(Sample Material) Study Kit on Current Affairs for UPSC Mains Examination
Biodiversity, Environment, Security & Disaster Management: NSG and China’s Grand Strategic Flip-flops: Some Plausible Explanations
A. Vinod Kumar
When India responded cautiously to the international tribunal’s rejection of China’s claim over the South China Sea (SCS), many commentators construed it as India ceding crucial ground on an issue where a tit-for-tat response would have been more appropriate to China’s ‘sabotage’ of India’s admission to the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). For South Block mandarins, a low-key diplomatic reaction to the tribunal’s verdict was an opportunity to not ruffle Beijing’s feathers and keep a window open for engagement with China on the NSG affair. The latter tactic seems to have been effective with the Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s visit to India– ostensibly to prepare for the upcoming G-20 and BRICS summits in Hangzhou and Goa, respectively – opening the space for dialogue on both the NSG and SCS. While Beijing evidently wants to buy New Delhi’s silence on the SCS at these summits, the possibility of a quid pro quo on the NSG was highlighted by the conciliatory voices in the Chinese media.
A commentary in Xinhua noted that India had ‘wrongly’ blamed China for the NSG episode, and that New Delhi should not be “downhearted as the door to the NSG is not tightly closed.” This apparent toning down of rhetoric is a far cry from the days when the Chinese official media spewed vitriol on India’s NSG quest, to the extent of warning India against letting “its nuclear ambitions blind itself.” Is a quid pro quo possible or tenable for India, especially since the SCS and NSG have emerged as strategic arenas for both powers to grapple with each other in their power balancing quests? The answer may lie in understanding China’s recent grand strategic behaviour, including why it blocked India’s NSG bid.