Narendra Modi once looked at China. As India’s business-friendly head of state, he traveled there repeatedly to attract investment and see how his country could learn from its neighbor’s economic transformation. China, he said, has “a special place in my heart.” Chinese officials hailed his rise to national power as a “political star.”
But not long after Mr. Modi became prime minister in 2014, China made it clear that the relationship would not be so easy. As he celebrated his 63rd birthday hosting China’s leader Xi Jinping — even sitting on a swing with him in a riverside park — hundreds of Chinese troops invaded Indian territory in the Himalayas, sparking a week-long standoff.
A decade later, ties between the world’s two most populous nations have almost completely broken. Continued border incursions erupted into a fierce conflict in 2020 that threatened to lead to all-out war. Mr Modi, a strongman who controls every lever of power in India and has expanded his ties to many other countries, appears uncharacteristically powerless in the face of the rift with China.
As Mr. Modi seeks a third term in elections starting Friday, the tensions weigh heavily on his campaign’s overarching narrative: that he is making India a great global power and, by extension, restoring national pride. Far from the 2,100-mile border, along every avenue where India seeks to expand, China emerges as a fierce competitor.
In India’s South Asian backyard, China has used its vast resources—the fruits of economic reforms introduced decades before India—to challenge Indian supremacy, court partners through infrastructure deals and gain access to strategic ports.
More generally, China and India are competing to lead the developing countries of the so-called global south. When India hosted the Group of 20 summit last year, using it to show its support for poorer countries, Mr Xi skipped the event. China has also been a major roadblock in India’s campaign to win a coveted permanent seat on the UN Security Council.
“Today, you are meeting an India that you may have never seen before, in many ways,” said Nirupama Menon Rao, India’s former ambassador to China and the United States. “I think the Chinese are realizing that more and more and they would still like to bring us down, put up barriers.”
India’s estrangement from China has provided an opening for Western nations to expand defense and economic ties with New Delhi, a sad development for Beijing.
India signed a series of agreements with the United States last year to boost military cooperation. India has also reached out to the other two members of the so-called Quad, Australia and Japan, as the group works to counter China’s power projection.
In addition, India sees an opportunity as the United States and Europe look for alternatives to China as a manufacturing location for their products. An early success was the surge in iPhone production in India.
But even with these openings, China continues to expose Indian insecurities. The Chinese economy is about five times the size of India’s, and China remains India’s second largest trading partner (after the United States), exporting about six times more to India than it imports. China spends three times more than India on its military, giving its forces a significant advantage on land, sea and air.
The Indian military, which has long struggled to modernize, is now forced to be ready for conflict on two fronts, with China to India’s east and ancient Pakistan to its west.
Tens of thousands of troops from both India and China remain at a war base in the Himalayas four years after deadly skirmishes erupted in the disputed eastern Ladakh region, where both countries are building up their military presence. Nearly two dozen rounds of negotiations have failed to bring about disengagement.
Although the political opposition has tried to paint Mr Modi as weak in the face of Chinese encroachment, the border raids are unlikely to hurt him much politically given the lack of news coverage from a largely sympathetic Indian media.
But Mr Modi has had to prioritize billions of dollars for border infrastructure and military upgrades as India still struggles to meet the basic needs of its 1.4 billion people. His government is drawing up plans to resettle hundreds of border villages as a second line of defense against the constant threat of Chinese encroachment.
S. Jaishankar, Mr. Modi’s foreign minister, recently admitted that there are no “easy answers” to the dilemma posed by India’s aggressive neighbor. “They change, we change,” Mr Jaishankar said. “How do we find a balance?”
In a book published in 2020, just as he had taken over as Mr Modi’s trusted foreign policy architect, Mr Jaishankar wrote that tensions between the United States and China set “the global stage” for India’s choices. in a “world of all AGAINST ALL.” India’s aspirations as a great power, he wrote, would require a juggling act: “engage America, manage China, cultivate Europe, appease Russia.”
India’s rise as a large, developing economy has allowed it to maintain its position – working with any partner it can benefit from – in a polarized and uncertain world.
Although India has expanded defense ties with the United States and doubled bilateral trade over the past decade, to about $130 billion in goods alone, it has resisted American pressure to review its strong ties with Russia. India has deepened ties with Europe and the Middle East, too. Trade with the United Arab Emirates alone reached $85 billion.
While India remains wary of becoming a pawn in the West’s battle with Beijing and has not forgotten its frosty history with the United States, China has become an inevitable focus since it has been a secondary threat for much of modern Indian history.
India’s socialist founding prime minister reconciled with communist China, but the beauty was shattered by a month-long war in 1962 that left thousands dead. The relationship began to normalize in the 1980s, although incursions continued, and open channels of communication kept tensions low and trade up.
“It was a different China,” said Ms. Rao, the former top diplomat.
The situation had changed in the years before Mr Modi took office, he said. As its economy soared, China began to buckle — investing heavily in the Belt and Road infrastructure initiative, which India saw as threatening its security and spheres of influence, and moving more aggressively along its borders and in the Indian Ocean.
But Mr Modi, who was blacklisted by the United States when he was head of state for his role in bloody religious riots, has continued to reach out to Beijing. As prime minister, he did not allow the embarrassment of the 2014 Chinese invasion to dampen his red carpet welcome to Mr Xi. His subtle message – a warning that “a little toothache can paralyze the whole body” – brought hope that Mr Xi would come around.
That hope ended with the deadly 2020 conflict in Eastern Ladakh. Now, it is clear that New Delhi has resigned itself to a long-term threat from China, a shift evident in Mr. Modi’s push for road and tunnel construction in border areas to support a large troop presence.
In the past five years, more than 2,200 miles of roads have been built along the border. In the Kashmir region, over 2,000 workers have been busy for three years digging a high-altitude tunnel that will improve connectivity to Ladakh.
When completed, the tunnel project, which will cost more than $850 million, will keep traffic moving year-round and reduce travel times by hours.
“For four months, supplies to the Indian Army were cut off because the road was going to be closed,” said Harpal Singh, head of the project. “Once this tunnel is completed, this will not happen again.”
Mr. Modi’s government is also trying to revive hundreds of villages along the border to bolster defenses.
Through a program called Vibrant Villages, the government is working to develop infrastructure, expand services and cultivate tourism in hopes of reversing the economic migration that has created “ghost villages.”
“What India could have done in the last 20 years, it has to do now in two,” said Sonam Murup, a retired Indian Army officer from Ladakh, referring to infrastructure development in his region.
“Our situation is much better now,” he said. “But when you look towards the Chinese side, you can see villages full of lights.”
Joy Dong contributed reporting from Hong Kong.
