Tag Archive for: India

Trump’s tariffs challenge India’s economic balance

US President Donald Trump’s tariff threats have dominated headlines in India in recent weeks. Earlier this month, Trump announced that his reciprocal tariffs—matching other countries’ tariffs on American goods—will go into effect on 2 April, causing Indian exporters to panic at the prospect of being embroiled in Trump’s escalating trade war.

Trump’s unpredictability offers little solace. While he recently suspended tariffs on cars and automobile parts from Mexico and Canada for one month—ostensibly to give US automakers time to ramp up domestic production—any hope that India might receive similar exemptions is, at best, wishful thinking.

During his February visit to the United States, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi did achieve an important goal: a nine-month negotiation process, set to conclude by autumn, on a new bilateral trade deal. But this timeline has no bearing on the reciprocal tariffs set to take effect next month. In his 4 March State of the Union address, Trump singled out India as a major tariff abuser and reiterated his commitment to imposing reciprocal duties.

The economic impact on India, which runs a trade surplus with the US, could be significant. India exported goods worth nearly $74 billion to the US in 2024, and estimates suggest that Trump’s new tariffs could cost the country up to $7 billion annually.

But the implications could be much more far-reaching. One analysis estimates that India effectively imposes a 9.5 percent tariff on US goods, while US levies on Indian imports are only 3 percent. If Trump follows through on his pledge of full tariff reciprocity, that imbalance will vanish—along with the cost advantages many Indian exporters currently enjoy. Indian products will become less competitive, leading to a decline in export revenues and job losses, especially in labour-intensive industries. Critical sectors—including chemicals, metals, jewellery, automobiles and auto parts, textiles, pharmaceuticals and food products—are expected to be hit the hardest.

The impact of reciprocal tariffs also depends on their structure—specifically, which products they target and how broadly they are applied. Will tariffs be imposed on entire categories of goods, such as fruit, or specific items, such as apples, which India does not export to the US? If the tariffs apply to broad categories or single out major Indian exports such as mangoes and oranges, they could significantly restrict India’s access to the US market.

This would put India in a difficult position: negotiate an exemption or urgently seek alternative markets. While Indian officials have rushed to Washington, hoping to gauge the Trump administration’s intentions before the reciprocal tariffs kick in, it appears they have found little clarity.

Trump’s 25 percent tariff on automobile parts would undoubtedly hurt India, a major producer. But Indian exporters are no more vulnerable than their counterparts in Mexico and China. If US tariffs are applied to all countries, they will drive up costs for everyone.

The greater risk for India lies in the potential long-term impact on the US automotive industry, which relies heavily on imported parts. If Trump’s tariffs lead to a massive resurgence of domestic manufacturing and a sharp decline in imports, Indian suppliers will inevitably suffer. But such a shift would take time, and given existing wage disparities, US-made parts will likely remain more expensive than Indian imports.

With projections suggesting that lower exports could cause India’s annual GDP growth to slow significantly, Modi’s government has scrambled to placate the Trump administration with pre-emptive concessions. The 2025–26 Union budget cuts tariffs on US-made bourbon, wines and electric vehicles. Even Harley-Davidson motorcycles, a frequent point of contention for Trump, will now cost less in India.

Will that be enough to placate Trump? If the US matches India’s 10 percent tariff on US pharmaceutical imports, it could eliminate Indian manufacturers’ current cost advantage. This is no small concern, given that pharmaceutical exports to the US account for about 31 percent of India’s total exports. That reflects India’s significance as a producer of the generic drugs sold in US pharmacies. If Trump’s tariffs drive up consumer prices, would US companies start producing generic drugs domestically, potentially undermining India’s most lucrative export sector?

Then there are the unknown unknowns. Will the Trump administration impose even higher tariffs on other countries that compete with India for the US market? And if Indian exporters lose access to the US market, could they find alternative buyers?

Trump has already touted his success in dealing with India. During a recent White House briefing, he declared, ‘India charges us massive tariffs, you can’t even sell anything into India. It’s almost restrictive’. But he claimed that India had ‘agreed to cut their tariffs way down now because somebody is finally exposing them for what they have done’.

Modi’s government has been quick to downplay the perception that it yielded to US pressure. But Trump’s remarks are bound to trigger intense soul-searching among Indian policymakers. India has long used tariffs to protect its domestic industries, particularly agriculture, automobiles and electronics. Reducing tariffs could expose these industries to fierce import competition, threatening local businesses and jobs.

India’s deep-seated preference for protectionist policies, rooted in its colonial past, will not be easily abandoned. Given that tariffs also serve as a vital source of government revenue, a sudden reduction could disrupt fiscal stability, especially when India must juggle competing economic priorities, such as infrastructure investment and funding essential welfare programs.

Some concessions, of course, will be unavoidable. In the coming months, India will have little choice but to explore strategic tariff reductions in select sectors while negotiating broader trade benefits and improved access to the US market.

Admittedly, preserving India’s economic sovereignty while making meaningful concessions to maintain strong trade ties with the US will require a delicate balancing act. With the October deadline for a bilateral trade deal looming, the stakes of striking the right balance could not be higher.

India has arrived

Last month, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced that the first official foreign visit of the commission in her second term would be to India. On the same day, Marco Rubio held his first bilateral meeting as US Secretary of State with India’s minister of external affairs, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s two-day visit to Washington last week confirmed his country’s rising international profile. The visit ended with the promise of what Modi called a United States-India ‘mega partnership’. As part of that partnership, he has committed to double trade with the US by 2030, increase oil and gas imports and expand US military sales to India.

