India’s Dynamic Advance: Countering China’s Influence in Southeast Asia and Shaping a Multipolar...
India is strategically propelling itself forward with significant strides aimed at extending its influence across Southeast Asia. This proactive endeavour by India holds the potential to counterbalance the prevailing dominance exerted by China within this region.
Harsh V. Pant, the Vice President for Studies and Foreign Policy at the Observer Research Foundation, a prominent think tank based in New Delhi, emphatically affirms India’s escalating ambitions within Southeast Asia. He underscores the undeniable reality of this development, asserting, “India unquestionably exhibits a surge in its aspirations throughout Southeast Asia.” Notably, Pant accentuates that India has undergone a transformation marked by increased assertiveness and transparency in its regional affiliations.
The escalating rivalry between India and China significantly shapes New Delhi’s strategic calculus as it diligently bolsters its regional presence. Over an extended period, Indian leadership exhibited hesitance and restraint when contemplating its role in Southeast Asia. This hesitance can be traced back to the complex and tense relationship shared with China, particularly concerning border disputes along the Himalayan frontier. Pant remarks that this apprehension stemmed from the understanding that engaging too prominently in the Southeast Asian sphere might unsettle China and provoke potential challenges. The backdrop to this cautious stance lies in the volatile backdrop of the 2020 clash between Indian and Chinese forces at the border, resulting in the tragic loss of at least 20 Indian soldiers.
Pant expounds on this perspective, noting, “Historically, New Delhi’s perspective has been to avoid any course that might agitate China.” This stemmed from the realization that Beijing possesses the capacity to wield its influence in ways that could prove troublesome for India’s interests. Despite these considerations, as China remains unwavering in its stance on the border issue, India’s perceptions have evolved. It is increasingly evident that the cautious approach has not yielded commensurate benefits in terms of securing India’s interests in Southeast Asia.
India’s External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar conveyed in June that the border conflict has cast a shadow over the relations between India and China. Until the relations between these two nations attain a semblance of normalcy, Pant maintains that India’s options are limited, necessitating an augmentation of its ties with nations encircling China, regardless of their size, to cultivate strategic leverage.
In this dynamic context, India’s proactive endeavours to expand its influence across Southeast Asia signify a strategic pivot. The nation’s evolving assertiveness and recalibration of regional relationships reflect a recognition that a more engaged and active approach is essential to safeguarding its interests, even in the face of challenges posed by China’s formidable presence.
In recent months, the government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi has intensified its diplomatic efforts aimed at counterbalancing China’s assertiveness by engaging with regional countries. This proactive approach serves to reinforce India’s ongoing comprehensive strategic partnership with nations in Southeast Asia.
An illustrative instance of this trend occurred in June, as New Delhi announced the provision of a naval warship to Vietnam, underscoring the deepening defence cooperation between the two countries. Satoru Nagao, a non-resident fellow at the Hudson Institute in Tokyo, highlighted this growing rapport, noting that India’s involvement extends to training Vietnamese Air Force pilots and ground crew for fighter jets, as well as maintaining a consistent presence of Indian naval vessels visiting Vietnamese ports. Additionally, Vietnam is now pursuing the procurement of supersonic missiles and surface-to-air missiles from India, according to Nagao, whose expertise encompasses defence strategy, foreign policy, and security alliances.
Derek Grossman, a senior defence analyst at the Rand Corporation, contextualized India’s evolving approach by tracing its roots to the “Look East” policy initiated in 1991. This policy predates the emergence of China’s more assertive behaviour in Southeast Asia. However, as Grossman pointed out, by 2014, when Modi revamped the policy into the “Act East” policy, the global landscape was contending with a distinct iteration of China’s influence, characterized by Xi Jinping’s ambitions to exert power on a broader scale and farther-reaching territorial domains.
