Tianjin Trifecta: Who Plays What Role In Changed India, China, Russia Relations?

The show—the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s (SCO) summit in China’s Tianjin—staged for the benefit of US President Donald Trump is over. The three-horse performance of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping had its intended impact, and in spades, on the audience of one.

With the gaslights and optics of the summit on August 31-September 1 now dimmed, it is time to take a close look at what trimurti Putin-Modi-Xi accomplished in a setting that had more than 20 countries in attendance as members and dialogue partners, including global players like Iran and Türkiye.

In a reference to the US and its tariff war, but without naming the country, the SCO Tianjin Declaration opposed unilateral coercive measures that are in contravention of the United Nations Charter, the norms of international law and the World Trade Organisation (WTO) principles and rules. The Declaration called for reform of the global governance architecture and pledged to uphold and strengthen an open, fair, inclusive, non-discriminatory and multilateral trading system which promotes the development of “an open global economy, ensures fair market access and provides special and differential treatment for developing countries”.

Shorn of the verbiage, it simply means to resist Trump’s tariff onslaught and the US-led West’s attempt to dictate the terms of trade worldwide. The Declaration, with India as a signatory, condemned the strikes by Israel and the US on Iran, which is an SCO member. An important side effect is that post-Tianjin, international interest in Ukraine has waned; and, as a result, Putin, who was isolated till recently, is basking in the warmth of new fellow travellers on the world stage.

The message that went home from Tianjin is that Russia-India-China (RIC), the three biggest powers which are now targeted by the US and its vassals in Europe, can no longer be ignored. Clearly, seeing Putin holding hands with Modi and these two in their elements with Xi seems to have touched a raw nerve and inflamed Trump. The breakdown of relations between Trump and Modi is attributed to the latter’s refusal to credit his one-time great friend with ending the recent military conflict between India and Pakistan. In finding a comfort zone with Putin and Xi, Modi’s signal to Washington was that New Delhi has other options. An angry and bitter Trump conceded as much by saying that the US has “lost India and Russia to deepest, darkest, China”.

That brings us to India’s biggest gain at Tianjin which is bilateral: a new and realistic reset of the relationship with China, which hit freezing rock-bottom in June 2020 with the Galwan military face-off in eastern Ladakh.

India and China did not break any new ground in Tianjin. But, visiting China for the first time after seven years, Modi and Xi, with their respective overtures, kept up personal interaction by consolidating the gains made at their last meeting in Kazan. The most important evidence of this at Tianjin was the two leaders making it a part of declared policy that India and China are now “development partners” and not rivals. This is a significant advance over the situation that has prevailed for more than five years, when New Delhi held that, given the situation on the border, there could be no talks. Equally significant is that there was no direct reference to the border issues but a reiteration that the situation should be managed by reaffirming that differences can be sorted out without becoming disputes.

For all that, India-China relations remain adversarial with influential sections of the establishment seeing China as a “threat”; and even those who are not hawks saying that the “China Challenge” has not diminished in any way in spite of progress on many tracks such as trade, tourism, visas and potential resumption of flights. This suggests that Beijing and New Delhi have called a “diplomatic truce” and remain far from a “ceasefire”. Given the prevalent uncertainties in global geopolitics, India and China have implicitly acknowledged that they have to protect, and not harm, each other, especially to withstand Trump’s growing hostility. New Delhi never lets it be forgotten that the Chinese are playing the long game and thus keeping troops massed on the border and continuing to build military infrastructure. Yet, from Beijing’s viewpoint, the two neighbours have to work together as development partners, not because India can be trusted but because Chinese interests demand that.

Thus have India and China entered a new chapter with much less adversarial overtones based on the recognition that the threats to their common interests and concerns are greater than at any time before and need to be dealt with while their bilateral differences can be set aside for a time when these fraught geopolitical tides recede. New Delhi has no doubt that this is good for India because India needs China, almost as much as it needs the US, for Beijing can make matters difficult. India needs peace and quiet along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) and there are critical imports such as electrical, electronic, automotive and heavy machinery, technology and parts, besides pharmaceutical ingredients, without which the Indian economy, manufacturing, infrastructure development and businesses, including in the services sector, would be badly hit.

