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Nirupama Rao is a retired Indian diplomat who has spent much of her career focused on China. She joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1973 and went on to serve as Foreign Secretary, Ambassador to China, and Ambassador to the United States. In recent years, Rao has been a visiting fellow at a variety of institutions, including Brown University, Columbia University and The Wilson Center, as she works on her forthcoming book: Telling it on the Mountain: India and China, 1949-1962 (Penguin/Random House). In 2018, Rao founded the South Asian Symphony Foundation, an organization based in Bangalore dedicated to promoting peace in South Asia, and she has published her own music and poetry as well. Rao lives in Bangalore, and this interview was conducted via Zoom in mid-August, when Indian and Chinese troops had backed down after clashes in June. Hostilities resumed at the end of August.

Q: Relations between India and China took a sharp dive in June after Chinese soldiers killed around 20 Indian soldiers, and just recently, there was another disagreement along the disputed border. India has seen a sharp anti-China backlash — is this a watershed moment or something that might pass?

A: The incident involving the loss of 20 Indian Army personnel, including a colonel, on June 15^th is emblematic of a turning point in India-China relations. Since 1975, not a single shot had been fired in the border areas between India and China. All of that came apart in Galwan.¹Indian and Chinese forces clashed in the Galwan Valley, a remote region in the disputed territory between China’s Tibet and India’s Ladakh, in June. Indian officials said that 20 Indian soldiers were killed, while China did not give a number for its casualties. Media reported that soldiers fought with their hands and crude weapons, such as nail-studded rods. The border clash occurred in the region that was home to the 1962 Sino-Indian war and has been a frequent source of tension in the countries’ relationship. The structure of relations that the two countries had built over the last three decades — the modus vivendi — has come apart, and I don’t believe that structure can be applied to the relationship as we go forward, because in the last few years it was already beginning to show signs of stress. That’s because of the rise of China, a much more assertive China, a China not afraid to hide its brilliance. That assertiveness has been translated into a much more muscular approach to issues concerning territorial sovereignty. Since India and China have an unresolved boundary question, it was very graphically illustrated in the increased Chinese activism in the areas along our long border, which is over 2,000 miles long.

We would all like to see relations not disintegrate completely. But until and unless we have a viable peaceful solution to this boundary issue between the two countries, it is going to be a source of difference. Prime Minister Modi always says: “Let’s not make differences into disputes.” But I’m afraid they are morphing into disputes at this moment. And the challenge is how to draw back from that situation.

For China, the border with India is a secondary strategic direction. China’s primary strategic direction is East Asia, the Western Pacific. But given the fact that India and China are two of the biggest countries in Asia, questions of peace and security, and war and conflict between these two countries should be important, not only for the region, but for the rest of the world.

Beyond territorial disputes, were there other issues that were leading to stress on the relationship?

India and China were increasingly coming up against each other in the region of South Asia. India has land borders with most of the countries in South Asia (including Afghanistan, if you take the way India defines its sovereignty, although Pakistan is in occupation of the portion of Kashmir that borders Afghanistan). In South Asia, you’ve seen an increasing and visible profile for the Chinese in the last decade or so. China has been helped along by the fact that many of our smaller neighbors have felt quite at ease and comfortable playing the China card against India.

There are certain imbalances in the region. We haven’t really worked on regional integration and physical connectivity, and just having heart-to-heart dialogues in the region. The pull of gravity brings our smaller neighbors in South Asia much closer to India than to China, but China still comes at them either through the ocean (if it’s Sri Lanka) or across the Tibetan Plateau (if it’s Nepal). Even though the physical distances are much greater as far as China is concerned, the fact is that China has developed a far more visible presence in South Asia. 

The China-Pakistan factor has become looming in the India-China equation because of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and the fact that China and Pakistan have welded together an extremely close relationship over the last few years.²The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, in the works since 2013, is a group of infrastructure projects China is carrying out or plans to invest in in Pakistan. It is a flagship portion of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, and it passes through territory administered by Pakistan but claimed by India. Notable projects include Gwadar Port highway extensions that will connect it to China, which would allow China to import goods from the Indian Ocean region, without having to go through the Malacca Strait, a vulnerable choke point through which most of China’s oil imports pass. The Center for Strategic & International Studies estimates that of the $87 billion in announced funding, only $20 billion has been spent. That has begun to overshadow a lot of the India-China relationship.

