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

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

The Central Asian economic and security alliance, created by China and Russia in 2001, represents more than 40% of the world’s population and is set to expand to 10 members this year with the addition of Belarus.

But while Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet, in a sign of deepening cooperation, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has decided not to attend the meeting and will send his foreign minister in his place. Modi’s absence is seen by some as an attempt to downplay the importance of the summit as New Delhi struggles to strike a delicate balance in its foreign policy.

Have questions about the world’s biggest topics and trends? Get answers with SCMP Knowledge, our new platform of curated content featuring explainers, FAQs, analysis, and infographics, brought to you by our award-winning team.

Zhang Baohui, a professor of international relations at Lingnan University in Hong Kong who specializes in Asia-Pacific studies, said Modi’s absence clearly showed that India was distancing itself from the SCO.

Chinese President Xi Jinping arrives in Astana, Kazakhstan, on Tuesday for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization 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 Organization 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 an attempt by India to avoid direct interactions with China and Russia, both of which have strained relations with the West.

“A more likely cause could be India’s broader strategic realignment. It has strengthened its alignment with the West and weakened its relations with the non-Western camp,” Zhang said. “This is particularly evident 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 at the Institute of South Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore, said Modi’s absence from the summit was likely due to busy domestic work and travel schedules.

Last month, the Indian president was re-elected for a third term, but his party saw its majority in parliament reduced. Modi, who has just returned to India from the G7 summit in Italy, will travel to Russia next week to meet Putin.

Ranjan suggested that Modi might want to avoid “crossing paths” with Xi at the SCO as relations between their nations remain strained since they last met on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in South Africa last year.

At the same time, India appears increasingly aligned with U.S. strategy in the Indo-Pacific region, while competing with Beijing for leadership in the Global South. The two Asian powers are also at odds over a long-running border dispute.

“India already knew before joining the SCO that it was China’s business,” Ranjan said.

“India’s foreign policy is more based on its national interest… India may feel that it will gain more by engaging with Japan, the US or Russia than by engaging directly with China.”

Liu Zongyi, secretary-general of the China and South Asia Center of the Shanghai Institutes of International Studies, said India had little interest in improving its relations with China, which were largely frozen due to their border dispute.

“(Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam) Jaishankar has made it clear that his priority will be to resolve the border disputes with China… but China-India relations include many aspects, not just the border issues,” Liu said. “In this context, even if the border issue cannot be completely resolved, we can definitely develop other relations.”

Relations between the two countries have deteriorated sharply since a deadly clash between their armies in the Galwan Valley in 2020, a disputed part 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.

Meanwhile, Beijing and New Delhi have yet to resume direct flights after a four-year hiatus due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and journalists from each country remain banned from flying to the other.

Ranjan sees some positives, however. He says Beijing’s recent appointment of Xu Feihong as ambassador to India, a post that had been vacant for 18 months, shows that both sides are keen to improve relations.

He said more diplomacy was needed and would be best served by meetings between Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Indian President Jaishankar to create a “conducive” environment for a later meeting of the leaders.

“So the channels of communication are there,” he said. “They have to reach out to the lower levels… if that is not done, it will be very difficult for two leaders to meet.”

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