It’s time India used its most powerful weapon against China: Trade

[B][COLOR="#696969"]Narendra Modi’s statement that “not a single bullet has been fired” was music to Chinese ears. Beijing’s bullet-less Himalayan aggression, as the Sikkim episode demonstrates, is similar to the way it has expanded its control in the South China Sea
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[I]Jun 30, 2017 14:14 IST[/I]

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[I]The national flags of India and China at Vijay Chowk, Rajpath, in New Delhi.[/I] ([COLOR="#4B0082"]FILE PHOTO[/COLOR])

Just as Prime Minister Narendra Modi was meeting United States President Donald Trump at the White House, Beijing ratcheted up pressure on New Delhi by officially publicising a military standoff at the Sikkim-Bhutan-Tibet tri-junction. The shadow of China’s muscle flexing over the Modi-Trump discussions paralleled what happened when Chinese President Xi Jinping paid an official visit to India in 2014. Xi arrived on Modi’s birthday bearing an unusual gift for his host — a major Chinese military encroachment into Ladakh’s Chumar region. And Chinese Premier Li Keqiang’s 2013 visit was preceded by a 19-kilometre incursion into Ladakh’s Depsang Plateau.

In China’s Sun Tsu-style strategy, diplomacy and military pressure, as well as soft and hard tactics, go hand-in-hand. In the same way, China’s xenophobic nationalism goes hand-in-hand with its economic globalisation project. China has held border talks with India while its forces perched on the upper heights of the Tibetan massif have staged fresh incursions.

In Beijing’s view, India is a critical ‘swing State’ that increasingly is moving to the US camp, undercutting Xi’s ambition to establish a Sino-centric Asia through an expanded tianxia system of the 15th century. Given India’s vantage geographical location, China needs its participation to plug key gaps in Xi’s One Belt, One Road (OBOR) project. But India not only boycotted Xi’s OBOR summit but has also portrayed OBOR as an opaque, neo-colonial enterprise seeking to ensnare smaller, cash-strapped states in a debt trap.

China may have orchestrated the Sikkim standoff not so much to cast a shadow over the Modi-Trump discussions as to warn Modi that his increasing tilt toward the US will carry long-term costs. China is already stepping up its direct and surrogate threats against India. One example is the proliferation of incursions and other border incidents since the 2005 India-US nuclear deal, which laid out a strategic framework for the US to co-opt India. China is also waging a psy-war through media.
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