Decoding the Chinese media narrative on the recent Abe visit to India.
- In Foreign Policy
- 12:49 PM, Oct 18, 2017
- Mahalakshmi Ganapathy
Japanese PM Shinzo Abe was on a two day visit to India on September 13-14, 2017 for the 12th India-Japan Annual Summit in Ahmadabad, Gujarat. It was the fourth Annual Summit between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Prime Minister Abe, under whose leadership the India-Japan relationship has acquired a personalized strategic trajectory that bodes well for future bilateral relations between the two countries.
Under the framework of ‘Special Strategic and Global Partnership’, both India and Japan have pushed for multifaceted cooperation since 2011 in order to unleash the “untapped potential of Asia’s two largest democracies” leading to a special geostrategic and geo-economic partnership in a region increasingly dominated by China.
The September visit by Abe saw a spate of 15 pacts signed spread across key sectors, including civil aviation, trade and science and technology. However, the highlight of the India-Japan Annual Summit was the official green signal given to the first ever Shinkansen bullet train to run from Mumbai to Ahmadabad city. The 534km high-speed train rail project will operate trains with average speeds of 200-250kmph and is touted to be a highlight of India’s infrastructure upgrade program that aims to plug into Modi’s vision to create 100 smart cities in the near future.
The total cost of the rail line is estimated to be around Rs. 1.1 lakh-crore ($17billion), with over 80% of it coming from Japan in form of a generous loan highlighted by a 0.1% interest rate over a 50-year repayment cycle that includes a 15-year grace period. Japan may also transfer their High Speed Rail (HSR) technology to India, including manufacture of rolling stock, thus making aiding Modi’s ‘Make in India’ flagship program to boost India’s manufacturing sector.
Apart from the bullet train, India and Japan also inked a memorandum of understanding to set up ‘India Japan Act East Forum’, with an aim to merge India’s Act East Policy with Japan’s Free and Open Asia-Pacific strategy that further promotes the ‘Special Strategic and Global Partnership’ . The idea of Asia Africa Growth Corridor (AAGC) that emerged in the joint declaration issued by Modi and Abe in November 2016, also found its place in current Modi-Abe summit. Pitted against the OBOR initiative of China, India and Japan found each other as natural allies in the Asian region to promote its four pillars :“Development and Cooperation Projects, Quality Infrastructure and Institutional Connectivity, Enhancing Capacities and Skills and People-to-People partnership” across Asia and Africa.
Under the aegis of the ‘India Japan Act East Forum’, connectivity and promotion of developmental projects in India’s vital Northeast region was envisaged. ‘North East Road Network Connectivity Improvement Project’ to improve the National Highway 40(NH 40) and construct a bypass on NH-54 in the N-E areas will receive a loan of Rs 2,239 crore from Japan. This project is expected to contribute towards intra-regional development of the geopolitically sensitive region.
While newspapers in India and Japan celebrated the growing friendship and strategic partnership between the two countries, the Chinese media too was closely watching the developments unfolding between its major geopolitical competitors in the region; India and Japan.
In an interview with Qianlong, an online military portal run from the capital city Beijing, Lu Yaodong, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) Institute of Japanese Studies, found the announcement of the visit by Abe signaling an important meaning. According to him, the timing of visit was planned much earlier but only revealed at a time when India and China had just come out of the escalating tensions in Doklam. Further, Jiang Jingkui, Director of Center for South Asia Studies at Peking University argued that while South Asian and Western countries chose not to take sides on the Doklam issue between India and China, Japan chose to take India’s side that clearly showed Abe’s bias towards India.
Abe, “super salesman” of the bullet train to India:
This bias towards India was alluded to Abe’s relationship with Narendra Modi that was characterized by the Chinese media as a period of “honeymoon” (蜜月 Mìyuè) and “love” (热恋期 Rèliàn qī). Media attention was also devoted to analyzing Modi’s “bear hug” (熊抱Xióng bào) diplomacy that has been his personalised way of engaging with leaders around the world. It was this personal friendship between Abe and Modi that led Abe to promote the Shinkansen bullet train as a “super salesman” moving forward with such low interest rates, according to Chinese media outlets.
