EDITORIALS & ARTICLES
Do you agree that the growing assertiveness of China is leading to multi layered Indo Japan relations? Comment. (UPSC CSE Mains 2018 - Political Science and International Relations, Paper 2)
- There are four areas where Indo-Japanese cooperation against China can be noticed: growing security collaboration; Japan’s promises to help India reduce its economic dependence on China; Japanese assistance in enhancing infrastructure connections between India and its neighbours, and joint Indo-Japanese projects in smaller South Asian states.
- Deepening cooperation between India and Japan is a reply to the growing appearance of the Chinese navy in the Indian Ocean. These avenues of collaboration include joint naval exercises, the entire Quad framework, and the Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement (ACSA). Japan is providing grants in aid to enhance power generation in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands where it will be present as per ACSA. While this a project for civilian purposes, there is no denying it is being realized on sensitive territories: India’s first line of defence in case of China’s naval threat.
- Further, the 2020 tensions in Ladakh strengthened New Delhi’s resolve to decrease imports from China by offering incentives to domestic producers. The Indian government has also become warier of China in the cybersecurity sector, a development that can be seen in its sterner approach to building 5G networks by apparently deciding to exclude Chinese firms. In the same period, Japan started to offer its assistance in building such networks in India.
- Tokyo is helping New Delhi to improve its infrastructure connections with neighbours. It is visibly helping India exactly in those regions that New Delhi considers sensitive (the Northeast) and in building connections to some of the countries where India is wary of Chinese influence (Bhutan, Bangladesh, Myanmar).
- Indo-Japanese nascent cooperation on containing China in other parts of South Asia is also visible. In Bangladesh, a Japanese and Indian company jointly won a project to build the Dhaka Metro Rail Line-6 in 2018, and this has been portrayed by some as an aspect of rivalry with China.
- Although separated by geography, India and Japan have a lot of shared interests. And their partnership becomes more important with the rise of China and its geopolitical ambitions.
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