India is the world’s most populous country, home to more than 1.4 billion people with a median age of 29.8 years, compared to 38.9 in the United States, 40.2 in China and 44.5 in the European Union. This massive and relatively young population, together with a large and fast-growing information and communications technology sector, is supporting an economic boom: India is now the fastest-growing major economy, with the International Monetary Fund forecasting a 6.5 percent increase in GDP this year. India is expected to overtake Japan and Germany to become the world’s third-largest economy by 2030.

Despite its vast potential, India has long been overlooked by the West, both economically and geopolitically. But a fundamental global realignment is now underway. The US’s unipolar moment has given way to an era of great-power competition that, unlike during the Cold War, features demands by emerging and developing economies for a more inclusive and representative multilateral system. In this multipolar age, both the US and Europe see India—a neutral foreign-policy actor and dynamic emerging economy—as vital to the future of their strategic priorities.

A founder of the Non-Aligned Movement, India has plenty of experience navigating precarious moments in world affairs. During the Cold War, it skilfully balanced its policies toward the US and the Soviet Union. When it engaged with the Soviet Union—from which it received considerable military assistance—it calibrated its approach to offset US support of Pakistan, without taking sides in the great-power competition.

India has since maintained this pragmatic balancing act, adapting its foreign policy to a shifting geopolitical landscape. Today, that means recognising its potential to shape global affairs, including by playing a leading role in building an efficient, realistic and inclusive multilateralism.

This is reflected in Modi’s pursuit of a more assertive, internationalist foreign policy. Beyond building new partnerships and strengthening old ones, Modi has sought to increase India’s influence in traditional and emerging multilateral fora. In 2023 alone, India held the presidency of both the G20 and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (a Chinese creation, comprising nine Middle Eastern and Asian countries).

Moreover, India plays a leading role in the BRICS, which, in addition to Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, now includes Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates. India’s approach to the BRICS is characteristically nuanced: whereas Russia and, to a significant extent, China see themselves as disruptors of the existing order, India views itself as a reformer. This enables it to maintain strategic flexibility as it advances its economic and diplomatic interests.

India’s relationship with China is complicated by other factors. While the countries work together in some fora, they are also locked in protracted territorial disputes and a competition for leadership in the so-called Global South. And India’s growing global clout—including its appeal to Western powers—stems in large part from its ability to act as a counterweight to China. The India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor was designed as an alternative to China’s Belt and Road Initiative and reflects India’s centrality to global supply chains.

India is also indispensable to the Quad alliance with Australia, Japan and the US—a grouping that is officially focused on maritime security and economic cooperation, though its members clearly seek to provide a buffer against China in the Indo-Pacific region. It is thanks to India—a rising ‘Southern’ power—that the Quad is not viewed as just another Western vehicle.

Modi has sought to bolster India’s Southern credentials, including by highlighting its status as the ‘mother of democracy’. By framing democracy as intrinsic to Indian civilisation, rather than a colonial legacy, he has aligned India with the middle powers that are now seeking to redefine global governance on their own terms.

To be sure, India has experienced a decisive shift since Modi became prime minister in 2014. He has moved India away from the secular and pluralistic values that had flourished after independence, in favour of an assertive Hindu nationalism. So many international indices have downgraded India’s democratic status that he is now seeking to create his own.

But Modi—the second leader of independent India (after Jawaharlal Nehru) to be elected to three consecutive terms—remains a dominant force in Indian politics, as recent regional election results affirmed. And at a time of rapid geopolitical change, he is committed to leveraging his position, and India’s profound strengths, to turn India into a global player.

India has long had the potential to be an active shaper of international affairs. It has now arrived.

The Quad foreign ministers joint statement: short and sweet

Today’s joint statement from the Quad foreign ministers’ meeting in Washington is short and sweet, particularly for those who have been arguing that the grouping should overtly embrace security cooperation.

The statement’s emphasis on ‘security in all domains’ is a noteworthy and welcome shift from the previous, awkward position that the Quad was not a security partnership, despite working together in health security, cybersecurity and maritime security.

This inherent contradiction was unnecessarily self-limiting and confusing but persisted because Quad members, including Australia, saw this self-constraint as necessary to assuage Southeast Asian sensitivities about counterbalancing or containing China.

The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade should update its official description of the Quad, which is currently a ‘a diplomatic, not security, partnership’.

Also absent from the statement is any reference to ‘ASEAN centrality’. This is notable because past Quad statements have all dutifully replicated this diplomatic deference to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. This ellipsis is an early indication that the Trump administration does not intend to pursue cooperation through the Quad only at a pace that is comfortable for Southeast Asian countries. In fact, ASEAN doesn’t appear to register at all as a policy concern among some members of Trump’s cabinet line-up.

While China is not named either, a joint commitment to ‘oppose any unilateral actions that seek to change the status quo by force or coercion’ leaves little doubt that Beijing is the Quad’s common challenge. A subsequent reference to ‘strengthening regional maritime, economic and technology security in the face of increasing threats’ should remove any remaining doubt. Beijing will inevitably react to such bluntness. But the Quad’s belated embrace of security cooperation is welcome. After all, security is a public good just like other elements of the Quad’s agenda, and something which the four countries should openly aspire to strengthen, without fear of offending others in the region.

