India Seeks to Escape an Asian Future Led by China

xizhimen

Experienced member
Messages
7,391
Reactions
384
Nation of residence
China
Nation of origin
China

India Seeks to Escape an Asian Future Led by China

A flurry of trade talks herald an economic realignment toward the West.

By C. Raja Mohan, a columnist at Foreign Policy and a visiting research professor at the National University of Singapore’s Institute of South Asian Studies.

modi-boris-johnson-india-britain-trade-GettyImages-1350855433.jpg

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson pose during a session at COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, on Nov. 2, 2021. CHRIS JACKSON/GETTY IMAGES

JANUARY 23, 2022, 7:00 AM

Last week’s launch of formal trade talks between India and the United Kingdom, with the declared ambition to ink a smaller deal in the next few months and a comprehensive agreement by the end of the year, is not much of a surprise. After all, Britain has made no secret of its desperate search for any and all partners to keep trade flowing after it walked out on the European Union.

But if one shifts focus to India and its reasons for pursuing a deal with Britain, things suddenly get more interesting. Even if Britain isn’t among India’s biggest trade partners, the start of talks marks nothing less than several major shifts in India’s foreign and economic policies. If Britain is seeking an economic future beyond Europe, India is looking westward to escape the growing prospect of a Chinese-led Asia.

Although India embraced globalization at the turn of the 1990s, there was little domestic support for liberalizing trade. Opposing free trade agreements united the left and the right; even more powerful was the resistance from an Indian capitalist class reluctant to open its captive market for foreign producers.

In the limited political space they thus had, the weak coalition governments ruling India until 2014 managed to negotiate just a small handful of free trade agreements—mostly with Asian partners, such as Japan, South Korea, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

India’s new enthusiasm for trading with the West has not escaped Beijing’s attention.

When Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi led the Bharatiya Janata Party to power in 2014 with a majority in parliament, his government ordered a review of all the free trade deals India had signed. Despite a strongly held view across India that the agreements worked to the disadvantage of Indian industry, Modi continued to participate in the Asia-wide free trade negotiations that would eventually produce the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), but he pulled out at the very last moment in 2019.

If New Delhi’s decision generated deep disappointment among its Asian partners, there was also strong domestic criticism of having isolated India in the global trade domain—a sea change compared to the debate over previous decades. Over the last year, Modi has ended India’s blanket opposition to free trade agreements and returned to bilateral free trade talks with several blocs, including the EU and the Gulf Cooperation Council. The shift wasn’t just toward a new attitude on trade but toward a new set of countries: India’s natural economic partners, especially those in the Anglosphere and the West.

Britain has not traditionally been on the list of countries the Indian establishment has been comfortable with. During the Cold War and afterward, Britain’s presumed tilt toward Pakistan chipped away at New Delhi’s goodwill for London. But the Modi government has transcended hesitations and invested political capital in expanding the partnership by focusing on potential areas of convergence. Trade liberalization has emerged as a major priority with Britain.

In walking away from the RCEP in 2019, India signaled its reluctance to be part of an Asian economic integration led by China. The sharpening border conflict with Beijing as well as the fear of the Indian manufacturing sector being wiped out by cheap Chinese imports contributed to the decision. In the spring of 2020, Chinese aggression in eastern Ladakh reinforced India’s decision.

As it turned its back on the East, New Delhi began to look to the West for trade partnerships, and the Anglosphere seemed the most responsive. It’s not just post-Brexit Britain that began to take a fresh look at India. Australia, reeling under the economic coercion imposed by China, also sought to revive moribund trade talks with India.

As Joe Biden and Narendra Modi meet in Washington, the business of balancing China enters a serious phase.

New Delhi’s positive approach to trade with Canberra goes hand in hand with a deepening bilateral and multilateral strategic partnership. Australia appointed former Prime Minister Tony Abbott as a special envoy on trade. Abbott has made frequent trips to New Delhi in the last few months, and the two sides are said to be close to signing an interim agreement in the coming weeks.

In the last few weeks, New Delhi has also intensified talks on trade liberalization with a number of countries including Canada and Israel. A trade deal with the United Arab Emirates is said to be ready for signature. All this is small fry compared to the importance of the EU and the United States. Brussels and Washington contribute more than 10 percent each of India’s annual global trade in goods, which totals close to $1 trillion.

Until last year, Brussels was not even interested in engaging New Delhi on trade discussions; that decision stemmed from a failed effort to negotiate a trade deal with India between 2007 and 2013. A major political effort at revitalizing the Indian-EU partnership in the last two years has resulted in a formal political decision in May 2021 to renew the talks. As the two sides prepare for the negotiations, there will be many hurdles to overcome, and no one is denying the difficulty of arriving at an agreement.

The United States, on the other hand, is not negotiating free trade agreements with anyone at this stage but is engaged with India in overcoming multiple trade disputes that peaked during the Trump years. Despite these difficulties, the bilateral goods trade has continued to grow, reaching close to $110 billion in 2021.

