The last few weeks have seen the spotlight return to various new fault lines emerging in India-China relations.

The latest among these was Prime Minister Modi and his ministers extending greetings to the Dalai Lama on his 90th birthday. The gesture prompted China to lodge a formal representation against what it calls India’s ‘official’ greetings to “a political exile who has long been engaged in anti-China separatist activities.”

The 90th birthday celebrations at Dharamshala had witnessed a hype regarding the Dalai Lama’s assertion on the issue of his reincarnation and its identification and recognition to be done only by his Gaden Phodrang trust. China responded to these assertions with its standard rebuttals.

Image: The Potala Palace, once the abode of the Dalai Lama, in Lhasa, Tibet

These exchanges reminded of what China had done to Panchen and Karmapa Lamas, igniting discussions of how the Dalai Lama’s incarnation is likely to trigger a serious crisis for India-China relations in the coming years.

To put it bluntly, there is no way India-China relations can escape unhurt from this issue of the Dalai Lama’s future incarnation as and when it occurs. Unless India and China consider plans to mitigate its impact, this is bound to emerge as another intractable irritant with implications far and wide, way beyond their bilateral ties.

To begin with, this will involve the question of the Gaden Phodrang trustees’ search for the 15th Dalai Lama, getting access to China’s 6.3 million Tibetans. China is very likely to deny them access inside China and initiate their own process for a parallel search and identification as they have done in earlier cases of Panchen and Karmapa lamas before.

But Tibetans living inside China constitute approximately 80 percent of the total 7.7 million Tibetans worldwide and will complicate the credibility of Gaden Phodrang and its search for 15th Dalai Lama.

Another potential scenario to be considered is if the Gaden Phodrang finds the 15th Dalai Lama in China or a third country, and he wishes to settle in Dharamsala in India and stay connected with the Central Tibetan Administration there. How will India tackle such a situation?

However, before all this happens, it will be worth considering where the memorial Stupa burial for the 14th Dalai Lama will be built, as he will be the first Dalai Lama to die outside Tibet.

Emotions are certainly bound to be ignited and hurt!

Xi, Tibet, and the succession(s)

More than the issue of reincarnation (read succession) in the case of Tibetan spiritual leader, China’s own power transition to its post-Xi new era may also face internal and external precipices, creating newer uncertainties for India-China interactions. The recent reincarnation debates have coincided with media reports of the last few weeks on President Xi’s muted public visibility.

These, in the face of his personality cult of omnipresence, have triggered speculations on a crisis brewing within the Chinese Communist Party and Xi’s retirement plans.

Beijing has so far refused to respond to any of these reports.

However, these developments must be read in the context of Xi’s unprecedented third term, his defiance of the convention of announcing next generation of leaders and questions about his successor, alluding to his continuance into a historic fourth term.

After the collective leaderships of Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao (1993-2012), Xi’s accession to power as the 7th President of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 2013 had marked the return to a personality cult reminiscent of the Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping eras.  

Besides his historic third term and adaptation of the “Xi Jinping Thought,” as the guiding doctrine for the Chinese nation, Xi had swiftly concentrated powers as ‘Core Leader’ of the Party, which also saw him using his anti-graft campaign to put thousands behind bars while placing his loyalists in all important positions.

But Xi’s third term has seen him purge several of his own team leaders like foreign minister Qin Gang, defence ministers Wei Fenghe and Li Shangfu and several other military leaders, including the most recent exit of Admiral Miao Hua, which betrays Xi’s grip on China’s power elite.

Hence, as we debate whether it is Xi who is crafting his seamless transition or is it the inevitability of power transition which is forcing his restructuring of China’s state administration, these visible shifting sands of China’s political landscape are bound to have their impact on India-China relations as well.

Indeed, some of these signs can already be identified in their changing equations.

Image: Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and President Asif Ali Zardari with their Chinese counterparts

The most recent example of these changing contours of India’s China challenge was visible at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) defence ministers' meet on June 25th in Qingdao. India’s Defence Minister Rajnath Singh had refused to sign the joint communique, citing “omission of the heinous Pahalgam terror attack, while it made direct references to militant activities in Balochistan.”

Most of the SCO states, except India, have endorsed China’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI), with several of them already benefiting from China’s investments. As Russia remains preoccupied with the Ukraine crisis, China has enhanced its influence in the SCO decision-making process as well as its capacity to appease Pakistan’s whims and fancies.

This explains the exclusion of Pahalgam from the SCO joint statement. Enacting its exact opposite, in 2022-2023, Pakistan had boycotted most of the India-hosted meetings of the SCO, thereby complicating India’s consensus-building efforts as the host nation.

SCO, CPEC and the tango

In more than one way, this marks the next stage of China's indulgence with Pakistan. Never before had China put its boots on the ground in Pakistan or so openly helped Pakistan at times of crisis.

Among others, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) has also redefined these equations. With 70,000 Chinese nationals working across Pakistan, including officers of China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the CPEC has become increasingly vulnerable to the security dynamics of Pakistan.

This explains China's continued obfuscation and deflection of all criticism of Pakistan that provides sanctuaries to terror outfits like Lashkar-e-Toiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad, The Resistance Force, and so on. In effect, China ends up protecting these designated terrorists as well.

This also explains why SCO’s RATS (Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure) remains ineffective in addressing India’s core concerns in this regard. Conversely, despite continuing border tensions and cross-border terrorism, India is expected to join the Chinese and Pakistani armed forces in the SCO’s counterterrorism drills.

Image: A Chinese train transiting goods through a BRI corridor. Photo courtesy: China.org.cn

Deepening economic and political crises in Pakistan will only further fuel Islamabad's rhetoric-driven overdrive with China’s backing, evidently driven by the impulse for strategic encirclement of India.