A second important bilateral gain is that with reference to China, in the SCO, India has found a new comfort zone, thanks to Putin mediating and moderating the relationship between the two Asian giants. This is useful not only for a better working relationship with China but also provides leverage for balancing India’s bilateral ties with the US, which are under acute stress. The unravelling of India-US ties comes soon after the two countries, during Modi’s visit to Washington in 2023, resolved to strengthen the strategic partnership for scaling new heights. Any setback to the strategic aspects of the ties, such as defence cooperation and transfer of technology, could be to India’s long-term disadvantage, especially in military terms. Trump has nullified all these gains and advantages to both India and the US by his obsessive focus on tariffs.

These bring us to the second of India’s three bilateral relationships that were in focus at Tianjin. Trump is palpably hostile to India at present, and his Make America Great Again (MAGA) Rottweilers such as Trade Advisor Peter Navarro and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, by snapping at India in crude and insulting terms, are only making the situation worse. On present reckoning, it is not clear whether it is only Trump who has turned hostile or whether Trump’s angry words signify a new US national policy towards India. While there is no doubt that Trump will extract a high price from India, the situation does not seem to represent US policy. For, while all this is going, India and the US are holding their biggest military exercise in Alaska. These exercises began more than 20 years ago, when Lalit Mansingh was the Vajpayee government’s ambassador to the US. Perhaps, there is symbolism in that the present exercise, like the first one, is being held in Alaska; which was also the setting for Putin’s meeting with Trump in the US.

The joint India-US military exercise being held at this juncture, when Trump also hosted a dinner for tech CEOs, including Indian honchos like Satya Nadella and Sundar Pichai, at the White House on September 4, shows that Trump’s punishing signals on tariffs, H1-B visas and jobs for Americans are far from clear and coherent. Are Indians, represented by H1-B visas stealing American jobs and hurting the US economy? Or, are Indians, like the five tech CEOs at his dinner, national US assets who create jobs and have contributed to America’s greatness? One reading is that when his rage is spent, the administration may create conditions for resuming talks between India and the US. The non-inflammatory interventions of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Indian interlocutors like Piyush Goyal suggest that some conversations are on and efforts for a trade deal have not been given up.

For all the bravado of Modi not backing down or blinking in his confrontation with Trump, there is no evidence of any word or act that may rile Trump further. In cold fact, Modi shows pragmatism. The bhakts, bajrangis and trolls who were out in full force with all their abuse and vituperation against, for instance, Bangladesh, Maldives, Türkiye and Azerbaijan, have been put away where they are neither seen nor heard. Even India’s highly visible and voluble External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar was neither seen nor heard in Tianjin or New Delhi during the SCO season. Similarly, the lobbies, the Hindutva hordes and the NRI outfits in the US and elsewhere are conspicuously silent. Finally, no matter how provocative Trump’s taunts, Modi refuses to poke the bear. On September 6, Modi said he deeply appreciates Trump’s (positive) sentiments posted on September 5 to the effect that he’ll “always be friends with Modi and …”, a day after he bemoaned losing India to China.

For once, it is said that Modi’s Ministry of External Affairs, which was most often manifest as India’s Ministry of Overseas Indians Affairs, was in good, pragmatic form during the SCO summit and on the three bilateral tracks with China, Russia and the US in recent days. The way New Delhi played it at Tianjin with China and Russia and, on a larger canvas, with the US, hints at an underlying resolve to assert India’s strategic autonomy. Whether such perceived strategic autonomy would come to the fore wherever else it should, such as for example in relations with Iran and Venezuela, is a moot question.

Then, as an aside, there are those who have dubbed the Tianjin trio of Xi, Putin and Modi as a dictators’ club. The democratic credentials of a country and its leadership no longer matter in international relations as much as they used to. Many see Trump as a dictator whose writ runs far beyond the borders of the US and to call Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu a mere dictator and genocidalist would be a gross understatement. Yet every whim and caprice of these two are pandered to without the slightest demur.

(Views expressed are personal)

Shastri Ramachandaran is a writer, senior journalist and commentator on political and foreign affairs. He is the author of Beyond Binaries: The World of India and China.