What Will Indian PM Modi's China Policy?

GLOOMY foreign-policy analysts in Beijing look at Narendra Modi, India’s new prime minister, and see a subcontinental version of his Japanese counterpart, Shinzo Abe. Two right-wing nationalists, elected on platforms of restoring economic growth and national pride, both need to act tough in their countries’ territorial disputes with China. Mr Abe’s tenure has marked a nadir in China’s relations with one big neighbour; so Mr Modi’s victory does not look good for China, either. That is one view. But other Chinese thinkers are cheerier, applauding an apparently chummy meeting this week in Delhi between Mr Modi and China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi. Writing in the Communist Party’s Global Times newspaper, Liu Zongyi, of the Shanghai Institute for International Studies, even predicted that Mr Modi is less likely to be “India’s Abe” than its “Nixon”—a right-wing leader who overcomes distrust to transform relations with China.

The Modi-as-Abe camp can point to a tub-thumping speech Mr Modi made during the election campaign in the north-eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, which China briefly invaded in a bloody border war in 1962 and over which it still claims sovereignty. Mr Modi was forthrightly patriotic: “I swear in the name of the soil that I will protect this country.” And sure enough, this week it was reported that India is to fortify 54 new border posts. In a foreign-policy speech last October, Mr Modi referred to “Self-Deception”, a book by his party colleague, Arun Shourie, which ridiculed Indian governments’ weak-kneed response to Chinese territorial encroachment, and called for India to “knit a network of alliances” to stand up to China.

China’s leaders were not invited to Mr Modi’s inauguration last month. But in a front seat was Lobsang Sangay, formal head of the exiled Tibetan government-in-exile, which is based in India, is loyal to the Dalai Lama and reviled by China as splittist. This suggests the new Indian government may be more willing to rile China than, for example, the one in 2008, when China paraded the Olympic torch in Delhi ahead of the games in Beijing.

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