Asia’s version of the Olympics kicked off with dazzling light shows, an esports debut, and a slew of top dignitaries in attendance. Xi courted top Syrian and South Korean officials amid the fanfare, but his government also raised fresh tensions in its border dispute with India.
The Group of 20 summit concluded in New Delhi yesterday. Xi Jinping did not attend and instead visited flood-damaged areas of northeastern China, sending his second-in-command to India in his place.
Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates will be admitted to the BRICS club. It remains to be seen if the enlarged bloc’s members can agree on anything substantial, and counterbalance the West.
BRICS is an awkward group, comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. But its appeal across the Global South shows that resentment about Western global leadership is emerging as an umbrella issue uniting countries as disparate as communist Cuba and anti-communist Indonesia.
Manoj Kewalramani is an Indian researcher whose interpretations of the People’s Daily, the flagship propaganda broadsheet of the Chinese Communist Party, provide a daily guide to how China leaders are thinking. He is also one of the most perspicacious observers of India-China relations.
China’s Vice Premier He Lifeng is in Pakistan talking up cooperation. But Pakistan’s fragile government in Islamabad also has to deal with local resentments at Beijing’s massive infrastructure projects, and its own complicated relationship with Washington.
The U.S. is cozying up to India partly in response to tensions with China. But no one in Washington, D.C., is quite sure how the new friendliness with Delhi will work out and what values will have to be tossed aside to make the relationship work.
The leader of the Tibetan government-in-exile recently visited the U.K., where he called for resolving “the Sino-Tibet conflict in nonviolent, peaceful means.”
The Chinese and Indian foreign ministers met, in the latest awkward dance move between the two Asian giants who have an unresolved border dispute and different reasons for saying nothing about the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Despite geopolitical tensions between Delhi and Beijing, electric vehicle brand BYD is making a big play in the Indian market.