Defence cooperation is not mentioned directly in the joint statement as part of the Quad’s security agenda. But it is strongly hinted in the commitment that ‘rule of law, democratic values, sovereignty, and territorial integrity’ should be ‘upheld and defended’ in the Indo-Pacific. (Note ‘defended’.) The Quad navies already exercise together in the annual Malabar drills. It is likely that a military dimension to four-way cooperation will now develop within the Quad, not only in unwarlike activities as disaster relief but also focused on deterrence. This should not dilute the Quad’s collaborative agenda in other policy fields, such as supply chain resilience and maritime domain awareness, but rather complement it.

The fact that the Quad foreign ministers meeting was virtually Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s first official activity will be read as a sign of President Trump’s willingness to back the quartet, which after all was revived in 2017 during his first term in office. This will come as a relief to Australia, India and Japan. And it underlines the Quad’s strategic utility not simply as a counterbalance to China but also as a means to anchor the US security role in the Indo-Pacific via a broad-based partnership with three of its most important regional partners, including its closest regional ally, Australia, and its most important one, Japan. India, which offers the heft as the world’s most populous country and democracy, will host the next summit of Quad leaders this year. Trump’s attendance in Delhi will be essential to maintaining the momentum.

This is a promising turn in the Quad’s fluctuating fortunes. It is tempting to inversely correlate the impact of joint statements with their length. The commendable brevity of this two-paragraph statement packs policy punches that were patently missing from some of the Quad’s recent, prolix pronouncements. When it comes to drafting joint statements, concision should be best practice: less means more.

India’s defence industry is benefiting from cooperation with France

India’s defence industry is benefiting from the country’s switch away from Russia and towards France for weapons acquisition.

India and France have cooperated on several key defence projects, such as Kalvari-class submarines, the Chetak and Cheetah helicopters and the Shakti helicopter engine. These projects involved technology transfer to India under licensed production from French companies.

Since the 1960s, Russia has been India’s primary defence partner and weapons supplier. However, India’s arms imports from Russia have fallen to a historic low. According to a Stockholm International Peace Research Institute report, India’s defence imports from Russia fell from 76 percent during the 2009–13 period to 36 percent during the 2019–23 period. It marks the first time since the 1960s that less than half of India’s arms imports came from Russia.

The Russia–Ukraine war, ensuing Western sanctions on Russian entities and growing camaraderie between Russia and China have further prompted India to reduce its reliance on Russian defence exports. Additionally, India has faced significant delays in the delivery for several orders from Russia, such as the S-400 surface-to-air missile system and T-90S tanks. All of this has led to India placing no fresh orders with Russia since the beginning of the Russia–Ukraine war.

Instead, it has increased arms imports from Western countries, mainly France and the United States. France emerged as India’s second-largest defence supplier during the 2019–23 period, when 33 percent of Indian imported arms originated from France. (The US supplied 13 percent of India’s defence imports in the same period.)

Now that France has become a significant arms supplier, the Indian government is looking for possible opportunities for collaboration with it on advanced defence technologies.

French aerospace maker Safran and India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation are negotiating to manufacture an engine for India’s fifth-generation fighter jet, the Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft Mk 2. Moreover, Safran is willing to engage in 100 percent technology transfer across various project phases, including design development, certification and production.

The project involves not only the transfer of technology to develop jet engines—usually the most technically challenging part of an aircraft—but also allows the firms to work together on advanced materials and metallurgy, which are important for making aircraft engines.

Such a partnership will give India access to technologies and industrial processes necessary for making the engines. The ability to domestically manufacture fighter engines may help the Indian Air Force to address its extreme shortage of combat squadrons.

Safran will also collaborate with India to develop helicopters that are likely to be the mainstay of the Indian Armed Forces rotorcraft fleet. The company is supporting the propulsion side of the Indian Multi-Role Helicopter program. The program aims to develop medium-lift helicopters to replace India’s Mi-17 helicopters. Safran has also agreed with Hindustan Aeronautics Limited to transfer forging and casting technology for the Shakti engine, which powers the Indian state company’s Dhruv, Rudra, Light Utility and Prachand helicopters.

On the naval front, India’s Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers have signed a memorandum of understanding with France’s Naval Group to collaborate on surface ships. The collaboration will support a ship design based on the Naval Group’s Gowind class for the Indian market and friendly foreign countries.

Political reliability and longstanding defence ties make France a dependable defence partner for India. Its emergence as a significant weapons supplier is benefiting India’s defence industry by equipping it with the technology and expertise to manufacture defence products domestically.

Manmohan Singh leaves a large strategic legacy

Former Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh, who has died aged 92, made an impressive contribution to contemporary India. As finance minister, he was the architect of the country’s economic liberalisation. As prime minister, he championed a deal with the United States on India’s nuclear energy program.

Both represented fundamental shifts in India’s direction with long-lasting effects. His apparently apolitical, academic background made him appear as a mild, risk-averse leader, but both the liberalisation and the India-US nuclear deal took India into unchartered and potentially risky waters.

Singh was born in a village in what is now Pakistan’s Punjab province. His family moved to India after the partitioning of what had been British India. Educated in Pakistan and India and later at Cambridge and Oxford—from where he received his doctorate in economics—he worked as an academic and in various policymaking institutions, including as governor of the Reserve Bank of India and deputy chairman of the Planning Commission. In 1991, P V Narasimha Rao, prime minister of a newly elected Congress-led coalition government, made him minister of finance.

