India’s China trade challenge
A strategic response is needed to tackle the burgeoning trade deficit with China, which reached alarming proportions at $101.02 billion in 2022. What we have instead is a dose of whataboutery from the government.
Why read this story?
Editor's note: For the first time since India lost 20 soldiers in a deadly clash with China’s People’s Liberation Army at Galwan in June 2020, China’s defence minister was in Delhi last week. Li Shangfu was attending the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation meeting of defence ministers and held a bilateral meeting with his Indian counterpart Rajnath Singh. Later this week, China’s foreign minister Qin Gang is scheduled to be in Goa, to attend the SCO meeting of foreign ministers. He was last in India in March for the G20 foreign ministers meeting where he met foreign minister S. Jaishankar. China’s President Xi Jinping, recently elected for an unprecedented third term, is also expected to be in India twice this year—in June and September—to attend the SCO and G20 summits. This flurry of diplomatic visits by Chinese officials and leaders to India suggests a sign of normalcy in bilateral ties, contrary to Jaishankar’s claim that “today the state of our relations with China is not normal” because of the situation on the Line of Actual Control. Meanwhile, the three-year-old border crisis continues unabated. As …
More in Chaos
You may also like
Reliance’s battery plans run into a China wall
Mukesh Ambani’s $10-billion bet faces a harsh reality: much of the clean-energy stack still sits overwhelmingly in Chinese hands.
India needs to stop courting the US and look for a solid plan B
It’s never a good sign when your foreign minister needs a lobbyist to meet US officials. The recent events signal a breakdown in the Modi government’s ability to operate in today’s Washington through its own machinery.
What China’s recent Middle East tour says about their ties
China’s expanding influence in the GCC region comes with its own set of opportunities—and constraints shaped by America’s influence in the Gulf.
