China in India's Post-Cold War Engagement with Southeast Asia

Chietigj Bajpaee

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000541823
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book examines the role of China in driving and sustaining India's post-Cold War engagement with Southeast Asia. In doing so, it provides a unique insight into the regional dimensions of the Sino-Indian relationship.

India launched its Look East Policy in the early 1990s as part of a concerted effort to revive the importance of Southeast Asia in the country's foreign policy agenda. This study assesses the role of the China factor – defined here as China's regional role, which has been interpreted through the prism of the Sino-Indian relationship – in the inception and evolution of the policy. More specifically, it establishes the extent to which China has been raised as a priority in discourses of India's Look East Policy and how this has varied over time from the origins of the policy through to the most recent phase of the renamed Act East Policy. Addressing the distinction between what policymakers signal in their official statements and their true or underlying motivations, the book alludes to the fact that government officials may not always reflect true intentions in their official statements, and it is often what is not said that may reveal more about their real motivations. This is particularly relevant in the context of the Sino-Indian relationship where diplomatic rhetoric often masks more competitive and confrontational aspects of the bilateral relationship.

An important analysis of the interplay between India's relations with Southeast Asia and China, this book will be of interest to academics, policymakers and students in the fields of International Relations, Asian Security, Southeast Asian politics, and in particular, Indian foreign policy, the Sino-Indian relationship, and India's Look East/Act East Policy.

1 Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9780367480066-1

1 The ‘Look East’ policy

India launched its ‘Look East’ Policy (LEP) in the early 1990s as part of a concerted effort to revive the importance of Southeast Asia in the country’s foreign policy agenda. Several factors have been attributed to the inception of the policy.¹ At the global level, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War divide led India to lose its primary strategic patron on the world stage while prompting the country to diversify its markets and sources of foreign trade, aid and investment.² Most notable was the improved relationship with the United States, but India also experienced a rapprochement with several countries in Asia, including the member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

At the domestic level, the precarious economic climate facing India following a foreign exchange crisis in 1991 forced the Indian government to accelerate its market reform and economic liberalisation agenda.³ This included reorienting the economy by making it more open to foreign investment and trade with the vibrant ‘tiger’ economies of East Asia.⁴ India’s engagement with Southeast Asia was also seen as a catalyst for the country’s embrace of globalisation. Indian Prime Minister Narasimha Rao (1991–96) notably referred to the Asia-Pacific as the ‘springboard for India’s leap into the global marketplace’ while Prime Minister Manmohan Singh (2004–14) noted that the LEP reflected ‘a strategic shift in India’s vision of the world and India’s place in the evolving global economy’.⁵

Related to this was internal political change under the government of P.V. Narasimha Rao that assumed power in 1991.⁶ This led to the rise of several of liberal, reform-oriented politicians and technocrats that became architects of the country’s market liberalisation process. Rule by more pragmatic and confident governments in New Delhi also set the stage for India’s growing regional engagement within the context of a bolder foreign policy.

At the regional and sub-regional level, there was also a need to revitalise India’s neglected northeast, which shares a 1,600km land border with Myanmar (Burma) by transforming the sub-region into a hub linking South and Southeast Asia.⁷ Related to this was growing recognition that economic integration in South Asia was being held hostage to the precarious state of India-Pakistan relations.⁸ This prompted India to ‘transcend’ the region by seeking economic opportunities in its ‘extended neighbourhood’, which includes Southeast Asia.⁹

The LEP has been surprisingly resilient in the three decades since the policy was unveiled despite a plethora of changes taking place, both at the level of domestic politics and at the broader regional level. At the domestic political level, several administrations have ruled the country since the launch of the LEP. These range from the centre-left Indian National Congress (1991–96, 2004–14) to the Hindu-nationalist BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) (1997–2004, 2014–) and a string of weak coalition governments in the mid-1990s. However, despite their varying ideological orientations, all these governments have embraced the LEP. At the regional level, the LEP has maintained its central tenet of ‘ASEAN centrality’. As the 2020–21 Ministry of External Affairs report notes, ‘ASEAN centrality has been, and will remain, an important aspect of India’s “Act East” policy which is a central element in India’s Foreign Policy’.¹⁰ This commitment to ‘ASEAN centrality’ has remained despite the fact that the relative importance of Southeast Asia as a driver of regional growth has diminished over time while there has been a broader redistribution of power in Asia.

What accounts for relative resilience of India’s LEP? The prevalent narrative is that India’s commitment to economic liberalisation kept the country committed to engagement with Southeast Asia. Another explanation is the maturing regional architecture in Asia, which led India to be subsumed by the growing web of regional multilateral initiatives (e.g. ASEAN Regional Forum, East Asia Summit, ASEAN Defence Ministers Meeting Plus). The growing importance of transnational security threats such as maritime piracy, terrorism and humanitarian assistance – particularly following the launch of the US-led ‘War on Terror’ in 2001/2 and the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 – also led to more coordinated and inclusive regional cooperation between India and Southeast Asia in the security sphere.¹¹

However, none of these explanations sufficiently account for India’s stepped engagement with Southeast Asia from the origins of the policy through its evolution over three decades and across a plethora of functional areas of interaction. For instance, while the US-led ‘War on Terror’ may account for India’s stepped up security engagement with Southeast Asia in the early 2000s, it does not account for India’s economic integration with the region. Similarly, the growing web of regional initiatives is a symptom rather than a specific cause of India’s stepped up regional interaction with Southeast Asia.