In the coming times, therefore, this new avatar of China-Pakistan axis 2.0 may even seek to undermine India’s interests by projecting it as a spoiler in regional initiatives and even alienate India in its own periphery. China has also been luring several SCO states to join CPEC, which has seen sporadic voices of support in Kashmir, including some in its political elite, hoping that India will reconsider its boycott of BRI and take advantage by connecting to the larger region.

In the long run, this China-Pakistan axis 2.0 in SCO could also promote authoritarian tendencies and complicate India’s democratic credentials with liberal democracies, as also push SCO’s anti-Western rhetoric, thereby suffocating India’s balanced multipolar vision.

India has often abstained from SCO declarations critical of Western sanctions, NATO’s out-of-area operations, or Israeli military operations in Gaza. In 2023, India refused to endorse BRI-related paragraphs in SCO leaders joint statement, and it remains opposed to Beijing’s proposals for a BRICS currency basket, preferring a more modest beginning by increasing intra-BRICS use of local currencies.

These fault lines will only become deeper with time.

The China-Pakistan Axis 2.0

Just like Operation Sindoor saw Prime Minister Modi enunciating his fresh three-pronged approach to countering terrorism, the last few weeks have also seen contentious debates on China’s behind-the-scenes role in the recent India-Pakistan military confrontation.

Though General Asim Munir has rejected these claims, media reports and official commentaries on China’s ‘live inputs’ to Islamabad on Indian positions during these military strikes, followed by Beijing’s global disinformation campaign to sow doubts on the performance of India’s Rafale jets, are novel in nature and carry great disruptive potential.

Likewise, reports of China’s J-10C fighter jets and PL-15 missiles having been used by Pakistan to shoot down Indian aircraft also marked the first confirmed combat deployment of such Chinese weapon systems, against India.

Adding to these are China’s recent diplomatic overtures, particularly the hosting of trilateral meetings of foreign ministers of China-Pakistan-Afghanistan and China-Pakistan-Bangladesh, both involving two of India’s neighbours with which New Delhi shared peculiar and sensitive equations.

Observers see these developments as marking a new beginning of China’s attempt to create a Beijing-led alternative to the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) that has been in a coma for the last 12 years. At least, the Pakistanis have no qualms about celebrating such audacious prognosis with China maintaining studied silence.

In the absence of effective functioning of the SAARC, the April 22nd Pahalgam massacre also saw Beijing supporting Pakistan’s narratives by calling for a ‘fair probe,’ thereby downplaying India’s concerns about cross-border terrorism.  But China was not alone in playing this equidistance. On the Indian side, Israel and Afghanistan were two nations that openly endorsed India’s Operation Sindoor, while most others urged India and Pakistan to dialogue and the early cessation of hostilities.

However, more than these diplomatic calisthenics, the coming times may see China’s direct battlefield support to Pakistan, which may not just embolden more misadventures by the latter but also reduce India’s strategic margins while boosting China’s weapons exports.

This China-Pakistan Axis 2.0 can also deepen regional asymmetry to potentially challenge India’s regional stature and influence. In the long run, this calls for India to recast its threat perceptions and defence preparedness and further accelerate its ongoing process of indigenisation.

In the short term, all these set the stage for External Affairs Minister (EAM) Dr S. Jaishankar’s upcoming China visit starting this weekend.  

Image: A Chinese and Pakistani frontier soldier engages in a friendly arm wrestling competition during a joint border patrol in China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in 2018. Photo courtesy: China Military Online

Interestingly, Jaishankar’s visit is to attend the SCO foreign ministers' meet at Tianjin during July 14-15. While the Qingdao experience of SCO defence ministers meeting three weeks before is likely to cloud the Indian approach to this meeting, it would also be an opportunity for India to gauge these changing contours and explore measures to contain any negative implications.

Jaishankar’s 'maiden' visit to China

Despite his hectic global itinerary and very professional demeanour, Jaishankar’s upcoming China visit starting this weekend will be his maiden visit to China since the Galwan crisis of June 2020.

The EAM has barely visited China twice after becoming India’s foreign minister in June 2019, though he was India’s Ambassador to China during 2009-2013 and has a deep understanding of the working style of Chinese leaders.

Jaishankar is expected to have a stopover in Beijing for a meeting with his counterpart, Wang Yi. While this meeting will be an opportunity for a quick stocktaking on the bilateral relations, Wang Yi is also slated to travel to India this month for the 25th round of the India-China Special Representatives (SR) talks with National Security Advisor Ajit Doval.

Both Doval and Yi had met in Beijing last December for their 24th round of talks that had accelerated India-China military disengagement following the Modi-Xi meeting in Kazan last October.

On the positive side, while Jaishankar’s China visit may be his first since December 2019, he has been in touch with his counterpart Wang Yi through other multilateral forums at Kazan, Munich and Rio de Janeiro. Also, his three-day visit starting Sunday comes after the visit of Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri in January and barely three weeks after visits of NSA Ajit Doval and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh.

Image: A view of the Gwadar Port in Pakistan's Balochisthan, built and operated by China. Photo courtesy: Creative Commons

These high-level engagements are intended to further contribute to the ongoing process of military disengagement as well as the resumption of the Kailash Mansarovar yatra, thus bringing back some semblance of normalcy in their bilateral relations.

Given his diplomatic acumen and finesse, Jaishankar is also expected to lay the grounds for the much-anticipated China visit by Prime Minister Modi, who is likely to visit China this autumn to attend the SCO Leaders’ Summit.

His measure of these emerging new contours of India’s China challenge during this visit can go a long way in making Prime Minister Modi’s coming China visit this fall a game changer in resolving India-China tensions.