A notable incident that signified India’s recalibration occurred when the foreign ministers of India and the Philippines jointly issued a statement in late June. The statement urged China to abide by The Hague’s 2016 arbitration ruling regarding the South China Sea. This gesture raised speculations that India was shifting away from its formerly neutral stance on territorial disputes in the region.
In 2016, The Hague’s international tribunal delivered a landmark verdict in favour of the Philippines, rejecting China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea. Despite this ruling, China dismissed it as “illegal and void,” persisting in its sweeping assertions over nearly the entire South China Sea. This stance contradicts the claims put forth by other countries like Malaysia, Vietnam, Brunei, and the Philippines, which contest China’s dominion over this resource-rich maritime expanse.
Derek Grossman from Rand Corporation elucidated India’s strategic actions as geared toward enhancing diplomatic, economic, and security bonds with Southeast Asian nations, aimed at providing them with the means to balance, hedge against, or directly counter Chinese influence. Grossman emphasized that this approach holds particular significance in the maritime domain, especially the South China Sea, where conflicting sovereignty claims pose threats to regional stability and the open nature of these waters.
China’s far-reaching expansion of influence through the Belt and Road Initiative across Southeast Asia is a pivotal factor driving India’s strategic considerations, as highlighted by Joanne Lin, co-coordinator of the ASEAN Studies Centre at ISEAS, within the Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore. In light of this, ensuring India’s security, especially in maritime domains, emerges as a critical priority, according to Lin.
Most nations in the region have thrown their support behind China’s ambitious mega-infrastructure endeavour, the Belt and Road Initiative—a hallmark policy project of President Xi aimed at extending Beijing’s sway by constructing a network of road, rail, and sea connections spanning Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. This assertive foreign policy approach of China, combined with the potential political and economic leverage facilitated by the Belt and Road Initiative, has provoked concerns across the region.
Navigating the shifting landscape of an evolving international order, characterized primarily by the rivalry between China and the United States, has posed notable challenges for Southeast Asian countries. Prashanth Parameswaran, a fellow at the Wilson Centre and founder of the weekly ASEAN Wonk newsletter, underscores that regional nations are engaging with India because it wields independent power. They view India as a crucial element in a broader strategy to shape a multipolar order, one that extends beyond the dichotomy of China-centred or U.S.-China dominated competition.
A regional survey conducted by the ASEAN Studies Centre at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute demonstrates that India’s standing has witnessed significant improvement among Southeast Asian countries, even though it maintains a neutral stance in Russia’s conflict with Ukraine. Joanne Lin, one of the survey’s authors, reveals that India now ranks as the third most preferred option in the region to counterbalance the uncertainties stemming from the U.S.-China rivalry, marking a substantial increase from its position in the previous year.
In this intricate diplomatic landscape, observers highlight that New Delhi provides an “exit strategy” for nations aiming to preserve neutrality amidst the U.S.-China discord. India distinguishes itself as not blindly aligned with either side and maintains a steadfastly independent foreign policy approach, an aspect that resonates with many Southeast Asian countries. Despite China retaining its prominent status as the most influential economic power according to 59.9% of the survey respondents, its influence has significantly diminished from the previous year, signalling growing caution towards Beijing’s intentions.
For nations like the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Singapore that harbour substantial distrust toward China, India emerges as an additional partner capable of offsetting Beijing’s influence, as underscored by Rand’s Derek Grossman. Although China remains a preeminent and strategic force in Southeast Asia, its influence has experienced a decline, according to the survey from February.
While Chinese leaders are expected to observe New Delhi’s efforts to strengthen regional ties, the growing influence of India in Southeast Asia and its heightened defence collaboration could cause unease in Beijing, as suggested by Lin. Harsh V. Pant of the Observer Research Foundation underscores that China will carefully monitor these developments and communicate its own messages. However, considering that Southeast Asia is a central component of India’s Indo-Pacific strategy, such considerations will not deter New Delhi from advancing its engagement in the region; rather, India’s momentum in the area is set to intensify further.
