Recently, India's position between China and the United States has undergone a very subtle change. To sum up, India and the United States are drifting apart, while China-India relations are showing some signs of warming. There are many reasons for saying that the United States and India are drifting apart, and the United States has recently done two things in succession to provoke India.
First, in early May, in order to win over the Philippines, the United States held a small meeting in Hawaii with the defense ministers of Japan, the Philippines, and Australia, and wanted to form a new "anti-China" alliance "squad" in the Indo-Pacific. This "squad" made India's position very awkward.
You must know that when the United States first formulated its Indo-Pacific strategy, it took India as the first target and established the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue mechanism. But since the second half of last year, the mechanism has begun to be gradually marginalized by the United States. 2024 is an election year in the United States and an election year in India. Therefore, since September last year, Modi has been sending invitations to Biden, hoping that the other party will visit New Delhi and cheer him on.
Biden
For the first time, Modi invited Biden to attend the celebration of the 2024 "Republic Day of India", but the US side refused. Later, Modi invited the leaders of the United States, Japan and Australia to attend this year's Quad summit, but Biden was still not invited. It is no wonder that Modi would be happy if Biden ignored the invitation of India's "old partner" several times and instead created a new "small circle" that did not play with India.
Since the formation of the "squad", the United States has been trying to reassure India, saying that the structure is a supplement to the original "Quadrilateral Security Dialogue". However, the Indian media believe that the US rhetoric is pure nonsense, and bluntly said that the emergence of the "small team" proves that the "Quadrilateral Security Dialogue" is irrelevant, and that the Philippines has replaced India as the priority partner of the United States in the Asia-Pacific region.
Second, Biden recently publicly disparaged the immigration policies of India and Japan during a recent election campaign, claiming that these two countries are at risk of recession because they are "excessively xenophobic" and unwilling to accept immigrants. The original intention of Biden's rhetoric should be to give the Democratic Party a platform for its immigration policy, and he wants to advocate the theory that liberalizing immigration is conducive to the development of the US economy, and Japan and India have unfortunately been "shot".
Bijiri
However, this time, both Japan and India have reacted very strongly to this matter. Japan's attitude was relatively restrained, and it only expressed great concern and regret for this remark.
India is welcome, Indian Foreign Minister S Jaishankar directly refuted that the United States should not sing about India's economic prospects, and also made-for-tat use of the recent campus protests in the United States, knocking Biden not to put ideology first, trying to control the global narrative before his home is cleaned.
In addition to Biden's unpleasant words, there is also a very important reason why Japan and India reacted so much, that is, these two countries are indeed facing economic difficulties, and more importantly, this economic difficulty is caused by the United States. In April, the Federal Reserve announced that it would keep high interest rates unchanged and even claimed that it would not rule out further interest rate hikes, which directly led to a "big dive" in the yen and the Indian rupee, and the Indian stock market recorded its biggest one-day drop since January this year.
Jaishankar
Because of the irresponsible fiscal policy of the United States, Japan and India are facing economic turmoil, and it is normal for Biden, the culprit, to jump out and "shake the pot" at this time, causing a backlash. At this point, the "honeymoon period" between the United States and India is gone. At the end of the day, the United States and India are not countries in the same boat at all.
At the economic level, the United States pursues the return of the industrial chain to the mainland, while India hopes to become a "replacement for China" and attract investment in the development of Indian manufacturing, which is incompatible. At the political level, the "Hindu nationalism" promoted by Modi and the "democratic values" that the United States has pulled out as a banner are not the same thing at all.
Not to mention the fact that recently, in order to combat the so-called "Sikh separatist forces", Modi instigated secret services to go to the United States and Canada to launch a cross-border hunt for Sikh leaders. The U.S. ambassador to India has publicly acknowledged that this round of controversy surrounding Sikhism is the "first major controversy" in U.S.-India relations.
Diego Garcia base
At present, Canada has arrested four Indians. The United States has also urged the Modi government to initiate an "accountability system" to hold assassins accountable. As for the military aspect, although the United States has invented a set of "string of pearl strategy" narratives to mislead India into regarding China as its biggest rival in the Indian Ocean sea power, in fact, the heavily guarded Diego Garcia base of the United States is the biggest obstacle to India's "southward expansion".
When an Indian aircraft carrier goes to sea, the first challenge it will face is the United States. Although there are border disputes between China and India, in the final analysis, although the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is strategically important, it is still a "no man's land" and extremely difficult to develop, and its value for India today is difficult to compare with that of the Indian Ocean.
Under such circumstances, the cooperation between India and the United States based on the "Indo-Pacific Strategy" can basically be said to be delaying each other and wasting a critical period of opportunity for each other's development and strategic transformation.
Sino-Indian
And now, with the repeated neglect of the United States, Modi seems to be showing signs of a change of heart. The Indian media openly stated that Tagore's prescient emphasis on "India-China closeness" should not be forgotten. The latest data shows that the trade relationship between China and India is showing a recovery momentum.
According to research by an Indian think tank, China has surpassed the United States in fiscal year 2023-2024 to become India's largest trading partner again, with both imports and exports showing a clear upward trend. Correspondingly, under the situation of the Biden administration's high trade barriers, India's imports and exports to the United States have shown a downward trend, and the import volume has plummeted by about 2%.
Recently, China has reappointed a new ambassador to India after a year and a half, which can be regarded as a sign of the importance of Sino-Indian relations. If Modi can see the United States clearly this time and readjust his position between China and the United States, then China will certainly be happy to see it.
Ambassador of the People's Republic of China to India
In addition to the easing of trade relations with China, India has also become more and more open in trade with Russia. According to Russian media reports, Russia used the Indian rupee to buy weapons worth about $4 billion from India.
At present, it is uncertain about the specific categories of these weapons, and it cannot be ruled out that it will be a "buyback", but all in all, it is a sure thing that India will become an arms exporter to Russia. This incident will inevitably lead to a wider and wider distance between the United States and the West and India. However, India has gone too far on the wrong path, and it is still unclear whether it will be able to get back on the right track.
Whether Modi has the skills to control the nationalist sentiment that is now rising in India, rather than being coerced by it, is also a huge question mark. But in short, it is not a bad thing for China that the United States has once again driven out an ally that it wanted to win over through its own "riotous operation".
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