This led to Singh’s first and the most important contribution, his pivotal role in the opening of the Indian economy and the liberalisation process from 1991 to 1996. The drastic economic and foreign-exchange situation that the country faced—India had barely enough US dollars to pay for a couple of weeks of imports—demanded equally drastic solutions. His economic reforms changed India’s development trajectory, moving India’s economy up from the what had been derided as the Hindu growth rate to more than 7 percent a year.

Shifting the focus from the public to private sector, it was a radical change of direction. India’s new economic dynamism and its status as a rising power resulted from Singh’s policies. Also for the first time, India began to look for international economic collaboration, initiating the Look East policy to build closer linkages with dynamic Southeast Asian economies.

In 2004, a Congress-led coalition unexpectedly won power. Equally unexpectedly, the unassuming non-politician Singh was nominated as prime minister. This set the stage for his second transformative achievement, the India-US civil nuclear deal, which changed the course of India’s relationship with the global nuclear non-proliferation architecture. India had refused to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and in 1998 had conducted nuclear tests and declared itself a nuclear power. But this required some acceptance from the US, the reigning unipolar power.

Building on initiatives by the previous government of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Singh reached agreement with the US to normalise India’s civil nuclear activities. More importantly, this transformed relations with Washington. It removed India’s pariah status in the global nuclear order even if it did not remove India’s non-nuclear weapon status under the NPT. India went on to be recognised for its exceptionally clean record in nuclear non-proliferation. The civil nuclear agreement, signed in 2008, was critical in opening nuclear commerce opportunities with the rest of the world.

As prime minister, Singh recognised the need for a closer and warmer relationship with the US, for both economic and strategic reasons. He found a willing partner in US president George W Bush, who was keen to see India at the centre of Asian security order. The US and India each had an eye on China as they built this relationship.

India’s changed relationship with Australia was also a consequence. Singh, along with then prime minister Kevin Rudd, elevated the Australia-India relationship to a strategic partnership in 2009, setting the scene for strengthened relations. Though, to be fair, the modern day comprehensive partnership, including regeneration of the Quad, did not take hold until later under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who, unlike Singh, visited Australia.

The Bush administration took the leadership in getting various exemptions required within the US domestic legal structure as well as the global ones at the Nuclear Suppliers Group, the member countries of which seek to support nuclear non-proliferation. Neither was easy.

Singh also faced challenges, leading a disparate coalition government in the Indian parliament that included communist parties that unrelentingly opposed the deal. His own party was less than supportive, not understanding why the government had to be risked for a deal for closer ties with the US. But Singh was equally determined, reportedly threatening to step down as prime minister if his party didn’t support him; this forced the Congress party leadership to back him. The communists withdrew their support to the coalition, but the coalition, and the nuclear deal, survived.

He remained prime minister until 2014.

Singh had his share of disappointments too. The vaunted economic liberalisation hasn’t entirely dismantled the central economic and market role of the Indian government, with bureaucratic obstructionism and red tape still a serious problem. Equally, he was unable to prevent his own party from undermining his nuclear deal with a destructive nuclear liability law that negated much of the benefits of nuclear commerce that the deal promised.

But probably his biggest failure was in failing to respond forcefully to the Mumbai terror attack, when Pakistani terrorists held the city to ransom for two days. His failure led to an image of Indian impotence that no doubt led to greater support for the much more assertively nationalist turn in Indian politics.

Singh was known as the accidental prime minister, a characterisation that he appeared to like. This was both his strength and his limitation. But, as he himself asserted at his last press conference as prime minister, history will no doubt prove kinder to his record and achievements.

Manmohan Singh, born on 26 September 1932, died in Delhi on 26 December 2024.

Beijing’s online influence operations along the India–China border

The Chinese government is likely conducting influence operations on social media to covertly dispute territorial claims and denigrate authorities in India’s northeastern states.

As part of a joint investigation with Taiwanese think tank Doublethink Lab for its 2024 Foreign Influence on India’s Election Observation Project, we identified coordinated social media campaigns seeking to amplify social tensions in Manipur and criticise the Indian government, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) party and its policies. This occurred in the lead-up to and during the Indian general elections, when social divisions were especially heightened.

Despite Beijing publicly seeking stability with India the Chinese Communist Party will likely use other covert methods, mainly targeting Chinese-speaking diasporas, to destabilise the India-China border and pursue its territorial ambitions.

The CCP has a history of trying to exploit ethnic and political conflicts in India’s northeastern states, such as in Manipur, where Beijing has allegedly fostered instability using Myanmar-based and local terror groups. On 3 May 2023, Manipur’s latest ethnic conflict in erupted between the Meitei and the Kuki indigenous ethnic groups over a disputed affirmative action measure related to benefits for the Meitei people. According to reports, the violence resulted in 221 deaths and displaced approximately 60,000 individuals.

Our findings shows that most of the narrative had first appeared on Chinese social media platforms which then entered the Indian social media landscape through translation or AI enabled translations. This way it reached to the targeted audience, the Meitei people. Anthropologists say the Meitei people may be ethnically related to Tibetans, whose land is now part of China, but the Meitei do not speak Chinese.

Violence in Manipur became a hot topic on Chinese social media platforms and websites in early 2024, amplified by pro-CCP writers and likely inauthentic social media accounts seeking to push CCP narratives in the region. These accounts spread misleading narratives, such as ‘There is a little China in India that holds the six-star red flag, does not speak Hindi and refuses to marry Indians’ (印度有个“小中国”，举六星红旗，不说印语，拒绝和印度人通婚). Others are ‘conflict in India’s Manipur is a result of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s crackdown on religious and ethnic minorities’, ‘India is running concentration camps for minorities’, and ‘Manipur has never been a part of India and the demand for independence in the state is justified.’

