Modi’s China Policy and the Road to Confrontation (Perspective 2 of 2)

The Doklam confrontation between India and China in the summer of 2017 was symbolic of the brewing tensions in their relationship. While the confrontation was resolved peacefully, its roots go back at least to 2007. Both the Manmohan Singh government and the Narendra Modi government pushed back against what they perceived to be a series of moves on bilateral, regional, and international issues that went against Indian interests. Modi’s responses have been more aggressive than Manmohan Singh’s in two ways. First, under Modi, India has more openly than ever before attempted to construct a coalition of militarily powerful states in the Asia-Pacific to increase Delhi’s bargaining power with Beijing. Second, India has sought to change the terms of engagement on the border conflict in three respects: a return to clarification of the Line of Actual Control (LAC) as the first step in border negotiations; linking further normalization between the two countries to progress towards a final border settlement; and seeking to inject a greater sense of urgency in the search for a settlement. This article concludes by asking why Modi responded more aggressively to China. It presents four explanations and concludes that Modi’s election in May 2014 coincided with a growing sense of strategic exasperation in India over its China policy, which questioned the value of the post-1988 commitment to normalization. The paper suggests that Modi shared that sense of exasperation, hence the rapid change in India’s stance within months of his coming to power.