China Will Remain a Key Factor in India–US Relations Over the Next 5 Years: Experts

U.S. President Joe Biden, (L), talks with India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the G20 Summit in Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia, on Nov. 15, 2022. Bay Ismoyo/Pool Photo via AP

This article is part of a year-long series entitled “India: The Next Five Years.” Conversations with subject experts, thought leaders, innovators, strategists, and diplomats will explore India’s foreign relations and its global outlook from 2024 to 2029.

India, a key U.S. ally, recently witnessed the world’s largest election. The massive, weeks-long process—involving over 900 million voters—led to the election of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a third consecutive win for the Modi-led National Democratic Alliance. Meanwhile, the United States is gearing up for presidential elections in November.

The Epoch Times spoke with two experts—one in the United States, one in India—about the outlook for the next five years for U.S.–India relations: its focus, inspirations, and challenges.

New Delhi-based Harsh V. Pant is vice president for studies and foreign policy at the Observer Research Foundation (ORF). Pant is the author of many books including the just-released “India–U.S. Relations in the Modi Era.” He told The Epoch Times that in the last decade, the relationship between the two nations has continued to evolve in a very positive direction despite changes in administrations.

“We have had Obama, then Trump and Biden, and in India you had Manmohan Singh and then Modi. We have continuous growth in the relationship based on some fundamental convergence of interest, and I think that’s likely to continue as the center of global politics continues to shift to [the] Indo-Pacific,” Pant said.

Aparna Pande is director of the India initiative at the Washington-based Hudson Institute. The author of several books, including “Making India Great, the Promise of a Reluctant Global Power,” Pande believes that three major factors will determine India–U.S. relations in the next five years. These include China, India’s economic rise and U.S. support for its ascent, and, finally, human capital.

The Key Factor: China

China will remain a key factor in defining the India–U.S. strategic partnership, according to both experts.

“[The] India–U.S. strategic partnership will continue to grow because China will remain a threat for India. China is a peer rival for the United States. Their defense partnership, their economic partnership, their global partnership in multilateral forums will continue,” Pande said.

Pant is the editor of “Aligned but Autonomous: India–U.S. Relations in the Modi Era,” published by ORF and Global Policy Journal in April 2024. He co-edited the special collection of essays with Vivek Lall, an American scientist who is currently chief executive of General Atomics Global Corporation.

In the introduction to the volume, Pant and Lall said that the United States and India have a “strategic imperative” to work together ensure a favorable balance of power that “advances their key interests and sustains their values.”

“This is particularly true in this age of the Indo-Pacific, with the rise of China paving the way for new challenges to emerge,” they said.

Regarding Indian apprehensions about U.S. talks with India’s adversary, Pakistan—a key Chinese strategic partner—Pande said the concerns stem from a “traditional Indian perspective.”

However, “no country in this world is totally isolated,” she said. “Except a country which wants to be like Myanmar or North Korea, [and] even those two are not. Let’s be fair—the two presidential candidates right now would like to have a conversation with the North Korean president,” she added.

A dialogue with someone doesn’t imply a partnership, Pande said: Therefore, it’s not correct to conclude that if the United States conducts talks with Pakistan, it’s failing as a partner to India.

Partnership in the Indo-Pacific

The U.S. State Department has said the United States “supports India’s emergence as a leading global power and vital partner in efforts to ensure that the Indo-Pacific is a region of peace, stability, and growing prosperity and economic inclusion.”

That support most likely will not change with the U.S. presidential election, Pande said. Regardless of the election’s outcome, China will remain the main threat. Therefore the Indo-Pacific strategy and the Quad alliance—a diplomatic partnership between India, the United States, Japan, and Australia—will likely continue under the same name.

“The defense and other cooperation should remain part of the Indo-Pacific strategy, the economic dimension. ... It will all depend on who wins elections and where the economic dimension goes or doesn’t go,” said Pande.

She said the Quad alliance and security partnership “has grown and deepened” and will continue to strengthen due to China and its behavior in the region.

“It sends a message to China. It helps build a sort of cooperation on the defense and strategic areas, without actually being a security partnership,” she said.

Further, the Quad alliance spreads the fiscal burden among the partner countries, with some of the funds also coming from the private sector, she said.

