India has long been touted as one of the world’s top emerging economies, and was a BRIC nation — Brazil, Russia, India and China — when it formed in 2001, expanding to BRICS in 2010 with the addition of South Africa.
For a long time, India trailed China in the speed and size of its economic development. The past few years have seen the country increase in geopolitical importance and engage more with other members of the international community, not just because of its inherent strengths, but because of the counterbalance it is hoped it can provide against China. Major economies have come to regard India as an essential partner, including in multilateral military exercises and as part of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue in the Indo-Pacific along with the US, Japan and Australia.
India’s long-term insistence on carving its own path, refusing to firmly align itself with any one nation, has not changed. Its growing influence and power, to an extent, makes it an unknown quantity. Nobody is under the illusion that it will fall into lock-step with the Western democratic world as was the hope for China after Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平) opened the country up to economic reforms. Some have linked the West’s muted response to Canada’s allegations that the Indian government was involved in the killing of a Sikh with Canadian nationality on Canadian soil to its courting of India.
Some might see similarities between China’s rise and that of India, and are wary of the direction the latter might take, but Taiwan has no concerns in that regard. Rather, it stands to benefit by increasing the depth and frequency of ties between New Delhi and Taipei, as both have to deal with the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) “gray zone” tactics and distortions of history to claim territory that it has no historical, legal or rational claim to.
For India, this is being manifested most explicitly in border disputes between western Tibet and Kashmir and in the northeastern Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, which the CCP claims as “South Tibet.”
Meanwhile, the CCP insists that Taiwan is an inalienable part of its territory, and has intentionally misinterpreted UN Resolution 2758 and forcefully insisted on other countries’ adherence to the “one China” principle. The latest example of this was China’s publication of a “standard map” with an aspirational mapping of its “territories” that included contested areas involving not just India and Taiwan, but also Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, the Philippines, Japan and Russia.
India and Taiwan experience military provocations from the CCP. Both have to constantly refute the bogus nature of the CCP’s claims over their territory. Both suspect that China has its reasons to wrest sovereignty from them, over the whole or part of their territory: China would benefit hugely from annexing Taiwan and is arguably troubled by a stronger, more geopolitically influential India on its doorstep, especially as it is showing signs of declining economically and demographically.
All of this suggests that increased ties, trade and technological exchanges would be mutually beneficial for Taiwan and India. There have been visits by Indian politicians and parliamentary exchanges, but these must be more visible and more frequent. The absence of official ties is an obstacle, but much can be done outside of the public domain for now, until a more stable and explicit relationship is established.
Taiwan and India can learn to play in the gray zone, to counter the gray zone tactics employed by the CCP.
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017
RSS