Biden attended the G20 summit, first sent Modi a meeting gift, the United States supports India to replace China, does India have this ability? Biden is about to visit Vietnam and put together the last "anti-China puzzle". The Philippines, Canada, India are restless, and China is at the enemy in 3 seas!
Biden sent Modi a "meet-and-greet" gift
After a long period of pre-publicity, on the evening of September 8, local time, US President Biden's special plane finally arrived in New Delhi, India, and Biden also began his G20 summit trip.
Although before his departure, the outside world already knew that Biden would expand the relationship between the United States and India in this operation and "support" India's coldly received G20 summit, all parties still did not expect that Biden's action would be so positive and rapid.
Just after he arrived in India on the evening of the 8th, he immediately held bilateral talks with Indian Prime Minister Modi and issued a joint statement.
In the statement, the two sides called on both governments to "continue to drive a fundamental shift in the India-U.S. strategic partnership at all levels of the global agenda." Biden also made clear in the statement that India became a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council and declared his commitment to promoting India as a center for repairing U.S. naval assets.
For India, this meeting gift cannot be described as heavy. In order to obtain a permanent seat in the United Nations, India has applied to the United Nations six times, and even formed a four-nation alliance with Brazil, Germany and Japan, hoping to support each other to become a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council.
The United States voted against India's entry into the regular in 2017, and although Biden's direct support for India is more verbal support, it is unlikely to really help India join the normal, but it can also be said to end a major problem in Modi's heart.
In addition, the so-called "continuing to promote a fundamental shift in the U.S.-India strategic partnership at all levels" is also worth paying attention to, and those familiar with the diplomatic interaction between the United States and India over the past two years should be able to guess the direction in which this so-called "fundamental shift" is shifting.
Thanks to the efforts of the United States, India is gradually deviating from its non-aligned principles and turning into the allied camp of the United States. Under this trend, even if India does not become an ally of the United States, it will become an important military partner of the United States in the Asian region and obtain more advanced military power with the support of the United States.
The most significant change is Biden's mention of "promoting India to become a maintenance center for US naval assets", once the United States and India reach a maintenance agreement, a large number of US ships, including aircraft carriers, will be repaired in India in the future, which is equivalent to directly solving the problem of aging US fleet, but insufficient domestic shipbuilding and maintenance capabilities; It will also give India access to more advanced ship technology to facilitate the development of its own aircraft carriers and other warships.
Therefore, we must pay attention to India's future movements and be wary of India becoming one of the allies of the United States, or becoming an important military fulcrum for the United States in Asia after moving closer to the United States in the extreme. This may directly change the geopolitical competitive environment around China, with irreversible effects on China.
From the current attitude of India, we cannot yet judge whether India will become an ally of the United States, but we can judge that India will definitely move closer to the United States militarily. Because this time, after receiving the "meeting gift" from the United States, India also carried out the "return gift".
India settled the last dispute between the two countries at the World Trade Organization at the meeting between the leaders of the United States and India, and India agreed to lower tariffs on some U.S. agricultural products. Tariff restrictions on these agricultural products began in 2007, when India banned imports of some agricultural products from the United States, such as poultry meat and eggs, to prevent bird flu, and the United States filed a consultation with the WTO's dispute settlement body in 2012, after which the WTO ruled India in violation, but India has not been able to implement the lifting measures.
Modi came up with this strategy of reducing tariffs this time, undoubtedly to show his sincerity of cooperation to the United States, because in the future, US-India relations will still be in a period of rapid development.
Can India replace China? What is the role of U.S. support?
Against this backdrop of warming relations between the United States and India, India's rise seems to have entered a high-speed phase, and the United States may also use this to achieve its other purpose of wooing India - India to replace China.
Some US media reported on September 9 that the rising India currently has conditions that are "almost the same as before China's rise". India has the world's largest population, the fastest economic growth rate among major economies, good relations with the United States and the West, and so on. It seems that India has taken advantage of the same advantages as China in the past to replicate China's economic miracle.
The article also details India's specific demographic advantages, Modi's efforts to transform India's economy, and puts forward the idea that "China falls, India eats".
So, can India really enter a stage of rapid development as the United States expects, and replace China in a short period of time?
We need to analyze the comparison between India and China, and the demand of the United States for India.