Apart from that, our growing closeness to the United States — the strategic, global comprehensive partnership that we have forged between the United States and India — is a bit of a thorn in the flesh to the Chinese, who are very thin-skinned and tend to be quite insecure about these big relationships.

China is building critical infrastructure in many countries surrounding India, including ports across the Indian Ocean Region, which some observers believe could become bases for China’s Navy. The Doraleh Port in Djibouti, for instance, borders a Chinese military base. Do you think these are part of a strategic plan or that they pose a threat to India?

With Sri Lanka, at this moment in time, you don’t see a Chinese military presence in Hambantota [a port that was transferred to Chinese lenders for 99 years after Sri Lanka was unable to repay loans]. But ports like Gwadar [in Pakistan] or Hambantota or Djibouti or Chittagong [in Bangladesh] are very much like strategic pivots. China can pivot to expand the use of these places anytime they want. They’ve taken out a strategic investment in the region. And I think that has implications for our national security, and it has implications for peace and stability in our neighborhood.

How should India approach this potential threat?

There are many approaches we should consider if we are to restore a strategic balance in the neighborhood. First of all, there are our own problems with China: the whole issue that has come front and center after the events in Galwan. How do we build deterrence against China, in terms of the bilateral relationship? In terms of the regional context, I think India has to look much more closely at dialogue, a very candid, frank, open dialogue, a free and energetic dialogue, with our neighbors. India has to build more integration, not insist on strict reciprocity when it comes to economic and trade partnerships, and emphasize the very organic linkages that bind India with its neighborhood.

South Asia is meant to be integrated. Historically, if you look at the Indian subcontinent, as it used to be called, it was very integrated. And India has begun to do that; Prime Minister Modi speaks of his “neighborhood first” policy, although his administration has seen some twists and turns. But by and large, I think our neighbors also recognize the vantage point from which India is coming. It’s a vantage point that China really does not have at this moment and will not have in the foreseeable future. But China has its economic resources and its military strength, which tends to loom across the region. We have to build strong, viable partnerships to deal with that.

How did we get where we are today?

India has one of the oldest modern diplomatic relationships with the People’s Republic of China, and it’s a relationship that has had a very turbulent past. It began on a cordial note in the 1950s, when two countries spoke about the five principles of peaceful coexistence between them.³In 1954, India and China signed a treaty focused on opening trade and allowing for pilgrimages between Tibet and India. The treaty was based on five principles: (1) mutual respect for each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty, (2) mutual non-aggression, (3) mutual non-interference in each other’s internal affairs, (4) equality and mutual benefit, and (5) peaceful co-existence. But everything disintegrated when the border question was exposed — the Chinese built a highway in Aksai Chin linking Xinjiang and Tibet — and of course, when the troubles in Tibet led to the flight of His Holiness the Dalai Lama into India in March of 1959.⁴In the 1950s, China built a road connecting Xinjiang and Tibet through Aksai Chin, a plateau also claimed by India around 16,000 feet above sea level that is largely uninhabited. The 14th Dalai Lama fled Tibet for India in 1959 after fears that the Chinese government planned to abduct him. That year marked the beginning of the “Tibetan Uprising,” during which Tibetans rebelled against the People’s Liberation Army. Some Tibetan exiles claim that over 430,000 Tibetans were killed by Chinese forces in the following 15 years.

Both these issues compounded difficulties in India-China relations, which ultimately culminated in the conflict of 1962.⁵Tensions over the disputed border erupted in October 1962, when Chinese forces advanced into areas claimed by India on both edges of the countries’ long border. Fighting lasted for about a month and ended after China unilaterally declared a ceasefire and withdrew behind the “line of actual control.” 722 Chinese troops and 1,383 Indian troops were killed, according to the respective militaries. China is widely seen as having won the war. It was in the mid-1970s, after China had been through its turbulent Cultural Revolution, that we restored relations at the diplomatic level.