While an Indian-U.S. free trade agreement is not in the cards, there is a recognition at both countries’ highest political levels that they need to urgently complement their growing security partnership with “an ambitious, shared vision for the future of the trade relationship,” as a White House statement put it this past September. The Modi government and the Biden administration have revived the joint trade policy forum, and there is a renewed effort to overcome many disputes.

The jury is still out on how well India and the West can translate their new geoeconomic convergence into concrete outcomes.

India’s new enthusiasm for trading with the West has not escaped Beijing’s attention. Reviewing India’s new trade activism, the state-controlled Global Times said New Delhi can’t turn its back on commercial engagement with China. It pointed to the growing volume of bilateral trade, which hit $126 billion in 2021up by nearly 44 percent over 2020 despite continuing military tensions and New Delhi’s policies aiming to reduce economic exposure to Beijing.

But India can’t ignore the fact that its trade remains massively unbalanced. China’s $70 billion bilateral surplus in 2021 is driven by the fact that India exports mostly raw materials to China and imports mostly manufactured goods. Although India can’t immediately lessen its economic dependence on China, it can certainly deepen economic integration with the West. At home, India can also revive its manufacturing sector to reduce imports from China.

Over the last year, New Delhi has outlined a series of incentives to promote manufacturing capacity in India, and access to Western machine tools and production technology will play an important role. Some of the early reviews of these policies are positive, but the full impact will be felt only in a few years.

New Delhi’s post-independence inward economic turn, policy of import substitution, and delusions of autarky saw the steady erosion of India’s trade and investment ties with the West. In the economic reform era that began in 1991, the West has returned to leading positions in India’s trade profile. But New Delhi has long struggled to seize the new possibilities with the West, even as China raced ahead to benefit from its growing access to Western capital, markets, and technology.

India’s political energies went into arguing with the West on first principles, seeking to redefine multilateralism and challenging its leadership of the global trading system. Rather than build on economic complementarity with the West, New Delhi turned to economies in the east that were similar to—and competing with—India’s.

India is now trying to reverse this by finding ways to integrate with its Western partners through free trade agreements. It is also interested in building resilient supply chains among trusted political partners. The economic fallout from Chinese-Western political tensions provides a new geopolitical context for India’s economic realignment. Of course, New Delhi is aware that the West can’t easily reverse the deep interdependence with China that has emerged over the last four decades.

The jury is still out on how well India and the West can translate their new geoeconomic convergence into concrete outcomes. For one, India’s trade negotiators are notoriously recalcitrant. In the West, trade bureaucracies have been attached to the mantra of universally open markets; we have yet to see whether they can shift to selective globalization among like-minded countries and take a strategic approach to commercial engagement with India. The Indian-British trade talks will provide some early answers.

 

Jackdaws

Experienced member
Messages
2,759
Reactions
1 1,583
Nation of residence
India
Nation of origin
India
Obviously. As Chinese reputation takes a beating because of China spreading a deadly pandemic and causing the death of so many innocents, it's the ideal time for democratic world to find ways to cease dependency on China.
 

xizhimen

Experienced member
Messages
7,391
Reactions
384
Nation of residence
China
Nation of origin
China
Obviously. As Chinese reputation takes a beating because of China spreading a deadly pandemic and causing the death of so many innocents, it's the ideal time for democratic world to find ways to cease dependency on China.
Do you have any proof that the virus originated from China? how do you explain that earlier samples were found in Europe and US? Since you always ask for proof, can you provide for this?
lol , democratic world, China's GDP was 3 times of India's 10 years ago, 4 times 5 years ago, 5 times 2 years ago and 6 times now, Democary does work magics ,doesn't it?
 

Jackdaws

Experienced member
Messages
2,759
Reactions
1 1,583
Nation of residence
India
Nation of origin
India
Do you have any proof that the virus originated from China? how do you explain that earlier samples were found in Europe and US? Since you always ask for proof, can you provide for this?
lol , democratic world, China's GDP was 3 times of India's 10 years ago, 4 times 5 years ago, 5 times 2 years ago and 6 times now, Democary does work magics ,doesn't it?
 

xizhimen

Experienced member
Messages
7,391
Reactions
384
Nation of residence
China
Nation of origin
China
CNN, lol, how about Xinhua News Agency? Or can BBC and Global Times represent WHO? and how do you explain that earlier samples were found in Europe and US?
 

Jackdaws

Experienced member
Messages
2,759
Reactions
1 1,583
Nation of residence
India
Nation of origin
India
Lol @ Xinhua - yes, the state owned news agency of a Communist state is supposed to be believed! Haha

Where was it found? And if so, does any reliable source state it's origin?
 

xizhimen

Experienced member
Messages
7,391
Reactions
384
Nation of residence
China
Nation of origin
China
Lol @ Xinhua - yes, the state owned news agency of a Communist state is supposed to be believed! Haha

Where was it found? And if so, does any reliable source state it's origin?
Google and find it out, issued by government research teams in Spain, Italy and US, Covid samples were collected long before China's first case. and you are not WHO, and you don't represent it, how could you say it with finality that the virus originated from China, I can also say it originated from India, but how much authority your and my personal opinions carry?
 

