India must rethink its relationship with China
Keji Mao
Since mid-2024, tentative signs of a warming in China-India relations have been upended again by external shocks, including the US President Donald Trump’s chaotic ‘reciprocal tariffs’ launched in early April 2025 and a terrorist attack in India’s Kashmir. These events have plunged the bilateral relationship into a state of uncertainty.
Amid this delicate thawing, India’s commerce and industry minister, Piyush Goyal, declared on April 11 that allowing China into the World Trade Organisation (WTO) was the root cause of today’s global trade crisis, while praising Trump’s tariffs as necessary and beneficial to the world, presenting a golden opportunity for India.
The subtext of Goyal’s remarks carries far greater weight than their surface meaning. For many in China, his words crystallise a bitter realisation: Indian decision-makers only entertain improving ties with Beijing during fleeting moments of vulnerability, such as after the floundering US visit in February 2025. The moment Trump decides to go after China, India reflexively aligns with Washington’s hawkish stance.
India’s approach to China, prone to sharp swings with shifting external winds, lays bare the fragility of China-India relations. This vulnerability stems from two sources. Externally, India’s posture hinges on the state of US-China relations: only when Washington and Beijing are on stable footing does New Delhi pursue warmer ties with China. Internally, domestic pressures can swiftly derail progress. Any spark that ignites public resentment toward China—whether Beijing is implicated or not—can sabotage bilateral relations.
More fundamentally, India’s ambivalence signals a failure to fully comprehend why amicable China-India relations benefit not only China but, more critically, India itself—especially its aspirations for development and global ascendancy.
China’s Lesson: Always Prioritize Development When Possible
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been dubbed ‘India’s Deng Xiaoping,’ but equating the two based solely on Modi’s pro-business reforms overlooks the depth of Deng’s legacy. Many in India fail to appreciate that Deng, the mastermind of China’s reform and opening up, not only drove domestic transformation but also made a prescient assessment of the global geopolitical landscape: the defining themes of the era were peace and development, not revolution and war.
This insight shaped nearly every facet of China’s foreign policy during its reform era. With global conflict unlikely in the near term, China seized the moment to prioritise economic construction, leveraging and reinforcing international peace to achieve socialist modernisation. Guided by this vision, China enacted sweeping strategic shifts in the early Eighties, crafting long-term modernisation plans, establishing coastal special economic zones, and embracing an open-door policy. Diplomacy and military priorities were realigned to serve economic goals, with meticulous efforts to avoid unnecessary external pressures.
By contrast, while India’s reforms in the early Nineties are often likened to China’s, Indian leaders have rarely articulated a clear, strategic reading of the global environment, instead reacting to tactical disturbances. This has left India far more susceptible to distraction than China. Even under intense external pressure—such as the Soviet bloc’s collapse, Western sanctions in the early Nineties, or crises like the 1996 Taiwan Strait tensions, the 1999 NATO bombing of China’s Belgrade embassy, and the 2001 South China Sea collision—China held fast to its strategic course. Its unwavering commitment to openness laid the groundwork for WTO accession in 2001 and a decade of ensuing breakneck economic growth.
Indian policymakers and citizens often puzzle over China’s obsessions with ‘the dragon elephant tango’ or its efforts to separate thorny border disputes from other bilateral issues. Some even view these overtures as deceptive ploys. Yet a cursory understanding of China’s strategic culture reveals these as the most sincere, pragmatic proposals drawn from Beijing’s own cherished experience. After all, even at the height of tensions with the West, China still extended generous terms to attract global capital, fuelling its sustained rise. Regrettably, few in India grasp Beijing’s mind.
In its pursuit of development, China has long focused on dealing with domestic economic, social, and political challenges while keeping a low diplomatic profile. For a large nation in a critical growth phase, a primary diplomatic aim is to create a stable external environment for economic progress, steering clear of unnecessary geopolitical entanglements. For countries like India and China, with vast populations, chasing fleeting ‘great power status’ or ‘global recognition’ is beside the point. By focusing on development with disciplined strategic resolve, such nations are destined to claim a prominent global role.
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