The current phase of this relationship really began in 1976, when the ambassadors returned to each other’s capital. Then in 1986, we had a serious Chinese transgression and intrusion in the eastern sector of the India-China border in Sumdorong Chu that threatened to escalate into a serious crisis, even involving the use of force. Fortunately, we didn’t come to that.

When we had that crisis in the mid-1980s, then-Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi took an extraordinary leap of faith. He decided to travel to Beijing to meet with the Chinese leadership and say that we need to take a long-term perspective of this relationship. He basically said: While the border question between our two countries is going to take time to solve, let us look at building mutual confidence and at least a greater level of trust — which was non-existent. And that’s how trade picked up. That’s how our business contacts burgeoned. That’s how people-to-people linkages were constructed. This was the structure that we built in this relationship.

When I talk about the turning point today, I wonder, are both countries going to take into account the larger picture in the relationship that has defined our interactions for the last three decades? Or are they just going to work on managing tensions between the two sides? That’s really the dilemma.

You’re currently writing a book on India-China relations from 1949 to 1962. What drew you to research that period?

This was a formative period in the relationship and all the disputes between us today really harken back to that era. There is a great deal of ignorance and a fog of misperception about what happened in that period and how matters escalated into conflict — whose fault it was and how the leadership failed. In India, the role of Prime Minister Nehru is questioned. He built his foreign policy on the consideration that India had to be independent and had to make its own sovereign decisions about its relations with the rest of the world. And friendship, or peaceful coexistence, with China was very much a linchpin of that strategy. Today, the archival material available on that subject is much more than it was before. I felt there was a need, especially for our audiences in India and particularly the lay audience, to be better informed about what happened in that period and why it was so formative in the creation of the dispute between our two countries, as well as what lessons it holds for us when we consider that problem today.

It’s a 20th-century legacy dispute that confronts us today. Are we going to handle it? Are we going to learn some lessons about the way it was handled in the past?

It’s a 20th-century legacy dispute that confronts us today. Are we going to handle it? Are we going to learn some lessons about the way it was handled in the past? Of course, we are confronted with a very different China today, a much more powerful, much more confident, much more assertive — you might even say opportunistic — China, then we were dealing with in that period. But certainly, knowledge of what went into that very historic period in the relationship is necessary if we are to look at solving the problem today.

Can you give us a preview? Is there one lesson you could share with us now?

Diplomacy is about finding middle ground. We were not able to find that middle ground in that period, and that had very serious consequences for the relationship. Now, you may say: is China prepared to find that middle ground today? That is the fundamental question we are confronted with, because for China, on this question of sovereignty, it clings on to every claim that it has. It’s a very different China that you’re dealing with today compared to the China you dealt with in the early years of the People’s Republic, when they were still consolidating their nationhood and finding their way in the world.

You were Ambassador to China and then to the United States. How did your experience as a diplomat in those countries differ?

They were totally different — worlds apart.

I had been going to China since the mid-1980s. I’d seen the way the country had changed; I had been a part of a number of negotiations and historic interactions with the Chinese. So, it was a link I had built from the mid-80s onwards, and it was exciting to see the changes in that country. And it was also very interesting to me as a professional diplomat to observe the way Chinese attitudes were changing, and the way they were metamorphosing into the attitudes of a country that suddenly found itself on the front lines of global prestige and success. By the time I went to China in 2006 [as India’s ambassador], that was the China that I was seeing, which is so different from the China I had first witnessed.

Coming from an open, almost chaotic, but completely free democracy like India, I realized that in dealing with the Chinese bureaucracy, the Chinese Foreign Office, the whole apparatus of the Communist Party, you were dealing with a closed, very orchestrated, very choreographed system. Everything was set to a certain tempo and rhythm. Even today, although China has reformed and opened itself to the world, the language of Chinese diplomacy is very much the language of Chinese diplomacy in the 1950s in the way they put things across, their points of emphasis, their refusal to really speak with any degree of candor. There was a certain conformity that at times became quite frustrating when you deal with the Chinese.

