Maritime dialogue with China, Russia as ties deepen

New Delhi: India will hold “maritime dialogues” with both China and Russia, sources have said, adding that bilateral maritime dialogues with Indonesia and France were held recently. This will be India’s second maritime dialogue with China at the joint secretary-level, the first having been held in 2016.

India has stepped up its interactions with time-tested friend Russia and giant eastern neighbour China after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s informal summits at Sochi (Russia) and Wuhan (China) with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping respectively. However, despite all this, New Delhi is also continuing its maritime consultations with the United States, Japan and Australia as part of the proposed “quadrilateral” which is widely seen as a move to counter Chinese naval dominance in the Asia-Pacific region. New Delhi is also working towards integrating the existing “Indian Ocean Region (IOR)” mechanism with the “concept” of the Indo-Pacific region.  

Sources on Wednesday said, “There have been dialogues with key players.... We had bilateral maritime dialogues with Indonesia and France. And we are also proposing to have maritime dialogues with China and Russia in the coming couple of months.”

India is strengthening ties with China in other ways too, with the RBI having issued a licence to the Bank of China to open its first branch in India. This was a commitment that PM Modi had given to the President of China and the commitment has been kept. India is also in discussions with China for the visit of the Chinese defence minister to India.

Sources also said the Indian government had never been openly critical of China’s role in the Indo-Pacific region but had only insisted on a “rules-based order”. Sources said, “There may have been commentaries critical of China’s naval posture in the Indo-Pacific, but the government of India has never been publicly critical of the Chinese posture. What we (India) have essentially said is that we would like a rules-based order in the Indian Ocean because it’s important for navigation, connectivity, and defence and security. This is our second maritime dialogue with China, the first being in 2016. It is at the joint secretary-level. It is taking place after our PM (Modi) made a keynote speech on the Indo-Pacific, so presumably that will be the focus of this discussion. ... There were welcoming references to PM’s speech on Indo-Pacific by President of China. We are hoping for positive discussion.”

“The concept of the Indo-Pacific is not directed against any country. Some special effort has to be made towards the ‘doubters’, those countries that have some concerns... some of the Asean and east African countries who (want to know) ... what our role is in the Indo-Pacific. Our position has been to explain to them that there has been an IOR (Indian Ocean Rim), we have tie that into the Indo-Pacific concept. IOR is a mechanism. Indo-Pacific is a concept. We need to tie that up. ... We have to address all these issues which is why some of these dialogues are taking place.”