The Chinese approach gels rather well with the Arab World’s ‘Act East Policy’.
The COVID-19 pandemic has been a major challenge for China, with unprecedented lockdowns and occasional horror stories of the origins and spread of COVID-19 and how it has been dealt with, leading to nationwide protests which have been partially successful in achieving the winding down of excessive COVID-19 restrictions. President Xi Jinping, emboldened after being crowned the third time by the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CPC), did have the taste of people’s ire and his limitations as the Chinese economy was also being hurt and a downward trend was being noticed.
This economic trajectory of India also gives India a distinct place in global politics today. There is a reason why the West, despite its differences with India over Ukraine, has continued to substantively engage with New Delhi. In fact, India's ties with the West have grown significantly amidst all the negative press India has received in the West. Where journalists remain prisoners of their short-term outlooks, policy-makers in the West recognize the real story -- the rise of India as a credible geopolitical and geo-economic player in the 21st century.
To say that the year 2022 has been a tumultuous one would be an understatement. Even as the year comes to an end, Russia continues with its bombardment of Ukrainian cities, targeting Ukrainian energy infrastructure with missiles and drones. The world’s second most powerful nation, China, is facing multiple pressures. In a matter of days, the Chinese Communist Party reversed its zero Covid policy as it came under pressure from the wider public that was tired of Xi Jinping’s strict Covid measures.
With tensions between an aggressive China and an emerging India intensifying, there will be significant changes and challenges in the Indian Ocean and South Asian regions. As 2022 comes to an end, the world is embracing a ‘new normal’ where new fault lines are being reconfigured in the Indo-Pacific.
Recent clashes between Indian and Chinese soldiers along the Line of Actual Control, or LAC, have once again underscored how a 20th-century conflict continues to shape the 21st-century trajectory of Sino-Indian relations and constrain New Delhi’s aspirations to play a larger role on the global stage. The Galwan Valley crisis of 2020 made it clear that Beijing had no intention of diplomatically resolving its border dispute with India. It also pushed Indian decision-makers into making certain choices that they were reluctant to make in the past, hoping against hope that engagement with China would be enough to produce the desired results.
The Chinese approach gels rather well with the Arab World’s ‘Act East Policy’.
The COVID-19 pandemic has been a major challenge for China, with unprecedented lockdowns and occasional horror stories of the origins and spread of COVID-19 and how it has been dealt with, leading to nationwide protests which have been partially successful in achieving the winding down of excessive COVID-19 restrictions. President Xi Jinping, emboldened after being crowned the third time by the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CPC), did have the taste of people’s ire and his limitations as the Chinese economy was also being hurt and a downward trend was being noticed.
This column argues that for India to continue to sustain the position it has occupied for some years as the largest recipient of gross inward remittance flows, it would be necessary to aim Indian diplomacy toward expanding greater global economic and education space for Indians.