The proposed bullet train project was dubbed unviable by Xu Liming, director of the Asia-Pacific Research Center at Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS). The Indian high-speed rail and Japanese high-speed rail profit model is different. According to him, while the Japanese model is through sale of tickets, India being “poor” and construction cycle for high-speed rail taking a long time, profitability in the Indian case would be hard to achieve. Hence he believes that Japan’s loan model is more of a political gimmick having strategic undertones. In order to compete with the international high-speed rail market where China’s advantages and agreements with countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia are greater, the Japanese side is facing a crisis, he opines.
Asia Africa Growth Corridor: a copycat version of OBOR
In an article titled “India unites with Japan to create a copy-cat version of the OBOR? Stop dreaming and wake up”, the reporter exclaims that no sooner than both India and Japan witnessed the OBOR, than they were really envious and decided to push for a “free corridor” together in Africa, Iran, Sri Lanka, apart from a number of infrastructure projects in Southeast Asia. Taking a jibe at Abe, the article notes that his imitation of OBOR with India while initially agreeing to be part of it is tantamount to “cutting the ground from under somebody’s feet”. China, the article claims is stunned by this double meaning.
On Modi, the article quotes without attributing sources that many voices from Indian domestic media criticized the Indian PM for not being part of OBOR as a big mistake. Further, to qualify India’s move of not joining the Belt Road Initiative, a racist post written by a well known Chinese military theorist who goes by the Weibo id “juzuozhaozhong” was shared on the portal. It argued that 1000 years ago, ancient China and India were old cultural civilizations in Asia, a place where Xuanzang, a Tang dynasty Buddhist monk travelled to India in search of Buddhist texts. However, he notes that India is still dreaming today, while China has woken up like a lion that has started showing its authority. India on the other hand is covered from head to toe in the “curry flavor” (racist remark suggesting that since Indians cook curry, they smell of it).
Behind Modi and Abe’s “bear hug” diplomacy: Containment of China
An article in the military affairs online media portal Qianlong, quoted a Japanese government official without providing sources that PM Abe’s visit to India was indeed intended to seek to contain China using India’s support. A narrative was crafted in domestic media to portray growing India-Japan relations to counter China, especially since the Abe visit immediately followed the Doklam stand-off between India and China. Driving this further, Lu Yaodong, director of the Institute of Japanese Studies at CASS suggested that the soft loan extended to India by Japan for the bullet train is but a larger geopolitical calculation by Abe to woo India. As the Indian Ocean has become Japan’s geo strategic target, India is therefore becoming an important diplomatic tool and Japan seeks cooperation with India for maritime security and defense cooperation. Thus economic cooperation becomes a secondary goal for Japan over security means, he opined.
These geopolitical considerations are driving Japan to build critical infrastructure for and also sell amphibious aircraft and other military equipment to India. Japan, according to Lu Yaodong, is attempting to raise the capability of self defence in the east of Asia Pacific region and is thus attempting to win over India as its partner in this region. India is also being roped in as part of the “diamond encirclement strategy” proposed by Abe in 2012 to supposedly counter China. The four countries forming the diamond are: Hawaii, Japan, India and Australia.
Expressing discomfort over India’s shifting position from a “non-aligned” foreign policy by moving closer to Japan and United States, Jian Jingkui, Director of Center for South Asia Studies at Peking University believed that if India abandoned its previous pacifist “personality” and moved towards further military defense cooperation, it would have a very negative impact on Asia. He asks India to maintain an independent posture, be sensible and principled to win over other countries and contribute to peace in Asia instead of becoming a “vassal” state by joining hands with Japan and United States to contain China.
This containment of China theory portrayed by Chinese media notwithstanding, an important foreign policy shift taking place in India under PM Narendra Modi. The erstwhile non-alignment has now given way to pragmatic strategic cooperation with countries that can benefit India. Given this calculation, Modi’s relationship with Japan, who is today close to becoming India’s natural ally, is also a trend towards this realist approach. China’s expansion of military and economic influence in India’s strategic backyard, tense Sino-Japanese relations in the East China Sea and the growing concern over America’s future role in Asia have raised questions that unsettle the post-war order in Asia. The India-Japan strategic relationship that has leapfrogged in the Modi-Abe era serves to bring a new stability to a region undergoing subtle shifts and politics challenging the stability of Asia.
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