Jackdaws

Experienced member
Messages
2,759
Reactions
1 1,583
Nation of residence
India
Nation of origin
India
Google and find it out, issued by government research teams in Spain, Italy and US, Covid samples were collected long before China's first case. and you are not WHO, and you don't represent it, how could you say it with finality that the virus originated from China, I can also say it originated from India, but how much authority your and my personal opinions carry?
So you don't really have a source. Again. Shocking! Or not.
 

xizhimen

Experienced member
Messages
7,391
Reactions
384
Nation of residence
China
Nation of origin
China

Jackdaws

Experienced member
Messages
2,759
Reactions
1 1,583
Nation of residence
India
Nation of origin
India

Do you need Italy, US covid sample news too?
Lol - this is what it says

“When it’s just one result, you always want more data, more studies, more samples to confirm it and rule out a laboratory error or a methodological problem,” he said.

And it is not peer reviewed either.
 

xizhimen

Experienced member
Messages
7,391
Reactions
384
Nation of residence
China
Nation of origin
China
Lol - this is what it says

“When it’s just one result, you always want more data, more studies, more samples to confirm it and rule out a laboratory error or a methodological problem,” he said.

And it is not peer reviewed either.
So your claim that it originated from China is global consensus and peer reviewed?
 

xizhimen

Experienced member
Messages
7,391
Reactions
384
Nation of residence
China
Nation of origin
China
How about this one? peer viewed?
 

crixus

Contributor
Messages
1,021
Reactions
1,160
Nation of residence
Canada
Nation of origin
India
How about this one? peer viewed?
LoL , this article is for 50 cent army rest world knows form where it started
 

xizhimen

Experienced member
Messages
7,391
Reactions
384
Nation of residence
China
Nation of origin
China
New York-area coronavirus outbreak originated primarily in Europe, not China: report
By Dom Calicchio | Fox News

Two separate studies show that the coronavirus outbreak in the New York City area – by far the most deadly in the U.S. – originated from Europe, not China, according to a report.

Researchers conducting one of the studies have detected seven separate lineages of viruses that have arrived in the New York City area and they expect to find more, The New York Times reported Wednesday.

The two studies are being conducted by the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and the New York University School of Medicine.

Despite examining different examples of the outbreak, researchers from both teams reached largely the same conclusions about its origins, the Times reported.

“The majority is clearly European,” Dr. Harm van Bakel, a geneticist and co-author of the Icahn School’s study, told the newspaper.

Travelers likely carrying the virus had already been arriving in New York from Europe before Jan. 31, when President Trump limited entry by foreign nationals who’d been in China and March 11, when the president announced plans to block travelers from most parts of Europe, the Times reported.

On March 19, the newspaper reported that travelers arriving from Europe – where outbreaks in Italy and Spain were severe – were being asked at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport only if they had been to China or Iran, not if they had visited the hardest-hit nations in Europe.

“People were just oblivious,” Dr. Adriana Heguy of the NYU research team told the Times.

Researchers need to track the history of the virus so they will be able to develop vaccines and modify them as the virus mutates into other forms, the report said.

As of late Wednesday, the novel coronavirus, also known as COVID-19, had infected 1.5 million people worldwide and killed nearly 88,000 people.

In the U.S., the virus had infected more than 420,000 people and killed more than 14,300.

In New York City, the virus had infected nearly 82,000 people (more than 19 percent of all U.S. cases) and killed more than 6,200 (nearly 44 percent of all U.S. deaths).




Most Australian coronavirus cases coming from USA: Scott Morrison
By Nick Pearson
10:56am Mar 20, 2020
The United States is the country of origin for most of the coronavirus cases in Australia, the prime minister has said.

Speaking on 2GB this morning, Scott Morrison said now was the right time to close the nation's borders.

"We were able to slow the virus' start and spread in Australia through these early periods," Mr Morrison said.
https%3A%2F%2Fprod.static9.net.au%2Ffs%2F83c1cd7f-677d-4f94-a12a-5353895de4dc


"The country which has actually been responsible for a large amount of these (coronavirus cases) has actually been the United States.

"At the end of the day, that's a function of the number of people who travel between the US and Australia."
Eighty per cent of coronavirus cases in Australia are people who have come in from overseas or have caught the disease directly from them.

Scott Morrison said most Australian coronavirus cases are connected to the United States. (AAP)

A failure to conduct adequate numbers of coronavirus tests meant the United States appeared to have many more infections in recent weeks than had been announced.

 
Last edited by a moderator:

Follow us on social media

Top Bottom