The special volume edited by Pant and Lall also discusses the burgeoning technology partnership between India and the United States in an Indo-Pacific context. It calls the initiative on “emerging technologies” the centerpiece of this relationship.

“The progress is seen both bilaterally and under the aegis of the Quad, especially as India’s deteriorating strategic relations with China and the U.S. trade restrictions targeting China have prompted efforts to reduce dependence on China,” it said.

In his conversation with The Epoch Times, Pant said that both India and the United States desire a stable Indo-Pacific and are coordinating their efforts to achieve this.

Aparna Pande, director of the India Initiative at the Washington-based Hudson Institute, speaks at an event at the Institute. photo courtesy Aparna Pande

India’s ‘Golden Age’

Modi frequently refers to his vision for India as “Amrit Kaal,” roughly translated as “golden age.”

“Amrit Kaal” has become a catchphrase for what Modi sees as a time of “exponential strides” in the country’s development, according to a government news release.

In line with this perceived golden age is “Viksit Bharat@2047,” the current Indian government’s roadmap for economic progress. “Viksit Bharat” means “developed India,” and Modi’s goal is for India to become a completely developed economy by 2047.

Late last year, speaking to the country’s educational leaders, Modi launched “Viksit Bharat@2047: Voice of Youth,” an initiative to “channel the energy” of India’s youth, particularly its students, toward the common goal of economic development.

“This is the period in the history of India when the country is going to take a quantum leap,“ Modi said during the event, citing examples of other countries who have become developed nations. “For India, this is the time, right time.”

If India is to become a developed economy by 2047, it will need to speed up the pace of its development, experts say. India’s rising generation of workers has the skill set and the capacities to sustain technological growth, Pant said.

Pande highlighted the United States’ role in helping India achieve its mid-century goals. “India needs foreign investment [and] technology, and by and large India will use the U.S. as the trusted partner for this,” she said.

One of the fastest growing economies in the world, India is widely projected to surpass Japan and Germany to become the world’s third largest economy by 2027, according to a recent Morgan Stanley report.

The investment firm expects India “to drive one-fifth of global growth in the coming decade—an assumption that hinges on the country’s growing status as the back office and factory to the world,” the report said.

“So, American companies, American investment, American technology, especially in the civilian realm, defense, yes! But [the] civilian [sector] is important, because India needs job creation,” said Pande, saying the jobs will come from cooperation with the American companies.

American businesses see India as an alternate to China, she said. They know they can’t completely move out of China right now—but besides Vietnam, Indonesia and Philippines, they see India as an alternate for “economies of scale or bigger companies and technology.”

An India–US Tug of War at the WTO

Despite a maturing of India–U.S. bilateral ties, including improvement in the two countries’ strategic and economic partnership, there’s one distinct exception: an ongoing India–United States rivalry at the World Trade Organization (WTO). Every year the diplomatic missions of the two nations battle it out in Geneva and at other WTO conferences, over rewriting or strengthening WTO rules vis-a-vis their perceived interests and markets.

“India and the U.S. have differing views when it comes to issues at the WTO. While there are some disagreements that are easier to fix, there are some that are difficult. India is a developing economy; it still has millions of people under poverty and so it is keen to ensure that its subsidies—primarily agricultural—are viewed favorably. The U.S. and many European countries differ with India on this issue,” said Pande.

She said India wants to ensure protection for its indigenous industries and is concerned that totally free trade will hurt them. That’s why it has “strong protectionist tendencies,” she said.

“At a time when many countries around the world are turning protectionist, including the U.S., India’s actions are not altogether surprising,” she said.

Last year Modi and Biden mutually resolved six “outstanding trade disputes,” according to the Indian Ministry of Commerce and Industry. Three of the disputes terminated at WTO were filed by India, while the other three were filed by the United States.

“This Mutually Agreed Solution (MAS) negotiated by both sides marks the culmination of protracted negotiations, and it is unprecedented in WTO history,” said the Indian ministry in a statement.

Pant said that going forward, there will be challenges to India–U.S. relations, because India isn’t an “alliance partner” of the United States and has differences with the United States on specific issues.

