Firstpost | Propelled by shared security concerns, India-Australia defence partnership gains dynamic momentum

The India-Australia relationship has seen meteoric growth since the turn of the century, with defence and security cooperation increasing in concert with stronger ties in other areas. Their converging security interests — due to the rise of the Indo-Pacific as a strategic construct, shared concerns in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR), and a shared threat perception with respect to China — have led to numerous domains in which India and Australia cooperate. Read the full article here.

The Diplomat | What’s in the New Amendments to China’s State Secrets Law?

At the sixth session of the Standing Committee of China’s top legislature, the National People’s Congress, last month, a draft amendment to the State Secrets Law was submitted for review and deliberation. Given the pervasive securitization of information in China today, the submission is considered timely in expanding the purview of “secrecy work” — that is, the task of protecting state secrets — in China. Read the full article here.

Mint | Containing China's technology ecosystem will remain a US policy priority

The most significant achievement of last week’s meeting between Joe Biden and Xi Jinping was that it took place. Xi agreed to crack down on fentanyl exports and resume military communication channels. There was some agreement on working together on managing risks from artificial intelligence. It took six months of ground work by cabinet-level officials and four hours of direct talks between the two leaders to agree on these limited points. Read the full article here.

Moneycontrol - Biden-Xi Summit: Challenge is to continue US-China engagements despite tensions

Leaders of the United States and China are expected to hold their first bilateral meeting in a year at the sidelines of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit in San Francisco today. The fact that this meeting is taking place is in itself a significant achievement for diplomats on both sides. It also underscores that despite the intense nature of Sino-US strategic competition and heated rhetoric, achieving some sort of stability is a shared interest. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi captured this in outlining the “Five Musts” for the two countries during his recent visit to the US. Read the full article here.

The Quad needs to work with other groups. ASEAN is the place to start

In recent years, the members of the Quad -- the U.S., Australia, Japan and India -- have each ramped up cooperation and relations with ASEAN countries. In September, Japan became the last of the quartet to upgrade its relationship with ASEAN to the level of a "comprehensive strategic partnership," and each of the four held a separate meeting with ASEAN leaders that month. Even India, which has had the weakest institutional connections with Southeast Asian governments, has markedly increased collaborative efforts in various areas under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "Act East" policy. In May, New Delhi conducted joint maritime exercises with ASEAN in the South China Sea. Read the full article here.

Hindustan Times | India, China war of positions in Maldives

The Maldivian presidential election last month culminated in a victory for Mohamed Muizzu and a loss for incumbent president Ibrahim Solih. The election was keenly watched in New Delhi and Beijing. How India and China see each other in strategic spaces such as the Maldives determines the nature of their competition in Small Island Developing States (SIDS) in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR). Read the full article here.

The Wire China | How China’s Global Initiatives Aim to Change the Way the World is Run

In 2013, in a speech in Moscow, Xi Jinping floated the idea of mankind being a community of shared future or common destiny. In the decade that has followed, this phrase began to shift from being a description of the world’s interconnected nature to underpinning the idea of a more proactive foreign policy that aims to shape a favourable external environment for China.  Since 2021, however, with the launch of the Global Development Initiative (GDI), the Global Security Initiative (GSI) and the Global Civilisation Initiative (GCI), the concept of mankind being a community of common destiny has been fleshed out as Beijing’s key proposition to reform global governance. Read the full article here.

Moneycontrol | China’s expanding military drone ecosystem is a menace for the likes of Taiwan and India

The recently concluded Sixth Chinese Helicopter Exposition, held in the Tianjin municipality of Northeastern China, put up a huge show of airpower with over 350 aircraft and air defence systems manufacturers from around 20 countries participating. At this expo, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army ground forces unveiled the latest addition to their drone arsenal, the KVD-002, manufactured by the Aerospace CH UAV Company. Read the full article here.

Mint | Championing pluralism globally will make India a ‘vishwaguru’

Contrary to what its critics think, India is well placed to be a vishwaguru, an exemplar state that shows the world the way towards a better future. Like all good gurus, it is neither perfect nor without self-doubt. Its many failings are open for all to see. Just like a good guru need not be a mahatma, it is not necessary for India to attain moral, political or economic superpowerdom to put forth its formula to improve how the world governs itself. Read the full article here.

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.