First of all, from the perspective of India itself, India today is indeed very similar to China in the past, with a large working population, a certain industrial base, and is expanding friendly relations with the West. However, India is very different from China in one way - that is, India's political model is decentralized, the central government has very limited restrictions on local governments, and local protectionist tendencies for industrial development are also very serious.
As a result, the preferential investment policies promised by the Indian government are often not realized in India, and many enterprises are attracted by India's preferential policies to invest in India, and then they are often exploited at various levels in the local areas. After the company has developed slightly, it will be required to localize, and the local government or local enterprises in India will acquire and control, and even the Indian parliament will "customize the law" for this protectionist behavior, and investors will not be allowed to take the proceeds out of India. The huge fine that Xiaomi suffered in India some time ago is the most direct proof.
And a country similar to China's early demographic dividend wants to achieve rapid development, the first step must be to fully introduce foreign investment, India's "sheep and sheep killing" to hinder the entry of foreign capital has determined that it is impossible to copy the Chinese model of the year.
According to data compiled by India's Mint, India's foreign direct investment in the first half of 2023 fell by 16.3% year-on-year, and a large number of foreign investors chose to leave the Indian market. After the close relationship between the United States and India, many American companies were "forced" by the US subsidy policy to invest in India, and this kind of foreign investment for political purposes is difficult to stabilize for a long time.
In addition, India's demographic dividend is also different from China's. India is far inferior to China in terms of universal compulsory education, and today's manufacturing technology development has been different from the past, now many scientific and technological products manufacturing have certain cultural requirements for workers, India itself has a disadvantage in this point, want to promote national development must strengthen the popularization of education, but India's religious concepts, the status of men and women, infrastructure and other factors determine that education can not be popularized in the short term.
In addition, in the strategy of the United States and India, the United States' positioning of India's needs is also very vague. The Biden administration has no idea what kind of India the United States needs. Is it the need for an India, which rises as fully as China and becomes America's rival again? Or is an India needed to completely become the factory of the world, without any political ambitions?
India has very obvious ambitions, and it is impossible to make India obedient to become a manufacturer of the United States, and let the United States make a large profit. India may now covet foreign investment and maintain friendly relations with the United States, but once India achieves great development, the pattern of deteriorating Sino-US relations is bound to reappear in India.
And India is different from China, India is a country with obvious aggression, as the only country after World War II to annex other sovereign countries, once India is strong, it will certainly not be like China's win-win development, clearly not hegemony, but very likely to launch a "hegemony" with the United States, then the position of the United States will be more embarrassing.
So China's success is not replicable from any point of view. The US strategy of supporting India to "replace China" is also unrealistic. We don't know when Biden's play can be, but the final outcome will definitely not be that India submits to the United States and becomes the "ideal Chinese alternative" in the eyes of the United States.
Biden put together his own "anti-China puzzle"?
In addition to India, Biden recently made a trip to Vietnam, which was scheduled for just one day after the G20 summit. But on this day, Biden will hold a meeting with high-level Vietnamese officials and upgrade the U.S.-Vietnam relationship to a strategic cooperative partnership.
Biden's thoughts in this visit actually began to be noticed by the outside world very early, because before the G20 summit happened to be the time of the ASEAN summit, Biden did not choose to participate in the ASEAN summit, but went directly to India to participate in the G20 summit, and then to ASEAN member Vietnam after the summit. This is obviously dissatisfied with ASEAN's attitude of not taking sides, but wants to find a breakthrough from individual ASEAN countries and completely pull Vietnam into the camp of the United States.
Vietnam, like India, is one of America's ideal "factory of the world" alternatives. In recent years, the United States is also making large-scale manufacturing investment in Vietnam, and in the Biden Vietnam itinerary announced earlier by the White House, we can also find that Biden will discuss with Vietnam this time, including educational exchanges and workforce development projects, as well as innovation to promote economic growth, which is obviously to transfer manufacturing to Vietnam, so that it can compete with China, becoming another node for the United States to contain China's rise.
Zhang Liangren, former deputy director of Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council, believes that Biden's visit to Vietnam is to put together the "last puzzle piece of the anti-China puzzle." Because in the past few years, the United States has been strengthening its comprehensive strategic partnership with Japan and South Korea, actively attracting the Philippines to join the anti-China camp, and is also working to win over Pacific island countries, and then extending south to Australia and New Zealand, and an "anti-China maritime Maginot Line" stretching across the Indo-Pacific region is being constructed.
