📰 India expects China to work sincerely: MEA
•India called on China to work “sincerely” on the disengagement plan at the Line of Actual Control as agreed to by both sides, amid concerns that the process has slowed down after the People’s Liberation Army soldiers failed to withdraw from the ridges of the “Finger” areas around Pangong Tso lake.
•“It is our expectation that the Chinese side will sincerely work with us for complete disengagement and de-escalation, and full restoration of peace and tranquillity in the border areas at the earliest, as agreed to by the Special Representatives,” said Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Anurag Srivastava on Thursday.
•“The conduct of Chinese forces this year, including the deployment of a large body of troops and changes in behaviour, accompanied by unjustified and untenable claims, has been in complete disregard of all the mutual agreements,” he said, adding that India would not accept “any unilateral attempts to change the status quo along the LAC”.
Pak. PM had reportedly raised the issue with Sheikh Hasina
•India on Thursday spoke of its unique relation with Bangladesh, in response to Pakistan raising the Kashmir issue with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
•In the weekly press briefing, official spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs Anurag Srivastava said India appreciates Bangladesh’s position which regards Kashmir as an ‘internal’ matter of India.
•“Our ties are time-tested and historic. We appreciate Bangladesh’s stance that Jammu and Kashmir is an internal matter,” said Mr. Srivastava.
Phone conversation
•The response came a day after Prime Minister Imran Khan raised the future of Kashmir issue with Ms. Hasina.
•“India and Bangladesh are celebrating the centenary event ‘Mujib barsho’ this year in memory of the founder of Bangladesh Sheikh Mujibur Rahman,” said Mr. Srivastava, highlighting the role of Sheikh Mujib who led the anti-Pakistan freedom struggle till the creation of Bangladesh in 1971.
•On Wednesday, Miss Hasina received a phone call from Mr. Khan and the two leaders discussed the COVID-19 situation in both the countries. Bangladesh’s official news agency said Mr. Khan discussed the pandemic preparedness with Ms. Hasina.
•However, the Pakistani official news agency claimed that Mr. Khan had also sought ‘peaceful’ resolution of the Kashmir issue for the prosperity of the region.
•The phone conversation is being interpreted as significant as it came weeks after the Bangladesh Foreign Ministry had hosted High Commissioner of Pakistan Imran Ahmed Siddiqui as Dhaka intensified anti-COVID-19 collaboration with Beijing, the traditional supporter of Islamabad.
📰 China launches ambitious Mars mission
Beijing wants to join the U.S. in successfully landing a spacecraft on the red planet
•China launched its most ambitious Mars mission yet on Thursday in a bold attempt to join the U.S. in successfully landing a spacecraft on the red planet.
•A Long March-5 carrier rocket took off under clear skies around 12-40 p.m. from Hainan Island, south of China’s mainland. Hundreds of space enthusiasts cried out excitedly on a beach across the bay from the launch site.
•“This is a kind of hope, a kind of strength,” said Li Dapeng, co-founder of the China branch of the Mars Society, an international enthusiast group.
•China’s space agency said that the rocket carried the probe for 36 minutes before successfully placing it on the looping path that will take it beyond Earth’s orbit and eventually into Mars’ more distant orbit around the sun.
•China’s tandem spacecraft — with both an orbiter and a rover — will take seven months to reach Mars, like the others. If all goes well, Tianwen-1, or “quest for heavenly truth,” will look for underground water, if it’s present, as well as evidence of possible ancient life.
•It marked the second flight to Mars this week, after a UAE orbiter blasted off on a rocket from Japan on Monday. And the U.S. is aiming to launch Perseverance, its most sophisticated Mars rover ever, from Cape Canaveral, Florida, next week.
Solo attempt
•This isn’t China’s first attempt at Mars. In 2011, a Chinese orbiter accompanying a Russian mission was lost when the spacecraft failed to get out of Earth’s orbit after launching from Kazakhstan, eventually burning up in the atmosphere.
•This time, China is going at it alone. It also is fast-tracking, launching an orbiter and rover on the same mission instead of stringing them out.
•Landing on Mars is notoriously difficult. Only the U.S. has successfully landed a spacecraft on Martian soil, doing it eight times since 1976.
📰 Deepening India-S. Korea ties
People from the two countries need to overcome cultural biases and move closer to each other
•India and South Korea have signed numerous bilateral agreements with the aim of taking their ties to the next level. However, the economic partnership is struck at $22 billion annually, and their defence partnership appears to have receded from great all-round promise to the mere sale and purchase of weapon systems.
