Is India sending a message to 'China's show' as Narendra Modi skips SCO summit?

As the annual summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation convenes this week in Kazakhstan's capital Astana, Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to use the forum to renew calls for a multipolar global order amid heightened tensions with Western nations.

The Central Asian economic and security alliance - established by China and Russia in 2001 - accounts for more than 40 per cent of the world's population, and is on track to expand to 10 members this year with the addition of Belarus.

But while Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet in another sign of deepening cooperation, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has decided to skip the meeting, sending his foreign minister in his place. Modi's absence is being seen in some corners as a bid to play down the significance of the summit amid New Delhi's efforts to strike a delicate balance in its foreign policy.

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Zhang Baohui, an international relations professor at Lingnan University in Hong Kong who specialises in Asia-Pacific studies, said Modi's no-show made it clear that India was distancing itself from the SCO.

Chinese President Xi Jinping arrives in Astana, Kazakhstan, on Tuesday for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit, and a state visit at the invitation of Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. Photo: Xinhua alt=Chinese President Xi Jinping arrives in Astana, Kazakhstan, on Tuesday for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit, and a state visit at the invitation of Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. Photo: Xinhua>

India, which joined the group along with rival Pakistan in 2017, hosted the annual summit virtually last year, a move that was interpreted by many as India's attempt to avoid direct interactions with China and Russia, both of which have strained relations with the West.

"A more likely cause could be due to India's broader strategic realignment. It has been boosting its alignment with the West and weakening its relationship with the non-Western camp," Zhang said. "This is especially apparent in India's relations with the SCO, which is seen by the world as a non-Western political grouping largely influenced by China and Russia."

Amit Ranjan, a research fellow with National University of Singapore's Institute of South Asian studies, said Modi's absence from the summit was likely due to busy domestic and travelling schedules.

Last month, the Indian leader was re-elected for a third term, but his party was reduced to a much narrower majority in parliament. Modi, who just returned to India from the Group of Seven summit in Italy, will travel to Russia next week to meet Putin.

Ranjan suggested that Modi may want to avoid "coming across" Xi at the SCO, as relations between their nations remain fraught since they last met on the sidelines of the Brics summit in South Africa last year.

Meanwhile, India has been seen to increasingly align with the US strategy in the Indo-Pacific, while competing with Beijing for leadership of the Global South. The two Asian powers have also clashed over a long-standing border dispute.

"India has already known before joining that SCO is all China's show," Ranjan said.

"India's foreign policy, it's more based on its national interest ... it may be like India feels that they are going to gain more [by] engaging with Japan or the US or Russia than [by] directly engaging with China."

Liu Zongyi, secretary general of the China and South Asia Centre at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, said India had little interest in improving relations with China, which were largely frozen because of their border dispute.

"[Indian Minister of External Affairs Subrahmanyam] Jaishankar has made it clear that his priority will be to resolve border disputes with China ... but China-India relations include many aspects, not just the border issues," Liu said. "In this context, that the border issue cannot be completely resolved, we can totally still develop other relationships."

Relations between the two countries took a major downturn after a deadly clash between their militaries in the Galwan Valley in 2020 - a disputed stretch of their shared border in the Himalayan region. The two nuclear-armed nations have since held more than 20 rounds of border talks with little progress.

At the same time, Beijing and New Delhi have yet to resume direct flights after a four-year halt since Covid-19 pandemic, and journalists from each country remain banned from the other.

Still, Ranjan sees some positives. He said Beijing's recent appointment of Xu Feihong as the new ambassador to India, a position which had been left vacant for 18 months, signalled that both sides wanted to improve relations.

He said more diplomacy was required and would be best served by meetings between Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and India's Jaishankar, to build a "conducive" environment for a leaders' meeting later on.

"So the communication channels are there," he said. "They have to engage at the lower levels ... unless that starts, it's very tough for two leaders to [meet]."

This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2024 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

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