We also identified coordinated inauthentic accounts likely originating from China disseminating the ‘Little China in India’ narrative on Western social media platforms, such as X and YouTube. For example, one Chinese-language speaking account named jostom, created in November 2023, posted the phrase ‘Little China’ 小中国, and shared a YouTube video with the nonsensical title ‘Manipur India known as “small China” once the impact of independence on India?’

The video (which had had only around ​​2500 views at the time of writing) was uploaded on 18 March 2024 by the YouTube account Earth story, which claims to be a Chinese-language ‘popular science number [sic] on international relations that everyone can understand’. It is unclear whether the videos uploaded by the account are original content or reuploads from an account of the same name on Douyin, a short-form video app popular in China. However, some video titles are also in English, indicating that the channel’s target audience goes beyond Chinese-speaking diasporas. In addition, there are always auto-generated captions in Hindi or English when the narrator speaks in Mandarin.

The jostom X account was one of many likely inauthentic accounts spreading the Little China narrative. The latest post by jostom was on 20 April 2024. The account has only 22 followers and follows 31 accounts, and mostly shares content with Chinese landscape pictures, a common feature of Chinese propaganda. Out of 71 posts on the account, the Little China video is the only political content.

Among its 22 followers, at least six accounts appear to be inauthentic: they were created around the same date, and their profiles and posts share many similarities. For example, they are all following a similar number of accounts, and the only posts these six accounts made were on 22 or 23 July 2023.

These accounts display similar characteristics to a sophisticated subset of Spamouflage disinformation networks, which ASPI identified last year as having interfered in an Australian referendum. This network goes beyond spreading typically pro-China propaganda and is known for amplifying domestic issues in democracies. Like the accounts that targeted Australia, accounts following jostom use images of Western women to develop their personas. Their first posts are aphorisms or quotes, many of which are incomplete.

The small sample of accounts discussed above is likely part of a broader network of inauthentic accounts originating from China that has increasingly sought to interfere in India’s domestic affairs. Since 2023, social media conglomerate Meta has publicly disclosed at least two coordinated inauthentic networks targeting India and originating from China in its quarterly Adversarial Threat Reports. The first disclosure in 2023 revealed that fake accounts originating from China were criticising the Indian government and military by focusing on issues on the India-China border. The second campaign, disclosed in early 2024, was linked to the original 2023 campaign but instead targeted the global Sikh community, creating a fictitious activist movement called Operation K that called for pro-Sikh protests.

On X, many of the accounts identified by Meta in its Adversarial Threat Reports continued to operate and disseminate disinformation in the lead-up to the 2024 Indian elections. Common topics and narratives spread by these included accusing Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi of not being concerned about the welfare of people in Manipur, amplifying protests in nearby Nagaland and fomenting dissent against the Indian government in another northeastern state, Arunachal Pradesh (see screenshot below). In some cases, accounts called for Indians to boycott the BJP over its activities in the Manipur region.

ASPI has identified some of the same accounts used for interfering in the 2024 Taiwanese elections.

The accounts appear to be copying tweets from other prominent Indian commentators rather than creating original posts. Sometimes this resulted in errors, such as the Nawal Sharma account appearing to have copied a tweet from India Daily Lives but failing to correctly copy the Hindi text while posting the same hashtags and link (see screenshot below).

The CCP’s influence operations targeting India in 2024 were mostly ineffective. However, they are part of a broader strategy to destabilise countries in their neighbourhoods. It has used similar methods to influence electoral outcomes and political narratives in Canada, Taiwan and Britain, where it has employed a combination of disinformation and covert support to influence public opinion and political results. These actions often reveal Beijing’s true intentions, such as its territorial ambitions in India’s northeastern states, and contradict its charm offensive with neighbouring states.

As the CCP resorts to more covert methods to pursue its interests, democratic countries should publicly expose these influence operations and share information on observed tactics, techniques and procedures with allies and partners. Indo-Pacific countries should consider financial sanctions against private companies or state-affiliated media conducting intelligence activities and disinformation campaigns, similar to sanctions applied to Russian disinformation actors. While it may be difficult to deter the CCP through these policy actions, it will at least impose costs on Beijing and make it more difficult to conduct these operations with impunity.

India and Philippines speak different strategic languages. Australia must be multilingual

The ‘emerging axis’ of autocratic powers epitomised by China’s support for Russia’s war against Ukraine is, as Australia’s top intelligence chief Andrew Shearer recently said, one of the most troubling strategic developments today.

And just as those axis nations—which also include North Korea and Iran—have as many strategic differences as commonalities, countries such as Australia that are worried by, and looking to counter, this malign axis should understand that they’ll need to accept and work with a range of approaches from partners.

This reality was underscored by remarks made at ASPI-hosted events in recent weeks by India and the Philippines—two key regional players who are dealing with China’s assertiveness in their own ways but whom are both important partners to Australia.

First, India. The emerging giant’s stance on the axis is the more complicated. India has had a long strategic partnership with Russia, going back to the early Cold War. Yet it has an equally long history of disputes with China. This has included not just the contest over their unsettled border but also tensions stemming from Beijing’s support to Pakistan and its barely disguised efforts at undermining India on a variety of issues such as refusing to allow India to join the Nuclear Suppliers Group which governs transfers of civilian nuclear technology and material, and refusing to back India’s efforts to promote UN Security Council reforms as well as India’s quest for a seat on the Security Council.