•At the heart of this bilateral stasis is the fact that, despite the best efforts of many well-intended leaders, Indians and South Koreans are failing to touch a mutually meaningful chord of empathy and move closer to each other as people. This is at least in part due to cultural prejudices on both sides, which stands in the way of a relationship based on openness, curiosity and warmth.
•It is not that efforts to correct distortions in such perception have been wanting. Yet, clearly, whatever bilateral progress has been made, say in the realm of trade and investment, has not lent sufficient momentum that people start building bridges in other areas. So, for example, there may be a widespread perception among South Koreans of India as a third world country, rife with poverty and hunger. While it is true that India is far from eradicating these deprivations, their extent may be exaggerated in the minds of some. On the flip side, it is often the case that Indians are unable to distinguish between the cultural and social characteristics of South Koreans and people of other East Asian nations.
Indians in South Korea
•Within South Korea, the integration of Indians in the local population is far from complete. There have been some instances of what appears to be racial prejudice or discrimination, including toward Indians in work settings in South Korea.
•As in any relationship, mutual respect regarding cultural values is the key to building a robust partnership between two countries. The means to achieving that respect is often filling the information gap that creates a chasm between two strong cultures. How much do Indians based in South Korea know about how Korean culture contributed to the growth of a broader Asian view of the world? It is more likely that to the average Indian mind, the defining traits of Japan’s and China’s cultures are better identified than those of Korean culture. All this is to say nothing of the hostility that some visiting South Koreans have faced in India.
Indian Culture Centre in Seoul
•This trajectory of India’s engagement with a strategically important Asian nation suggests that an urgent course correction is required. The establishment of the Indian Culture Centre (ICC) in Seoul 10 years ago was a step in the right direction. Its mission was to promote people-to-people contacts. Yet, given the current focus on diplomatic initiatives — an important but not the only component of a potentially rich bilateral space — it can sometimes be complicated for the average South Korean to access to its offices and services. The ICC’s attempts to broad-base an appreciation of Indian culture by, for example, teaching south Indian dances to elementary school students in South Korea, or organising experiential sessions centred on Indian cuisine, are commendable. Yet, it may reach an exponentially wider audience if the focus of such efforts was the common man of South Korea, beyond the urban, English-speaking elite of Seoul. The same may be applicable to South Korean culture centres in India. As the balance of power in the region continues to shift fast, India and South Korea may need each like never before, to protect their ways of life. However, both countries will be able to help each other only if they can fill the cultural gaps. A regional hegemon is already pushing hard into the ambit of the Indian Ocean. The sooner these bonds are renewed the better it would be for all Asian democracies.
📰 Calibrated balance
Non-alignment as a policy must be rethought, but India must be wary of alliance systems
•In separate statements this week, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar laid out India’s world view in the face of global challenges, many of which pull it in different directions. Mr. Jaishankar’s contention was that non-alignment as a concept belonged to a bygone era and that multipolarity in the world necessitated that India would have to take a definite stand, and even take “risks” on issues such as connectivity, maritime security, terrorism and climate change. However, he made it clear that India does not reject non-alignment in its entirety, and that while it would no longer remain disentangled from difficult decisions, it would not compromise on its independence. More importantly, he said that India has “never been part of an alliance system, nor will it ever be”. He added that even the U.S. must look beyond its present alliances, and engage with more multilateral arrangements. Mr. Jaishankar explained that while non-alignment worked for India during the Cold War era between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, the fact that India and China share a land boundary would always be a factor in a “new cold war” between the U.S. and China. He spoke of Indo-U.S. cooperation in many fields, and the growing maritime collaboration in particular, but left unsaid the hard reality that military collaboration on land would prove problematic given India’s disputed boundary with China, the venue of a nearly three-month-long stand-off between the PLA and the Indian Army.
•Mr. Jaishankar’s comments are a clear-eyed assessment of India’s constraints and avenues for its potential growth. The assertion of India’s strategic independence and resistance to joining any alliance comes as a timely reminder amid speculation that tensions with China will push India into a stronger clinch with Washington, which is on its own collision course with Beijing. It is significant that despite multiple references by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to the India-China clashes, the deaths of Indian soldiers at Galwan Valley last month, and his call for India and the U.S. to jointly “counter” China, the government has rightly chosen not to raise its tensions with China in any forum other than bilateral talks with Beijing. Equally significant is the government’s outreach to Moscow, including a visit by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and the participation of Mr. Jaishankar in the Russia-India-China trilateral last month, and the External Affairs Minister’s comments that India should also seek to build coalitions with “middle powers”, such as the European Union and Japan. A time of crisis often clarifies priorities. At a time of a double crisis for India — battling the novel coronavirus pandemic in the country and Chinese aggression at the border — the message from New Delhi is one of a carefully calibrated balance.