I remember a time just before the Beijing Olympics were held in 2008. The Olympic torch was being brought to China, it was traveling through India, and some Tibetan refugees in India had protested against the sequence of the torch being taken through India. I was called to the Foreign Office at 2 a.m.; the Chinese [diplomats] just couldn’t see any reason when we told them that in a democracy such as ours, such protests were everyday phenomena. Whichever party, whichever school of opinion, they were all free to express themselves. We told them we would make sure that nothing happened to the torch, and we ensured there would be no disruption to the passage of the torch through India.

Contrastingly, in America, everything was just like what we were used to: the access you got, the conversations you had, the kind of freedom you enjoyed in being able to elicit opinions from your American friends and interlocutors, even those who were not completely well-disposed towards India. There was a degree of candor and frankness and openness, which was a breath of fresh air.

Was the ability to conduct diplomacy in China compared to the United States markedly different?

I definitely think so. The India-China relationship was essentially a prisoner of the framework that had been set for it by the Chinese. I don’t think there was any give on the Chinese side. There was no attempt to meet you halfway. There was no attempt to take a long-term perspective of this relationship. Whereas in the United States, the whole process of diplomatic engagement was very different. It was defined and predicated essentially upon this vision of growing partnership between the two countries. The United States had decided — and India on its part had been equally responsive — that this partnership had many sides to it, was people-centered, and spoke the language of open democracy. I think that made the difference.

Which Chinese leader over the past twenty years or so has had the best relationship with India?

Premier Zhu Rongji spoke a lot of sense. He was driven by what you would call “sense and sensibility” when it came to the relationship. Premier Wen Jiabao also had quite a cordial relationship with his corresponding colleagues on the Indian side. I haven’t had any direct dealings with President Xi Jinping, but I did meet him when he was vice president and also when he’d already been anointed as China’s next leader. But at that stage, there was no way of really assessing the kind of leader he would become. And I think this opinion has been shared by a lot of people who saw him before he ascended to the top position of leadership.

What was your impression of Xi as a person?

He tended to be quite subdued and measured and very correct. It was as if everything was shuttered. I don’t think you got the sense of the real person he was when you interacted with him. I remember a conversation he had with Mrs. Sonia Gandhi, the leader of the Congress Party, who was visiting Beijing in 2008 at the time of the Olympics. She met Mr. Xi, and he had this long conversation with her about religion. They talked about a Buddhist shrine in Xi’an that had been buried by a natural disaster for 800 years, and how the people living in that area adjacent to Xi’an had never forgotten the fact that there was a Buddhist temple buried beneath the soil. He got a little animated when he spoke about how religious faith doesn’t really die out among the people. That seems to be an obsession with the Chinese Communist Party. I remember some other Chinese leader, who had served in Tibet for a number of years, also speaking in the same way. This whole concept of religion, of prayer, of worship and faith, is something that they constantly seem to be wrestling with.

India’s relationship with the United States has improved in recent years. How much of that has to do with China?

The relationship with the U.S. is a very old relationship. Even before our independence, the Americans had been great supporters of India’s independence and Indian democracy. The Constitution of India has learned a great deal from the U.S. Constitution. There’s no question of that kind of alignment of values with China from the very inception of our republic. It’s true that in the 1950s, and during the Cold War, there were divisions and estrangement between India and the United States. Certain periods, of course, were better than the others.

