Moneycontrol | What China’s missing officials tell us about its politics

The sudden vanishing of China’s Defence Minister Li Shangfu has sparked speculations about factional infighting and political instability. For many, this, along with the broader crackdown in the military and the abrupt removal of Foreign Minister Qin Gang, are indicative of warring factions undermining Xi’s authority. However, given the developments over the past decade and the exalted position that Xi enjoys, this is likely a misreading of the situation. Read the full article here.

The Quint | India-US Ties: Despite Nijjar Storm, All’s Well on the Western Front

Washington’s perceived 'harsh response’ to the India-Canada fracas has sparked both suspicion and pessimism in some quarters in India. Skeptics have sought to highlight the unreliability of the US as a partner while pessimists have argued that this incident is likely to press the US to re-evaluate its relationship with India. Read the full article here.

Hindustan Times | When India and China speak for Global South

The Global South is a vague term – it is supposed to capture a diverse group of 130-odd countries, encapsulating two-thirds of the world’s population, and covers Africa, the Middle East, Asia, the Pacific Islands, Latin America, and the Caribbean. But it seems to possess extraordinary political and diplomatic purchases for both India and China. Both are increasingly positioning themselves as leaders of the Global South. What utility such leadership implies for each, however, reveals differences. Delhi appears to view the Global South through the lens of shared interests and hopes to function as a bridge between the Global North and Global South. Meanwhile, Beijing’s outreach to the Global South is driven by an agenda to tilt the scales in its favour in terms of its strategic competition with the United States (US).

The Hindu | The signals from this ‘Made in China’ smartphone story

Huawei, the Chinese smartphone giant, has created ripples within the strategic and business community with its newly unveiled Mate 60 Pro which houses the Kirin 9000 processor. The chipset reportedly used Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC)’s second-generation 7nm fabrication technique, thereby demonstrating China’s capability to manufacture a 7nm chip. Read the full article here.

Deccan Herald | Enhancing India’s role in the Indo-Pacific

On September 7, Prime Minister Narendra Modi attended the 20th ASEAN-India summit in Jakarta, Indonesia, where leaders held extensive discussions regarding bolstering the ASEAN-India relationship in the Indo-Pacific. Modi remarked on the “unison in the vision of India and ASEAN for the Indo-Pacific”. India’s increasing development and maritime diplomacy in the Southeast Asian region suggests that the ASEAN-India relationship in the Indo-Pacific region is becoming stronger, underpinned by a convergence of interests in the Indo-Pacific. Read the full article here.

The Diplomat | Restricting Foreign State Immunity: China’s New Law and What It Means

Among the many legal drafts reviewed and adopted at the recently concluded session of the Standing Committee of China’s top legislature, the National People’s Congress, was the Law on Foreign State Immunity. On September 1, the concluding day of the session, the NPC Standing Committee adopted the bill, and the law is scheduled to come into force on January 1, 2024. It joins a line of foreign policy-affecting legal changes introduced at the NPC in the past few months, such as the Foreign Relations Law enacted in June. Read the full article here.

Moneycontrol | China Economy: Has the export-investment-state-driven growth model reached its limits?

The Chinese economy appears to be undergoing a historic churn. This is a product of several factors, such as the structural challenges of the investment and exports-driven growth model, government intervention in order to reshape economic structure and incentives and a turbulent external environment. The scrapping of the zero-COVID policy in late 2022 had created expectations for a rapid economic recovery in China. This was reflected in the rise in growth expectations in the first quarter of 2023. There was anticipation that pent-up consumer demand, increased fiscal spending, and efforts to boost market confidence and signal openness and policy predictability would result in growth rebounding. This, however, has not come to pass. Read the full article here.

Mint | China’s economic troubles mark the end of its geopolitical ascent

In the past few weeks, the world has discovered that the Chinese economy has serious problems and might already be in a crisis. The impending collapse of a real estate behemoth is causing analysts to ask if China’s Lehman moment is at hand. One-fifth of the stock of apartments is unoccupied. There are worries about how China will manage the nearly $9 trillion in off-budget domestic debt that its local governments have accumulated by building bridges and airports to nowhere. One in five young people are unemployed in a country where it takes just over two working adults to support one senior citizen. Economic growth might already be in the vicinity of 3% and might fall to 2% by the end of this decade. Over the past few years, Beijing lent developing countries nearly $1 trillion to gain global political influence. Most of that money is not coming back. Read the full article here.

Takshashila Blog | Is Europe Unanimous on China?

Germany recently released its strategy on China, outlining the challenges China poses and setting forth an agenda regarding how it intends to cooperate with it. The document notes the assertive character of Chinese foreign policy, China’s efforts to reshape the existing rules-based international order “according to its own preferences”, and how China impacts European and global security as a result. Germany calls China a “partner, competitor, and systemic rival”. It points out human rights violations in Xinjiang and Tibet, and the erosion of civil liberties in Hong Kong. Read the full blog here.

Deccan Herald | Why are nations interested in joining BRICS?

The 2023 BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) Summit is currently underway in Johannesburg, South Africa. Pre-Summit deliberations show that there are some unique and significant developments to look out for. One of them is the expansion of BRICS, which is set to be taken up for an elaborate discussion at the summit. Read the full article here.

Moneycontrol | Three factors that prevent India and China from getting close

Both India and China lie at the heart of the geopolitical churn in the Indo-Pacific, with their bilateral relationship holding significant implications for the future of the world order. While India is pursuing a policy of multi-alignment, it increasingly seems to be caught between two emerging power centres. On one side is a rising China, which is seeking to actively reshape the international order to facilitate its rise to the centre-stage of world affairs; on the other is the US, which is working to boost domestic strength, revitalise old alliances and fashion new partnerships in order to sustain its preeminence. Read the full article here.

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.