Chinese President Xi Jinping has not been a good foreign policy president as he has managed to alienate countries like India, Japan, and Vietnam, said foreign policy expert Fareed Zakaria on Monday. He said China's rise has caused great nervousness and anxiety in Japan, India, Vietnam, South Korea, Australia, and the Philippines.
"Xi has not been a particularly good foreign policy president. In that sense, he has managed to alienate almost all these countries. So if Xi is able to genuinely adjust course, that would be one thing. But I think Xi is much more ideological than people realise," he said while speaking to Business Today's Executive Director Rahul Kanwal on the sidelines of WEF 2024.
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Speaking on the ongoing tension between New Delhi and Beijing and Xi Jinping's boycott of the G20 event in New Delhi, Zakaria said if Xi was smart, he would know the most important relationship in the world for China should be India.
"Because if he can defang India and defang India's opposition to him, the American alliance in Asia becomes much less potent because otherwise, you're dealing with offshore countries. India is the only major (country in the region). He's playing to a different tune. He's not taking any real steps," he said.
The world-renowned host suggested that China did not gain anything from its advances in Ladakh instead it triggered anti-China feelings among the Indians. "What has he gained from that Himalayan excursion? 40 miles of glaciers and in return, he completely changed the Indian attitude towards China," Zakaria said, adding that he suspects that the tensions will continue.
The foreign policy expert said that he does not see any particular rapprochement unless one sees a real de-escalation, and it would have to start with that border. "For India, understandably, the symbol of China's commitment to a bit different relationship would be not just the de-escalation from the border, but the destruction of infrastructure that has been built at the border. Because you can't just withdraw your troops and keep in place the whole infrastructure there, which can allow them to surge forward at any moment," he said.
When asked about China's move to build new villages and more military infrastructure in the border areas, Zakaria said it seemed that the current Chinese leadership had an obsession with the idea of demonstrating to India that it was the older brother. He said there was a phrase that used to be used in the 1960s after the 1962 war, where the Chinese wanted to show the Indians that it was a superior and more powerful country in Asia.
"Maybe that is the dynamic here. China should be trying to play the US and India and put a wedge between them. There are 16 borders that China has. It has resolved 15 of them. This is the 16th, and they show no signs of wanting to resolve it. You have to assume it is because they have a strategic desire to maintain a certain kind of...you know that area is sensitive because there is a potential. There's a way in which you can create a kind of stranglehold a chokepoint for India over for India. And maybe they want to do that."