US President Donald Trump escalated the trade war with China earlier this year. After that, China started trying to repair relations with India, a Bloomberg report claimed. It said that Chinese President Xi Jinping also sent a letter to Indian President Droupadi Murmu.
The report mentioned that an Indian official, on condition of anonymity, said that the original purpose of the letter was to understand whether India was interested in rebuilding relations with China. Although the letter was sent to President Murmu, it quickly reached Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Xi Jinping expressed concern in the letter and said that any agreement between the US and India could harm China’s interests. China will assign a provincial-level official to take the work forward in this regard.
Then, last June, Modi’s government started giving importance to the issue. At that time, discussions were underway with India to increase US tariffs. At the same time, Trump claimed that he played a role in ending the conflict between India and Pakistan after the attack in Pahalgam, Kashmir.
The NDTV report claims that upset with Trump’s tariff policy, India and China decided to forget the 2020 border conflict, speed up negotiations and start new talks to resolve old border disputes.
The NDTV report says that since then, the relationship between the two countries has improved. Direct passenger flights between India and China are starting in a few weeks. China has given concessions in urea exports to India. And India has re-introduced tourist visas for Chinese citizens, which were closed for several years.
It says that this new beginning in relations was due to Trump’s tariff policy. He actually wanted to punish China, and later pressured India. After Trump imposed double tariffs on Chinese goods last March, China called on India to stand together against the “politics of hegemony and fear”.
Xi Jinping then said, “The elephant (India) and the dragon (China) will dance together—this is the only right way.”
Last July, Chinese officials also started using this metaphor. China’s state-run newspaper Global Times went a step further and said that the two Asian superpowers should “dance ballet” together in the fight against US tariffs.
Prime Minister Modi is soon going to China to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit. This is his first visit to China in seven years. The last time he was on the same stage with Xi Jinping was at the BRICS summit held in Kazan, Russia, last year.
Eric Wolander, editor of the China-Global South Project, said that through this summit, the CA will want to show what a new world order could look like without the US. The BRICS is actually the goal of the alliance to show what Trump is worried about.
This year’s SCO summit will be the largest since the organization was formed in 2001.
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