As Nixon was preparing to open to China in 1972, it was clear that in order to ensure all went smoothly, the United States needed the help of Pakistan.⁶The United States did not have diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China when President Richard Nixon began his effort to open to China, and Pakistan became the intermediary between the countries. During a trip to Pakistan in 1971, then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger secretly visited China with the help of Pakistani President Yahya Khan. So, the United States took sides in the conflict between India and Pakistan that led to the birth of Bangladesh.⁷The partition of India created a Pakistan split in two parts: West Pakistan (modern day Pakistan) and East Pakistan (modern day Bangladesh). In 1971, after East Pakistan leaders declared independence, the Pakistani army launched a brutal campaign that killed as many as 3 million civilians. In December of that year, India joined the war on the side of Bangladesh, and Pakistan surrendered soon after. The United States supported Pakistan during the war, over the protests of its officials on the ground, who described Pakistan’s actions as genocide. Henry Kissinger told The Atlantic in 2016 that Pakistan committed “extreme violence and gross human rights violations” but “to condemn these violations publicly would have destroyed the Pakistani channel, which would be needed for months to complete the opening to China, which indeed was launched from Pakistan.” That was a very, very dark period in the relationship. But a few years later in the Carter administration, things began to look up. President Reagan and Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi set up a good rapport. From the Clinton presidency onwards, there was this recognition that here was the world’s largest democracy, and the United States had not really developed relations of mutual trust and confidence with it over the years, and this needed to be set right. The rise of India was seen as something that the United States should support and be a partner in as the process moved forward. That’s really when you had the India-U.S. civilian nuclear deal, where India was brought back into the fold after a long period of division and alienation on account of the nuclear question.⁸India’s decision to develop nuclear weapons raised tensions with a range of nuclear powers, including the United States, which opposed nuclear proliferation. President Bill Clinton sanctioned India in 1998 after India conducted nuclear tests. President George Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced an agreement in 2005 that gave U.S. support to India’s nuclear program with some concessions from India. There was a flowering of relations in the military-strategic sphere, in business and investment, in science and technology and health, in outer space, in educational ties, and people-to-people linkages. We have an Indian-American diaspora in the United States which is 4 million strong.

China has watched this growing cordiality and closeness between the United States and India that had not existed before. This has created, as far as they’re concerned, a different balance in the Indo-Pacific and a potential competitor to the rise of China. India’s relations with the other big democracies in the region — Japan and Australia — that is also a matter of constant irritation to the Chinese. They do not introspect themselves about where their “Wolf Warrior” diplomacy has gotten them, where their muscularity and aggressiveness has gotten them.

India, the United States, Japan and Australia collaborate on security in the Indo-Pacific through the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue. Does this “Quad” have a real common vision when it comes to relations with China?

That vision is still evolving. Somebody the other day called the Quad “Ajai” (America, Japan, Australia, India), which in Hindi or Sanskrit means “victory.” It is more than a dialogue mechanism today because there are military exercises. All of the Quad has yet to conduct that kind of exercise together, but members have bilaterally and trilaterally. There are many forms, permutations and combinations within the Quad that speak to a high level of understanding and mutual confidence and trust between these four countries.

As we move forward, there is scope for the Quad to develop relations in many other areas, whether it’s in infrastructure, in connectivity, in more transparent ways of development assistance being provided to other countries in the region. Just being able to enhance the scope of an alternate vision for the region, which is based on respect for international law and codes of conduct, freedom of navigation and democratic value, is important. It’s antithetical to what the Chinese provide.

It would seem to many people in the United States that the United States and India are natural allies in a growing struggle against China. What do you make of that view?

If you took a survey of Indian popular opinion about attitudes to the United States, I think it would be overwhelmingly positive, quite in contrast to the way China is viewed. And that is a problem for China: it has very few friends in the region. What can you really count as China’s foreign policy successes? The U.S.-India relationship is a partnership not only between two democracies, but a partnership of natural allies. We don’t call it an alliance, but you can certainly call it an alliance of liberty and democracy. I’m not saying that in a poetic or flowery way — in actual meaning and substance, there is a lot to this relationship that shows promise and great potential.

Of course, the U.S. is going through a presidential election in a few months. We’ll have to see what the future holds. There is a bilateral consensus between the Republican and Democratic parties about the need to build better relations with India. So this relationship is in a good place.

It seems that Modi and Trump have good chemistry. Would a Biden administration impact India’s relations with the United States and cooperation on China?