So where does that leave India with respect to the new axis? At the Raisina Down Under summit, which ASPI co-hosted with India’s Observer Research Foundation, India’s External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar answered by explaining that the three biggest countries of the Eurasian landmass formed a strategic triangle. This was, he reminded the audience, basic geometry learnt in all schools.

It was in India’s interests, he said, that it ‘never allow two sides to come to a point where the third is utterly disadvantaged’.

‘And I would even argue going beyond that,’ he continued, ‘at a time when … Russia’s relationship with the West is very badly damaged and Russia is turning more and more towards Asia, it’s useful in Asia that we give Russia more options … The more broadly Russia is engaged by Asian countries, frankly, that will allow that much more political, diplomatic flexibility for everybody concerned.’

The implication was that it is a better Indian strategy to tolerate Russia’s aggression and lawlessness, and to engage with both Russia and China through groupings such as the BRICS—which also includes Brazil and South Africa—than leaving India’s Eurasian strategic peers to pursue their no-limits partnership unchecked and without giving Moscow some kind of off-ramp.

Jaishankar’s further implication is that this is not just in India’s interests but the broader region’s and the West’s as well. Of course, whether this undermines the rules-based order intended to protect smaller and weaker states, and whether it’s a convenient excuse for India given its reliance on Russian energy and defence equipment, are both fair questions.

Still, India’s approach can clearly offer strategic balance. Better to have India there than not, Jaishankar is effectively saying. India, he pointed out, is neither Western nor anti-Western.

Our challenge is not to pressure New Delhi to pick a side. We should remember that China represents as much or more of a military and political threat to India as it does to any other country. It’s a principal reason why New Delhi invests in relations with Canberra and Washington, and why it participates in the Quad. We also know New Delhi is genuinely concerned by Russia’s growing closeness to China and by the two authoritarian states’ ‘no limits’ partnership.

The Philippines, by comparison, is a smaller player whose main goal right now with respect to China is to preserve its sovereignty. The strategic priorities it articulates are shaped accordingly. Speaking to an ASPI audience in Melbourne just days after the Raisina event, Philippines Secretary of National Defense Gilberto Teodoro Jr stressed the importance of calling out coercive action by China and the need for like-minded partners to do so together. There were no geometric metaphors—just a demand that the threat be clearly understood and responded to.

The Philippines has its own backstory: a treaty ally of the United States against both the Soviet Union and China during the Cold War, and a more recent history in which the mercurial leader Rodrigo Duterte harmed his countries’ interests by trying unsuccessfully to find a modus vivendi with Beijing.

Despite the different approaches, these are both very important partners to Australia. It’s worth noting their common strategic assessments and their emphasis on collective action. We know that limiting our reading of strategic challenges to ‘major power competition’ is wrong. Collaboration among regional powers, including smaller ones, is critical to what Foreign Minister Penny Wong calls ‘strengthening influence, leverage and sovereignty’.

Australia and likeminded countries such as the US and Japan need to assure India, the Philippines and others in the region—with all their varied approaches to the China challenge and the growing axis—that it is in their interests and the region’s to work with us.

The foundation is mutual interest rather than strategic altruism, as Ashley Tellis once characterised it. This doesn’t make it transactional however. Rather it is based on core principles of territorial integrity, democratic sovereignty, individual freedoms and national security. It might be useful for all sides to acknowledge this.

The push and pull of the India–Australia relationship

Australia’s new relationship with India has push-pull poles—the pull of the Indian diaspora in Australia and the push that China applies to the Indo-Pacific.

The diaspora is the personal dimension that pulls India and Australia together. China is the geopolitical push that shapes the four-year old India-Australia comprehensive strategic relationship.

Between the push-pull poles stretches the great pool of shared prosperity in trade and investment, education, science and technology, and clean energy.

This push, pull and prosperity defined much in Canberra’s India talkfest in Parliament House last week: the back-to-back meetings of the Australia-India Foreign Ministers’ Framework Dialogue and the second Raisina Down Under dialogue, a multilateral conference that aims to address geostrategic challenges in the Indo-Pacific. Here was first track and second track dialogue running so close as to overlap.

At the press conference after the foreign ministers’ dialogue, Australia’s Penny Wong said it was the 19th time she’d met her Indian counterpart, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar. When they came together on the Raisina stage the next day, Wong counted meeting number 20. She observed that among the world’s foreign ministers, ‘Jai is the person with whom I have met most and that says something about our friendship, it says something about my regard for him, and the wisdom and insight he always brings to our discussions.’

Personal chemistry always helps diplomacy, but interests drive. Interests have driven Australia and India to converge in this renewed relationship, far removed from their distant and often negative dealings in the 20th century and the early years of this century.

Wong said her constant contact with Jaishankar reflected the importance of what is being created: ‘We share a region and we share a future. We see India as just so important in terms of securing the region we both want and the world we both want.’

Wong said the diaspora of 1 million Australians with Indian heritage is ‘the beating heart of the relationship’. Jaishankar agreed that the diaspora is a key to the India-Australia bond, just as it is in India’s dealings with the United States: ‘The model is the manner in which our US relationship transformed. I do think it’s a change that can be corelated with the growth of the diaspora in the US.’