Even the emergence of a more confident government in New Delhi or the growth of the Indian economy and the concomitant acceleration of the country’s economic liberalisation does not by itself explain why India made such a concerted effort to pivot towards Southeast Asia as opposed to other regions that also hold strategic significance to India, including the Middle East (West Asia), Central Asia or its own neighbourhood of South Asia. While Southeast Asia’s economic vibrancy acted as a magnet for India’s engagement with the region and may have been one of the factors that prompted India to initiate the LEP in the early 1990s, this does not explain why India’s engagement with the region accelerated over time as the relative importance of Southeast Asia to regional and global growth was in decline, or why India has continued to cling to the principle of ‘ASEAN centrality’ in its regional engagement.

2 The ‘China factor’

This study postulates that the ‘China factor’ – defined here as China’s regional role, which has been interpreted through the broader prism of the Sino-Indian relationship – presents a more credible explanation for the resilience of India’s post-Cold War engagement with Southeast Asia from the inception of the LEP. While not disputing the relevance of the aforementioned factors, this study seeks to demonstrate that the ‘China factor’ permeates key areas of India’s post-Cold War engagement with Southeast Asia, and as such provides a more robust and over-arching narrative for the evolution of the LEP.

The role of China as a catalyst for India’s LEP is not well recognised, both in the origins of the policy and in its evolution as India’s eastward engagement has gained substance and momentum. Rather, official (government) statements have tended to portray China’s role as largely benign or irrelevant to the evolution of the LEP. This is subsumed under the broader narrative that the LEP was rooted in economic compulsions while the strategic dimensions of the policy only gained relevance during its later decades (or phases), particularly after it was reinvigorated by the renamed ‘Act East’ Policy under the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi that assumed power in 2014. For example, during the Shangri-La Dialogue annual conference in May 2018, it was noted that the renamed ‘Act East’ Policy was an attempt at ‘shifting the emphasis of what had previously been an economic and trade-based policy to one aimed at nurturing political and security relationships’.¹² According to this, if the ‘China factor’ holds any salience, it is only during the latter part of the policy when the strategic dimensions of India’s engagement with the region gained importance.¹³

This study seeks to challenge this assertion by examining the importance of China in driving and sustaining India’s post-Cold War engagement with Southeast Asia since the inception of the LEP.

3 Objectives of this study

This study will assess whether China has been raised as a priority in strategic elite discourses of the LEP and how this has varied over time and across key areas of engagement in India’s relations with Southeast Asia. Embedded within this are two more fundamental questions that this study seeks to address on the nature of India’s regional engagement:

• First, is India’s ‘Look East’ Policy real? In other words, does the rhetoric of the LEP match with the reality of India’s post-Cold War engagement with Southeast Asia?
• Second, how does one define the ‘region’? Have the contours of the regional sub-system in Asia been redefined by India’s growing engagement with Southeast Asia and can India and China be considered units operating within the same regional space?

In terms of the contribution to wider conceptual scholarship, this study explores the distinction between what policymakers signal in their official statements and their true or underlying motivations. This alludes to the fact that policymakers may not always reflect true intentions in their official statements given the proclivity for such statements to be diplomatic or non-confrontational in their language. In this case, it is often what is not said or the silences that may reveal more about the true intentions undergirding foreign policy behaviour. As academic Kripa Sridharan notes, it is ‘very revealing what is not said’ in official discourses, adding that ‘when something is never mentioned it is of equal concern that it could be the real factor’.¹⁴

This is particularly true in the case of the Sino-Indian relationship where diplomatic rhetoric often masks more competitive and confrontational aspects of the relationship, especially following the normalisation of bilateral relations in the post-Cold War period. As strategic analyst Raja Mohan notes, ‘the quaint-coded formal statements between New Delhi and Beijing often tend to obfuscate the tension between the two rising powers’.¹⁵ Academic John Garver echoes this view, noting that the ‘conflictual aspect of the Sino-Indian relationship contrasts with the rhetoric of China-India friendship’ at the official level.¹⁶ As this study reveals, this divide between official statements and true or underlying motivations is also evident in the LEP where there is a tendency to downplay the relevance of the ‘China factor’ or portray it as largely benign terms.

4 Regional (and global) dimensions of the Sino-Indian relationship

While there have been several studies of the Sino-Indian relationship and India’s LEP, combining these areas fills a void by addressing the regional dimensions of the bilateral relationship.¹⁷ This subject has gained importance as both countries’ growing capabilities and clout in the international system has provided China and India with more tools and platforms to interact with each other while projecting their bilateral relationship to the regional (and global) levels. Ashley Tellis with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace refers to this as the ‘“amplification” of particular Sino-Indian disputes onto the larger Asian canvas’.¹⁸ Former Indian diplomat Prabhakar Menon also notes that ‘anything deleterious between the two spreads its germs beyond the borders of both’ and conversely healthy India-China relations ‘release the wholesome energies of the two giants for the good of the region as a whole’.¹⁹

Southeast Asia is uni...