Towards entente cordiale

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping’s forthcoming “informal summit” in China raises the strong possibility of improving the relations between the two countries. There has been a flurry of activity for the last few months involving National Security Adviser Ajit Doval, Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale and External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, among others. This raises the hope of a substantial progress, an entente cordiale, since the summit meeting has been arranged after adequate preparation, including confidence-building measures on both sides.

India has shown concern regarding Chinese sensitivities on the Dalai Lama. The ghost of the 73-day stand-off in Doklam has now been buried and the concerns about the Chinese presence in the Indian Ocean have been kept aside in an attempt to focus on commonalities rather than differences. The Modi-Jinping summit in Wuhan is expected to yield rich dividends and it will set the stage for the Prime Minister’s second visit to China in June, when he is scheduled to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation meeting.

India has been moving energetically to repair relations with neighbouring countries. The reset with China is needed because of the changing geopolitical situation in which both Beijing and New Delhi seek to build an alliance that can weather the mercurial US. The summit meeting is a major investment for both leaders. They will seek to set the tone of the relationship that will then be followed up by officials concerned from both nations. The devil is always in the details, but the expectation is that there would be effort to find practical solutions to each other’s concerns. President Jinping needs India to be on board his Belt and Road Initiative, while India has territorial concerns since it runs through the PoK. Just as India has done, China too has made some concessions already. It announced it would resume sharing of hydrological data of the Brahmaputra and Sutlej rivers, which is crucial for flood prediction and relief planning. The two leaders have the ability to forge a new path of mutual benefit to the two countries. How well they seize the opportunity remains to be seen.