S Jaishankar explains how India’s “tense” history with China and “steady” relationship with Russia hangs in balance as Moscow looks East.
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00:00One of the pleasures of dealing with China is that they never quite tell you why they do things.
00:09In 1988, we, in a sense, normalized the relationship more when Rajiv Gandhi, who was then the Prime Minister, went to China.
00:20The India-Russia relationship has actually held very, very steady.
00:30Let me turn to China. When I was ambassador, it seemed that despite the difficulties at times in the relationship, it had reached a certain equilibrium.
00:52There were informal summit meetings between Prime Minister Modi and President Xi.
00:57And then suddenly in 2020, I think everyone was caught by surprise when China crossed over the line of actual control.
01:06Well, Ten, you know, one of the pleasures of dealing with China is that they never quite tell you why they do things.
01:17So, you often end up trying to figure it out and it's always, there's a certain ambiguity out there.
01:29It's never been an easy relationship. It's always had its share of problems.
01:34It's had a war in 1962. It's had military incidents after that.
01:40But after 1975, there was actually, there's never been a loss, there's never been a military, a combat fatality on the border.
01:531975 was the last time.
01:56In 1988, we, in a sense, normalized the relationship more when Rajiv Gandhi, who was then the Prime Minister, went to China.
02:08In 1993 and 1996, we did two agreements with China to stabilize the boundary.
02:18And the boundary, by the way, is disputed.
02:21So, there's a negotiation going on.
02:24So, this is how it was from really till 2020.
02:30Before that, during that, after that, I have been in regular touch with my counterparts.
02:36Other colleagues have spoken to their counterparts.
02:39At various points of time, the Chinese have given us different explanations.
02:44None of them are really tenable.
02:46And if you have really the two biggest countries of Asia, of the world, with that degree of tension between them, it has consequences for everybody else.
02:57In February of 2022, Putin and Xi issued a joint statement in which they said their relationship went beyond a traditional alliance and has no limits.
03:08And how might this impact New Delhi's relationship with Moscow?
03:14Russia has historically seen itself as a European power, even though it's spread across both Europe and Asia.
03:25My expectation would be that the turn of the events since 2022 would be because its relationship with Europe and with the West has been so severely disrupted.
03:42That Russia is actually turning to Asia and to other parts of the world, but primarily to Asia because that's where a lot of economic activity is.
03:55And it is also an Asian power, even though it has not always seen itself primarily as that.
04:02So I would actually predict that Russia would make very strenuous efforts to build alternative relationships, a lot of which would be in Asia.
04:14US, Russia, Russia, China, Europe, Russia.
04:19Almost every one of these relationships has had very big ups and downs.
04:25I mean, there have been very bad periods in that relationship.
04:28There have been good periods in that relationship.
04:30The India-Russia relationship has actually held very, very steady.
04:33So we take great care to make sure the relationship is working.