I’m pretty confident that the general direction of the India-U.S. relationship will not only be maintained but taken forward. You have the example of what happened in the Obama-Biden administration to take a cue from. Essentially, there’s been a great deal of continuity and consensus on the part of different administrations as far as the India-U.S. relationship is concerned. Of course, Mr. Modi and Mr. Trump share a very good personal rapport, and the Trump administration has also taken this relationship forward. We’ve had problems on the trade front, and there’s been some issues that are still to be resolved, including about H-1B visas for Indian professionals working in the United States. But by and large, if you look back at the achievements of the last four years of the Trump administration, the India-U.S. relationship has definitely progressed and has been enhanced and deepened. We expect that to be continued in the next administration, whoever wins the election. The advisors who are close to the Biden campaign have made it very clear that the relationship with India will be accorded very high priority.

India was a leader of the Non-Aligned Movement during the Cold War. Even as anti-China sentiment ramps up in India, are there some who think India would be better off staying in the middle of a U.S.-China conflict and playing off both sides? And is there merit to this view?

I like to think that India has a free and energetic foreign policy — we don’t really want to use the word non-alignment. The description “strategic autonomy” is sometimes applied to the relationship. But if you ask India on whose side it is, India will say: India is on India’s side. Every country takes decisions on foreign policy and relations with the outside world based on its own national interest. Today, in the Indo-Pacific, you have the bipolarity of the rivalry: competition and tensions between the United States and China. But there are also many poles of influence spread across the region, which center on countries in Southeast Asia, in East Asia, and in India. So this gives freedom to maneuver through a lot of situations.

For India, China is a neighbor. Over the years, the kinds of linkages and interactions that we’ve had with China have structured a relationship that is quite elaborate and quite complex. So, I think the challenge today before India and China is not only to look at that larger picture of the relationship, but how to manage these tensions that have cropped up, whether they’re on the border or in trade and investment. The imbalance of trade we have with China is huge. And it has not been addressed by the Chinese.

Second, the issue of trust between the two countries is at an all-time low. You see the impact of that in the decisions the Indian government is making and is bound to make in the future about how we manage the economic relationship with China. They are in order to safeguard the national interest, in order to protect our industries, in order to ensure that national security is not jeopardized, particularly, when it comes to 5G. We just banned 59 Chinese apps, and that has had a ripple effect across the world. After that, the Americans began to talk about the problem with TikTok. Huawei played quite a big role in building India’s 3G and 4G networks, but I don’t see it being involved with 5G at all.

This is a kind of a Sputnik moment for India. We will have to redefine and restructure a lot of these connections with China that we took for granted. And that also means within India, looking at our own economic reform and liberalization and the way to create a better regulatory environment, better norms, better standards, and revive our own manufacturing industry.

Chinese companies have invested heavily in Indian startups, and much of India’s information infrastructure is reliant on China. Is that kind of investment and role a threat, and should India be doing things like banning Huawei and ZTE in order to mitigate it?

We certainly need to mitigate it, because in the technology ecosystem within India, the Chinese have become quite a prominent presence. The government will need to work with private industry in order to craft a cogent and credible approach to deal with this Chinese presence. Because it could affect national security; it could affect data privacy. For instance, take a simple thing such as the Chinese smartphone presence in India. A company like Xiaomi has a huge proportion of the smartphone market within India because it’s affordable. And, as time goes by, if this presence were to increase, it could stretch into our border areas, into very sensitive border states — what are the implications for all that? What happened in Galwan should be a wake-up call for the policymakers to consider a lot of these issues.

Supply chains have been shifting away from China recently as Chinese labor becomes more expensive and relations between China and some parts of the world deteriorate. How do you think Indian efforts to capture supply chain opportunities have gone so far?

It’s a bit of a mixed bag. We have not been as successful as they have been in Vietnam and other countries. But now, with what has happened vis-a-vis China in June, I think it has been a bit of an epiphany for India. The government is looking very seriously at improving the ease of doing business in India, at removing the red tape and the bureaucratic hindrances that did not enable such things to happen in the past. The center and focus, as far as all this is concerned, is the whole issue of how to improve the rate of GDP growth of the Indian economy, because so much rests on that as far as the welfare and livelihoods of the young people of India are concerned. They make up about 65 percent of our 1.3 billion population. It’s very important that the ease of doing business, the regulatory environment, the norms, the standards are all improved, and the government is very focused on that.

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