Xi on path to conflict with Modi

In the run up to next week’s G20 summit in New Delhi, China’s President Xi has sent a message to India’s Prime Minister Modi: ‘My way or the highways’.

The highways are the roads to their joint border in the Himalayas which Beijing built to get its military equipment closer to the disputed ‘Line of Actual Control’ (LAC). 

Xi’s way was Monday’s unveiling of his country standard national map: 2023 edition. It shows the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh and all of the disputed Aksai Chin plateau as being inside China’s borders. Xi wants Modi to eventually agree with this depiction and Beijing told New Delhi to “stay calm” in its reaction to the map.

India’s acquiescence in China’s view that Arunachal is ‘South Tibet’ is a non-starter; indeed, its response was that the map is “absurd”, but images from the U.S. company Maxar (released this week) show that China views force as an option to change minds. A network of newly constructed bunkers and tunnels dug into hillsides in Aksai Chin were not difficult to spot. They are now integrated into the roads, pipelines, airfields, helipads, and military bases China has built along the 2,100-mile-long border. India has tried to match this build-up of force. The two fought a brief artillery war in 1962 and in recent years there have been clashes which, while not involving guns, have resulted in dozens of fatalities.

On Thursday, Xi twisted the knife. Officials said the Chinese leader would not be going to New Delhi for the G20 summit. There were already signs that the meeting would see little progress on thorny issues such as Ukraine/Russia and trade, but Xi has attended every G20 in-person since coming to power in 2013. This looks like a clear attempt to damage the event and undermine India’s potential to showcase its growing geopolitical weight. Premier Li Quing is expected to go in Xi’s place, but that will only underline whoisn’t coming to dinner.

The decision contrasts with last week when Xi attended the BRICS summit in South Africa, an event he dominated. The meeting ended with an announcement that the BRICS would be expanding from 5 members to 11. There’s little chance in the medium term of it becoming a genuine rival to other regional or global groupings but snubbing the G20 is another way of trying to boost the relevance of BRICS+.

It also means there will be no chance of Biden/Xi meeting, nor of Prime Minister Sunak getting a few minutes ‘facetime’ next week, a subject which brings us to James Cleverley’s trip to Beijing this week. The Foreign Secretary was severely criticised by members of his own party, including Ian Duncan Smith, for being part of “Operation Kowtow”. Duncan Smith is a fierce critic of Beijing’s litany of human rights abuses and is one of the British MPs on a Chinese sanctions list. However, describing the visit as kotowing, saying it “smells of appeasement” is harsh. Cleverly is the first senior British minister to visit China in five years during which time relations have deteriorated. As he said, “China’s size, history and global significance means [it] can’t be ignored.”

The Foreign Secretary insisted he raised human rights in “every single one” of his meetings in Beijing. This is a ritual most western politicians have to go through even though they know that it will have little effect on Chinese officials other than to irritate them.

However, surely engagement is better than the continuing drift in relations as long as UK policy is as “clear eyed” about China as the Foreign Secretary claims. As the chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, Alicia Kearns MP, told Reaction: “The primary goal should have been to demonstrate Britain’s resolve to stand firm in the face of an alarming drift by the CCP towards authoritarianism in recent years”.

Kearn’s added that: “The next step should be publishing an unclassified China strategy to end the strategic ambiguity experienced by civil society, academia and industries as well as ministers”. She was repeating criticism made in this week’s 87 page Select Committee report that there appears to be “confusion across Whitehall about the Tilt to the Indo-Pacific, stemming from a failure to explain the policy”.

The report also recommends that the UK suggests to its AUKUS partners (USA/Australia) that Japan and South Korea should be invited to join the pact, and that the UK should consider being part of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD) –  the loose naval agreement between the USA, Japan, Australia and India.

This would gel with what is emerging in the Pacific. The QUAD and AUKUS are just two of a raft of agreements designed to block China’s gradualist approach to controlling first the South China Sea, then the East China Sea, followed by the Western Pacific. On Aug 18, President Biden hosted the leader of South Korea and Japan at Camp David. The talks were aimed at creating a common security agenda and they agreed to a coordinated response to “regional challenges, provocations, and threats”. For South Korea and Japan to come together in this manner is remarkable and illustrates their levels of anxiety about China’s intentions. The Philippines has recently signed an agreement with the US granting Washington extra basing rights and Manila is building relationships between its senior military commanders and their counterparts in the US and Japan. The Philippines recently conducted its first joint naval drills with Australia, and earlier this summer Malaysia and Singapore participated in US led exercises.

This web of agreements and alliances has more long-term significance than next week’s G20 even if, individually, they make fewer headlines. For the UK not to have an interest here would be foolish, and to have an interest includes knowing more about China.

This is why it is wrong both to criticise the UK for engaging with Beijing this week, and to heap scorn on what is often called “delusions of grandeur”. A second-tier power arguing for a second-tier role in the most important economic, diplomatic, and military region in the world is not delusional.

Over the past year, the foreign ministers of the Netherlands, Spain, Poland, Hungary, Germany, Denmark, Slovenia, and many other countries have made the trip to China. None of them was spotted kowtowing.

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