bilateral exchanges, including with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. He also participated in an ‘ASEAN+3’ meeting, with representatives from the ten countries of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), as well as Japan and South Korea. His engagements aimed at assuaging regional anxieties surrounding China’s belligerent rise and its intensifying rivalry with the US. However, his meeting with Blinken said otherwise. Read the full article here.

Hindustan Times | Qin’s removal reveals a messy portrait of China

The standing committee of the National People’s Congress (NPCSC), China’s top legislature, on Tuesday, announced the removal of Qin Gang as the country’s foreign minister. The decision came during a previously unplanned and abruptly announced daylong meeting of the body. Conventionally, NPCSC meets on a bimonthly basis. Meeting dates and agenda are usually announced far in advance. This departure from set norms in a country where tradition and discipline are valued above all, and where small deviations and changes are all the signs one gets of upheavals within, has set off speculation. Read the full article here.

Firstpost | Franco-Indian collaboration in Indian Ocean Region: How India-France partnership has taken centre stage in the IOR

During Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent visit to France, France and India spelt out their commitments to the Indo-Pacific region. In a first, the two democracies published a roadmap for their bilateral and regional cooperation. The roadmap outlines the alignment between the two countries’ vision for the region, with cooperation extending across the domains of defence, security, economics, connectivity, infrastructure, sustainability, and human-centric development. Read the full article here.

Takshashila Blog | China Challenge: Transatlantic Divergence

It is a truism that the rise of China poses a serious challenge to the US and Europe. However, there are differences in terms of their understanding of the nature of the challenge. For instance, there has long been a debate among them – the US and Europe, that is – whether China poses a strategic challenge, or is an indispensable partner in dealing with global challenges, or whether it is an economic threat or opportunity. Read the full blog here.

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.