Jaishankar said the rapport with Australia showed ‘a relationship whose potential was waiting to be realised’. Among the four Quad members (Australia, India, Japan and the United States), he said, the bilateral dynamic that has changed the most for India is with Australia. ‘The relationship is on a roll,’ Jaishankar said, and ‘the more we do, the more the possibilities open up.’

India’s upbeat language on Australia contrasted the discussion about what China’s push is doing to the region.

The sharpest account offered to the Raisina dialogue was from Andrew Shearer, director-general of Australia’s Office of National Intelligence. Shearer said Prime Minister Anthony Albanese refers to him as the ‘bad news guy’, and he delivered such news. Geostrategic competition, Shearer said, would drive a ‘generational, structural contest in the Indo-Pacific’. Rivalry over critical technologies would be the ‘centre of gravity’ or ‘commanding heights’. Looking at China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, Shearer offered a ‘very strong view that we have underestimated the strategic impact of this emerging axis’.

Jaishankar’s language on China was that of a minister looking to ‘find ways to discuss how to normalise the relationship’. Since the deadly clash between Indian and Chinese troops on the Himalayan border in 2020, he said, the relationship had been ‘cut back’ and ‘very profoundly affected.’

On 21 October, India announced an agreement with China on ‘disengagement and resolution’ of border issues. A few days later, China’s Xi Jinping and India’s Narendra Modi sealed the deal with a handshake on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in Russia, the first formal bilateral between the two leaders in five years.

In Canberra, Jaishankar observed that the deal with China is a ‘positive development’. The next challenge, he said, was de-escalation of forces, with more negotiation by foreign ministers and national security advisors. At the Raisina dialogue, Jaishankar put the border issue into its broadest context: ‘It’s really in a way quite a challenge, because you have the two most populous countries, both of whom are rising in a broadly parallel time frame.’

With an eye on Donald Trump resuming the presidency in January, the Canberra talks emphasised what Wong called ‘the great importance in the Quad’.

Jaishankar said India had seen steady progress in its relationship with the US over the last five presidencies, including the previous Trump presidency. The second version of the Quad had been under Trump in 2017, Jaishankar said, and that should help its prospects with the new administration. India is confident, and Jaishankar said that its ‘relationship with the United States will only grow’.

In dealing with the Indo-Pacific impacts of the first Trump presidency, Australia did much in tandem with Japan. Canberra will again work with Tokyo, but this time New Delhi will add a new dimension to the Trump wrangling and whispering.

India has a China problem, not just a border problem

It’s not just the border. India has a deeper problem with China, and it looks like it’s part of the same problem that other countries have with China: the country has become much more aggressive.

Indian policymakers and commentators routinely assume that if New Delhi could only resolve the dispute over the line of the Himalayan border, other issues would fall into place. In fact, there’s not much reason to believe that. Just look further afield to the Western Pacific or Ukraine.

For the past several years, New Delhi has said there can be no progress in other aspects of the relationship as long as China refuses to concede on the border problem. This was initially an effort at pushing the border problem to the centre, presumably in the hope that China would not want to risk the entire relationship over it. But China has not budged and does indeed seem willing to risk the relationship instead.

There has been some recent speculation that India and China are on their way to resolving their standoff at the border, where military confrontations have sometimes become violent. India’s External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said last month that 75 percent of the disengagement problems had been resolved. The holding of a round of Sino-Indian border talks in August and a meeting between Indian National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and Chinese Foreign Affairs Minister Wang Yi also added to hope. But Jaishankar has since clarified that his reference was only to disengagement, not to issues of militarisation of the border or the larger state of relations.

Anyway, there may be a larger problem with India’s strategy. The assumption behind it appears to be that the border dispute is the key issue in the relationship. But confrontations at the border may be consequences of deeper problems rather than a cause of them.

India-China relations have become increasingly challenging over the past two decades, even before a severe border clash that raised tensions in 2020. China objected vociferously to the US-India nuclear deal. It gave way, but a few years later refused to allow India to join the Nuclear Suppliers Group, which governs transfers of civilian nuclear technology and material. Around the same time, China repeatedly stymied Indian efforts to designate Pakistan-based terrorists under the UN terror list. Similarly, China has refused to back India’s efforts to promote UN Security Council reforms as well as India’s quest for a seat on the Security Council.

A meeting of foreign ministers of the BRICS group failed to issue a joint statement (for the first time since its founding) because of the Security Council issue. It is not difficult to assume, given China’s long-standing efforts to undermine UN Security Council reforms, that it had a hand in the latest failure.

India’s assumption appears to have been that each of these was a discrete policy disagreement rather than an indicator of a more fundamental issue—and that may be its big mistake.

China’s behaviour with many of its neighbours has similarly changed. These changes have included increasingly aggressive behaviour in the South China Sea and East China Sea, particularly against Taiwan. It is also attempting to fish in troubled waters in both the Middle East and in the Ukraine war by extending diplomatic support to Iran to undermine American influence and appearing to provide material support to Russia.

Each of these instances of China’s behaviour may seem explicable when viewed in isolation. China and its supporters would argue that its behaviour in the South China Sea is a response to aggressive actions by Vietnam and the Philippines, for example.

But we are seeing too many instances. There’s a pattern, and India should recognise it.

If China’s behaviour has fundamentally changed, and its behaviour towards India is only one aspect of that change, then what New Delhi faces is a much more serious problem than just the border. Indeed, it’s clearly not even a Sino-Indian problem, but a China problem.

Part of this might reflect some historical patterns about the way rising powers behave, but one aspect of it may be more narrowly cultural: a reflection of China’s sense of itself and its place in history. Either way, such a shift in China’s position and worldview is not likely to be dealt with through negotiations narrowly focused on an apparently simple border dispute.