However, “a certain maturity has come in the relationship and the two sides can deal with the differences in a very mature manner. And that, I think, is the result of institutionalization that has happened in the relationship,” he said.

That institutionalization takes the form of multiple channels of communication between the two sides, and regular interface between the two bureaucracies, according to Pant.

“Based on that, we'll continue to see growth in this very, very important relationship in the next five years,” he said.

Human Capital

India needs investment to enhance its human capital potential—in other words, its future workforce. Pande said that the United States has an important role to play in that sphere.

Human capital—one element of what are termed the four pillars of sustainability—is essential for sustainable development. The other three pillars are economic growth, environmental stewardship and social progress.

The World Bank calls investment in human capital “the most important long-term investment any country can make for future prosperity and well-being.”

According to a July report from global management consulting firm McKinsley, for India to achieve its economic goals, the country will need to create 90 million jobs by 2030 and 600 million jobs by 2047. To meet its development goals, it will need to raise income sixfold, to over $12,000 per capita.

If this is to happen, India urgently needs to enhance the skills of its workforce, Pande said.

The United States can help to do this in two ways, she said—in the first place, through R&D by American companies, and secondly, by bringing Indian workers and Indian students to the United States in greater numbers.

When Indians study in the United States, you see “some staying back to contribute to the American economy, but a large number going back to India,” Pande said. “The human capital investment which India needs will only grow if [the] India–U.S. partnership grows, for there’s no other country which can help India’s lower and upper end labor as the United States can.”

Pande said there is little cause for concern about Chinese competition with the United States for human capital, as long as “there are always opportunities for young people to study in multiple [countries].”

“An autocratic state, which incentivizes students to come and study—will not be able to create the same paraphernalia and environment as a democratic state. Second, the language barrier will always remain. For Indians, it is easier to talk in English,” said Pande.

Indians can obtain degrees more cheaply in China than in the United States, she said, but due to the H-1B visa program and other factors, there are more opportunities for Indians to work in the United States than there are in China.

Will India’s Russia Ties Hurt Its US Relationship?

Modi visited Russia in early July—his first state visit since returning to office in June. It was also the Indian prime minister’s first trip to Moscow since the start of the Ukraine war. The visit raised questions in the West about India’s stance on the war. It also sparked concerns about the impact of India–Russia relations on India’s friendly relationship with the United States.

Both Pande and Pant said that the India–Russia equation will not impact India–United States relations on a strategic level.

The United States understands that India sees Russia as a “continental balancer” against China, Pande said. Pant agreed, saying that this understanding will prevent any major disruption in relations between the United States and India.

The role goes back to the days of the Soviet Union, “because for India on the Asian landmass, it needs that support,” Pande said.

However, “the challenge will actually come for India in the coming years, as China gets stronger.” The Russia–China dynamic of the present is different from the USSR–China dynamic of the past, she added. During the Cold War, Soviet Russia was stronger than China. Today, China is much stronger economically than Russia. And Pande does not see that inequality changing in the short term.

“Will Russia for its own interests decide to side with China and not India? Let us not forget [that until] 1966, the Soviet Union supported China; in the 1962 war, [the] Soviet Union supported China, not India,” Pande said. As a result of the Sino–Indian War of 1962, China annexed almost 15,000 square miles of Indian border territory.

As China gets stronger, India will be watching to see how far Russia will go to support India’s interest, including militarily, Pande said. While India views Russia as a balancing factor, Russia will have a different perspective.

Meanwhile, how the India–Russia strategic partnership evolves over the next five years will affect how the India–United States strategic partnership grows in the same period. Russia supplied more than half of India’s weapons purchases over the last two decades. Although the amount has been steadily declining, if a third of Indian military equipment is of Russian origin, that raises concerns in the U.S. defense establishment.

Unless the India–Russia defense partnership begins to limit itself to smaller military equipment and “not the big items,” the India–United States partnership will not reach its full potential, she said.

Moreover, Pande said, the “Russia factor” does not sit well with Americans, just as the “Pakistan factor” does not sit well with Indians.

India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi flashes a victory sign as he arrives at Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) headquarters to celebrate the party's win in the country's general election, in New Delhi, India, on June 4, 2024. Arun Sankar/AFP via Getty Images