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Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi speaks at the National Press Club in Washington on Thursday. Photo: Getty Images via AFP
China

China-India relations next 5 to 10 years look ‘tough’, says top opposition leader Rahul Gandhi

  • Comment by Indian National Congress Party chief comes as annual meeting of security-themed Shanghai Cooperation Organisation goes virtual-only
  • Protracted border dispute casts long shadow over Beijing and New Delhi’s efforts to ease bilateral tensions
China-India relations
Khushboo Razdan
Khushboo Razdanin New York
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India’s best-known opposition leader predicts relations between Beijing and New Delhi will be “tough” over the next five to 10 years, a day after it was revealed that a high-level regional security meeting would be held virtually rather than in person.

Rahul Gandhi, leader of the Indian National Congress Party and now on a three-city US tour, shared his observation at a Stanford University event in California on Wednesday when asked about the rival countries’ historically hostile ties.

“It’s tough right now,” Gandhi said, noting China had “occupied some of our territory”.

“It’s rough,” he added, before stating: “India cannot be pushed around. That is something that is not going to happen”.

China and India have been mired in a protracted border stand-off that flared in 2020 as a deadly brawl resulted in the deaths of at least 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers in the contentious Kashmir region.

Despite more than 17 rounds of Sino-Indian diplomatic and military talks over the past two years, last December hundreds of Indian and Chinese troops wielding spiked clubs and tasers engaged in fistfights in Arunachal Pradesh, a province in India’s northeast claimed by Beijing as “Zangnan”, which translates as southern Tibet.

On Tuesday, in another apparent setback to easing bilateral tensions, India announced that an annual meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation scheduled for July would now be held online and not in person as previously planned.
The SCO is an eight-nation Eurasian security bloc aimed at counterbalancing Western influence in the region. China and Russia, along with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, were founding members in 2001; India and Pakistan joined in 2017. India has held the rotating chairmanship since September.

China-India relations: Qin Gang pledges better dialogue to improve ties

Without elaborating, India’s ministry of external affairs made its decision known in a press release, stating that the 22nd meeting of the group would be held in a “virtual format” and led by the country’s prime minister, Narendra Modi.
Before the surprise announcement, speculation had surfaced that some SCO leaders would not confirm their in-person attendance at the annual event, including those of China and Pakistan. For a time, Chinese President Xi Jinping was expected to travel to New Delhi for the meeting and hold a discussion with Modi.

“India wants to keep the SCO mechanism functioning, so an amicable solution to hold the summit virtually will save Modi and Xi from having the difficult chat about the military tensions at the LAC,” said Aadil Brar, a columnist for India’s ThePrint and a visiting scholar at National Chengchi University in Taipei. The LAC, or Line of Actual Control, is a disputed demarcation of territory claimed by both China and India.

“Xi knows quite well that he would be given a frosty reception by Modi if he had decided to travel in person for [the] SCO,” Brar said, adding that “Foreign Minister Qin Gang’s two recent visits to India weren’t exactly cordial”.

China’s moves to assert control on border risk further tensions with India

Qin held a bilateral talk with his Indian counterpart last month in Goa on the sidelines of the SCO foreign ministers’ meeting. The two agreed to improve communication and dialogue, but they diverged on the situation along the Chinese-Indian border.

The Indian side described it as “abnormal” and “fragile”, as the Chinese foreign ministry readout called the situation “generally stable”.

Some reports suggested India’s decision to make the next SCO meeting virtual was made in part because of circumstances surrounding Russian President Vladimir Putin. In March, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant against Putin over war crimes in Ukraine. India is not a member of the ICC.
It remains to be seen whether Putin and Xi will visit New Delhi as expected for the Group of 20 meeting in September.
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