Chinese media praises Modi’s foreign policy

New Delhi, January 4

In rare praise for PM Narendra Modi, a Chinese government-controlled media outlet said India had become more strategically confident and proactive in creating and developing a “Bharat narrative”.

“For example, when discussing the trade imbalance between China and India, Indian representatives earlier used to primarily focus on China’s measures to reduce the trade imbalance. But now they are placing more emphasis on India’s export potential,” the author said in a Global Times article.

“In the political and cultural spheres, India has moved from emphasising its democratic consensus with the West to highlighting the ‘Indian feature’ of democratic politics. Currently, there is even more emphasis on the Indian origins of democratic politics,” wrote Zhang Jiadong, Director of the Centre for South Asian Studies at Fudan University, Shanghai. This shift reflects India’s ambition to escape its historical colonial shadow and act as a “world mentor”, both politically and culturally, said the article while stating that “since PM Narendra Modi assumed power, he has advocated for a multi-alignment strategy, promoting India’s relations with the US, Japan, Russia and other countries and regional organisations”.

“India has always considered itself a world power. However, it has only been less than 10 years since India shifted from multi-balancing to multi-alignment, and now it is rapidly transforming towards a strategy of becoming a pole in the multipolar world. The speed of such changes is rarely seen in the history of international relations,” wrote Zhang.