In Spite of the Spite: An Indian View of China and India in BRICS
| Published date | 01 September 2021 |
| Author | Sreeram Chaulia |
| Date | 01 September 2021 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.13009 |
In Spite of the Spite: An Indian View of China
and India in BRICS
Sreeram Chaulia
O.P. Jindal Global University
Abstract
Based on expectations drawn from rationalist understanding of international institutions, this article argues that China and
India persist with membership and participation in BRICS despite their growing bilateral conflicts because the grouping serves
their respective strategic interests. Contrary to accounts portraying BRICS as a model for South–South cooperation or as a
forum for socialization of member countries to develop a new shared collective identity, the article highlights the nationalistic
power politics angle and explains why BRICS will continue to have both China and India inside the tent. For China, BRICS is
one of many multilateral institutions with which to challenge and push back the United States and the Western-crafted liberal
international system. For India, BRICS is less of an anti-Western formation and increasingly a soft balancing instrument through
which China can be bound to rules and moderate its assertive behaviour as a great power. The article also highlights the con-
structive role Russia plays in the internal soft balancing of China via BRICS and offers examples of Russia acting as a behind-
the-scenes intermediary to massage Sino-Indian tensions during military standoffs. The conclusion is that BRICS will survive
China-India confrontations even amid the worsening geostrategic environment in Asia.
On 23 June 2020, the foreign ministers of the Russia, India
and China (RIC) trilateral held a virtual meeting. Its timing was
intriguing. Just one week prior to it, the armies of China and
India engaged in a fierce hand-to-hand combat in the Galwan
Valley in which twenty Indian troops and an unspecified num-
ber of Chinese troops
1.
were killed. Following the clash, there
was a heavy buildup of troops by both sides across different
points of the line of actual control (LAC) and intense national-
istic fervour (see also Introduction by Verma and Papa 2021).
Talk of a limited war was in vogue.
Yet, amid darkening clouds and manoeuvring for tit-for-
tat escalation in the high Himalayas, neither China nor India
boycotted the trilateral, whose agenda was to focus on
broad themes like global trends following the COVID-19
pandemic. But much as Russia, the host of the RIC event,
would have preferred to steer clear of geopolitically delicate
issues, bilateral dynamics did creep in. India’s Minister of
External Affairs S. Jaishankar obliquely took aim at China by
saying ‘the leading voices of the world must be exemplars
in every way’by ‘respecting international law’and ‘recognis-
ing the legitimate interests of partners’(Roy, 2020). China’s
Foreign Minister Wang Yi commented pointedly that ‘we
should correctly treat and properly handle the sensitive fac-
tors in bilateral relations’(Roy, 2020).
Notwithstanding these thinly veiled barbs and rising Sino-
Indian friction, RIC carried on unimpeded and so did a meet-
ing of senior officials of the bigger BRICS grouping on 2 July
2020. Even as the LAC standoff lengthened into a prolonged
stalemate, the twelfth BRICS summit meeting happened
nonetheless on 17 November 2020, with both President Xi Jin-
ping of China and Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India
attending it through virtual means owing to the COVID-19
pandemic restrictions. The summit did not witness any testy
Sino-Indian exchanges because the two sides had been
engaging in several rounds of bilateral dialogue on a separate
track from the multilateral BRICS agenda. A few days prior to
the BRICS summit, the corps commanders of the two coun-
tries met at one of the friction points at the LAC and
announced a three-step disengagement plan to move back
their respective armies from one hotly contested area to posi-
tions before the Chinese incursions of April and May 2020
(ANI, 2020). While there was no guarantee of this plan working
out owing to fears of strategic deception and mistrust, both
sides decided to keep the BRICS summit and BRICS processes
going without letting the military conflict affecting them.
If one takes a retrospective look, the bilateral animosity
between China and India has been somewhat insulated from
the BRICS multilateral agenda right since the 2006 launch of
this unique intercontinental institution with a dream of has-
tening a multipolar world order. Formations like RIC, BRICS
and Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), where both
China and India are full members, have not been rendered
irrelevant or paralysed by Sino-Indian rivalry, not even in
extremely tense moments when Beijing and New Delhi nearly
went to blows such as the 2013 Daulat Beg Oldi incident and
the 2017 Doklam confrontation. One can be sanguine that
BRICS will survive China–India conflicts in the future because
it serves the national interests of both China and India to let
this institution remain and flourish.
1. China’s riposte to the West
Why have China and India persisted with BRICS in spite of
their overflowing bilateral strategic mistrust? From a rational
Global Policy (2021) 12:4 doi: 10.1111/1758-5899.13009©2021 Durham University and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Global Policy Volume 12 . Issue 4 . September 2021519
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