Vietnam is a key node, Vietnam directly borders China, and Sino-Vietnamese relations are complex and delicate. The two countries have both cooperation and maritime disputes. If the United States can use this opportunity to comprehensively upgrade its relationship with Vietnam, it will create a key strategic node for the United States in the South China Sea. In the event of a conflict between China and the United States, the United States could also land in China through Vietnam, a country bordering China.
Based on Zhang Liangren's view, we can further extend and combine Biden's previous actions to India with Biden's visit to Vietnam, speculating that once Biden completely takes India and Vietnam, he can use these two countries to build a complete encirclement of China from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. This is undoubtedly extremely dangerous for China.
But it is too early to say that Vietnam has completely turned to the United States. Until now, Vietnam has maintained its neutral attitude of not choosing sides, and the bait thrown by the United States can indeed tempt Vietnam, but Vietnam is not willing to bite the hook, and still wants to ride the wall in the middle to obtain maximum benefits.
The most direct manifestation of this is that Phu Trong, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam, visited the border port of the Friendship Pass with the Chinese ambassador to Vietnam on August 25, emphasizing that Vietnam regards the development of relations with China as a top priority; He reiterated this view when he received visiting senior Chinese officials on September 5. This shows that Vietnam still wants to stabilize its relations with China and avoid getting involved in the conflict.
However, in the long run, the United States' wooing and pressure on Vietnam will only become heavier and heavier, and it is still unpredictable whether Vietnam can eventually resist this temptation and completely turn to the United States. Vietnam can only be observed and guarded.
China has suffered from enemies in the three seas, and the situation in its surrounding areas is unprecedentedly grim
But even if there is uncertainty about whether Vietnam will now fall to the United States, the situation around China is not optimistic.
Today, China is facing the recent situation of enemies in the three seas, namely:
First, the Philippines provoked incidents in the South China Sea and attacked Ren'ai Reef again;
Second, the Canadian frigate provoked in the East China Sea and confronted the Chinese warship;
Third, India is studying how to participate in the war in the Taiwan Strait.
Among them, the Philippine news came from the information released by the China Coast Guard on September 8, on the same day, two more Philippine replenishment ships and two coast guard ships entered the waters near Ren'ai Jiao in China's Nansha Qundao without permission from the Chinese government in an attempt to resupply the Philippine tank landing ship Sierra Madre sitting on Ren'ai Jiao.
The Chinese side warned the Philippine vessel in accordance with the law, followed the supervision throughout the process, and effectively regulated it. Judging from the information flowing out, the Philippines has not achieved its goals this time, but this frequent provocation has shown that the Philippines will not give up provoking China in the South China Sea, and there may be more Philippine provocations in the future, resulting in a further deterioration of the situation in the South China Sea.
The Canadian frigate incident occurred after Canada's joint military exercises with the United States and Japan. A Canadian warship named USS Ottawa cruised the East China Sea in the week after leaving its Yokosuka base in Japan, and encountered Chinese warships at least three times, only about a kilometer from each other. In this series of incidents, Canada also concocted the same incident as the Philippines, claiming that a sailor exposed to "small Chinese lasers" could cause "permanent eye damage."
But the reality is that Chinese warships may have been using laser ranging to determine the distance between themselves and Canadian warships to ensure safe displacement. This is obviously a Canadian side playing with right and wrong, provoking China.
The information on the Indian side comes from Indian officials obtained by Bloomberg. According to the revelation, the Indian side has studied the possible actions of India after the conflict in the Taiwan Strait, and the final conclusion shows that India can become a logistics base for the US military and its allies in the event of a conflict in the Taiwan Strait, providing them with supplies and maintenance operations. In the most extreme cases, India would even go to war with China directly on the northern border, helping the United States contain China's power.
Under the common threat of the East China Sea, the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait, the current situation around China is entering a stage of unprecedented tension, which shows that the United States' encirclement and containment of China is constantly tightening, and China needs to strengthen its own defense forces as soon as possible and develop more powerful military forces to ensure that it can defeat the invading enemy in all directions.
At the same time, we must also maintain the mentality of "giving up illusions and preparing for battle", and if foreign enemies do not allow us to live in peace, we should strive for peace for ourselves with a resolute mentality.