This is not to suggest that the border dispute is trivial. In 2020, for the first time in decades, blood was spilled in a clash between Indian and Chinese troops. Tens of thousands of Indian and Chinese soldiers are eyeball to eyeball, with all the attendant risks of inadvertent escalation.

This is a matter of concern even without all the other layers of complications between the two countries. Nevertheless, those layers of complications do matter and suggest that more fundamental issues are at stake than just the border dispute. If China is now fundamentally difficult to deal with, resolving that problem will be harder than Indian policy seems to assume. And even if it were resolved, other disputes may not be.

Dissanayake’s difficult path to take Sri Lanka back to non-alignment

The new president of Sri Lanka, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, will have to walk a fine line to return the country to its traditional foreign policy of non-alignment.

The country remains caught in a situation dangerously close to a zero-sum game of relationships with China and India, both of which are essential for its economic recovery. To help him stay out of that situation, Western countries should go beyond economic help and engage Sri Lanka in a larger and more comprehensive agenda.

Left-leaning Dissanayake has emphasized his desire to avoid entanglement in global rivalries and expressed his determination to balance Sri Lanka’s relations between India and China. The country tilted somewhat towards Beijing during the presidency of Mahinda Rajapaksa from 2005 to 2015.

A visit to Delhi, during which Dissanayake met both India’s foreign minister and national security advisor, was organised in February 2024 to reassure his powerful neighbour and give some credence to his stated intentions of neutrality.

Economic realities and geostrategic rivalries may soon challenge his positions of principle. Beijing provided US$11.2 billion in grants and loans for infrastructure projects in Sri Lanka from 2006 to 2022, while in 2017 Sri Lanka’s financial difficulties forced it to hand over control of the Hambantota port to China for 99 years. The bilateral relations between the two countries are now entrenched.

True, Sri Lanka’s 2022 economic crisis allowed India to regain influence. New Delhi provided a US$4 billion package in financial assistance, including food, medicine, fuel, currency swaps and loan deferments. It also deepened cooperation in areas such as infrastructure, energy and trade. Beijing provided US$75 million in humanitarian aid, though at first it was reluctant to restructure Sri Lankan debt.

While Dissanayake must be aware of the importance of Sri Lanka’s financial indebtedness to China, he also understands that India’s bailout was essential. And he knows that India is geographically close to Sri Lanka.

Still, political and geographical proximity did not prevent Mahinda Rajapaksa, president from 2005 to 2015, from tilting towards China when India refused to build the economically unsound Hambantota port. His brother Gotabaya, president from 2019 to 2022, confirmed the orientation. Even if Dissanayake is likely to adopt a more cautious approach with Beijing than his predecessors, he remains structurally tied to China.

Moreover, significant irritants remain in Colombo’s relations with New Delhi. In line with his electoral commitment not to let foreign powers buy more Sri Lankan national assets, Dissanayake has promised to cancel a proposed wind power project by India’s Adani Group. Maritime security matters also create occasional issues. Indian trawlers fish in Sri Lankan territorial waters in the Palk Strait, and Chinese naval and research ships use Hambantota.

All these factors indicate the difficulty of the new government’s position. Even if the new president has committed to ensuring that Sri Lanka’s sea, land and airspace would not be used in ways that would threaten India or regional stability and has recognised the importance of India’s support in development efforts, he is not immune to pressures on both sides.

Dissanayake seems determined to enlarge the pool of Sri Lanka’s foreign investors. But he is stuck with contracts with China concluded in the Rajapaksa era, which, combined with inept governance and corruption, contributed to the country’s economic crisis in 2022.

Other countries have undertaken several initiatives to help Sri Lanka get out of its economic predicament. It got a US$2.9 billion bailout loan from the IMF and benefits from the EU Generalized System of Preferences. The Paris Club has restructured its debt.

However, these measures are temporary by nature and not enough to prevent Sri Lanka from drifting into China’s lap. They should be part of a larger and more comprehensive agenda, including Western efforts to build a stable and mutually beneficial security relationship with Sri Lanka, particularly in maritime security.

Regional maritime cooperation, and capacity building in particular, would suit the pragmatism of Dissanayake and balance China’s occasional naval presence. It wouldn’t exclude China, so Sri Lanka would be left in the middle, where Dissanayake wants to be.

It would reassure India much more effectively than any promise by the new president.

The French government has recently initiated a joint venture with the Kotelawala Defence University to set up a maritime security school in the Trincomalee region as part of its broader strategy for the Indian Ocean. This could be the basis for larger cooperation. Other countries, such as Australia, could join the effort, turning the exercise into minilateral cooperation that would benefit the entire region—and Dissanayake’s policy in particular.

Tag Archive for: India

Raisina Down Under

Read more

Tag Archive for: India

Stop the World is back with a pod on the Quad

Stop the World is back from its summer hiatus and, with so many major developments already, there’s much ground to cover in 2025.  

This week, ASPI’s Raji Pillai Rajagopalan speaks to Euan Graham and Griffith University’s Ian Hall about the Quad partnership between Australia, India, Japan and the United States. They discuss the significance of the Quad Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Washington DC just days into the new Trump Administration, and the security role of the grouping in the coming years, including how – and whether – the Quad partners are thinking about deterrence.  

Guests:  

Raji Pillai Rajagopalan  
Euan Graham  
Ian Hall