India continues ban on Chinese apps, 'malign' vaccine competition, and remembering the Wuhan lockdown
Welcome to today’s The India China Newsletter.
China on Wednesday issued a sharp statement criticising India’s move last week, announced in a notice to Chinese companies as this newsletter had mentioned, to continue the June ban on 59 Chinese apps, including TikTok, WeChat and Alibaba’s UC Browser. Here is the statement from the Chinese Embassy in Delhi:
Since last year, the Indian side has repeatedly used national security as an excuse to prohibit some Mobile APPs with Chinese background. These moves in violation of WTO non-discriminatory principles and fair competition principles of market economy severely damage the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese companies. The Chinese side firmly opposes them.
The Chinese government always asks Chinese companies to observe international rules and local laws and regulations when doing business overseas. The Indian government has the responsibility to follow WTO rules and market principles and protect the legitimate rights and interests of international investors including Chinese companies. These moves of the Indian government have also hindered the improvement of the Indian business environment and the innovative development of related Indian industries. China-India economic and trade cooperation is mutually beneficial by nature. We urge the Indian side to immediately correct its discriminatory measures and avoid causing further damage to bilateral cooperation.
The app ban has, actually, received far more coverage in the Chinese press than the border crisis that triggered it. Global Times editor Hu Xijin weighed in on Twitter with customary tact:
This is what Qian Feng, a regular commentator on India affairs who is from Tsinghua University, had to say:
This is a "proof of allegiance" to US after Biden took office as the US President, and it is also an irrational revenge followed a series of crackdowns carried out last year. India is taking revenge on China, and also set up a bad example for the world to revenge China, and the purpose in one side is to take revenge against China, and on the other hand is to satisfy the needs of interest groups in India, showing a tough attitude toward China.
Not that India and China don’t have enough points of discord to deal with as it is, but it seems some media in China are finding another point of disagreement -- vaccines. The Chinese Foreign Ministry said earlier this week, as this newsletter noted, there was no need for “malign competition” on vaccines, but some of the media in China don’t seem to think so. To me, this seems more noise in the media echo-chamber than grounded in reality, but today India was accused of trying to keep out Chinese vaccines in the neighbourhood:
Based on previous reports and some sources, the Global Times learned that the Bangladeshi government had agreed that Sinovac conduct clinical trials on CoronaVac in Bangladesh as early as July and planned to implement the trials since August.
At that time, Bangladesh did not need to share the cost. But the clinical trials were delayed until October due to the Indian government allegedly meddling in the two sides' cooperation during the period, according to some sources reached by the Global Times.
Here was the more plausible explanation offered by Bangladesh’s Health Minister in October, via Reuters:
“We are not co-funding the trial. That was not in the agreement. They never asked for money when they approached us,” Maleque said. “As per agreement, they’ll bear all expenses of the trial, they’ll give us 110,000 free vaccines and they’ll share the technology so that our pharmaceutical companies can make the vaccine.”
Maleque said Sinovac was still free to conduct the trial in Bangladesh with its own funds. “They can conduct the trial. But we can’t co-fund the trial with a private company. It has to be a government-to-government deal if we go for co-funding,” he added.
Sushant Singh has a piece out in Foreign Policy on the limited relief that closer defence cooperation with the U.S. and within the Quad may bring India on the China front:
The Quad has succeeded as a mechanism for signaling that all the major Asian powers are on the same page about dealing with China, as evidenced by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s harsh response comparing it to NATO. But the Quad still remains a consultative institution, far short of a collective defense institution with a formal security architecture. If the perception of its strength and importance is exaggerated, as was the case under the Trump administration, it could alarm China into a strong reaction, without the Quad itself having the mechanisms in place to react.
In India’s case, such a pushback would come on the 2,200-mile continental border with China, which is also the site of its most immediate and pressing challenges from its trans-Himalayan neighbor. The Quad, in its current form, is incapable of ameliorating those pressures or compensating for India’s continental weaknesses. India’s own maritime capabilities are badly limited in the Indo-Pacific, and the country cannot effectively anchor a security architecture in the wider Indo-Pacific— or even in the Indian Ocean. The burden of expectations is too much to bear for India, with its weak economy and glacial pace of military modernization.
Worth a watch: A very slick video from the South China Morning Post, comparing India’s and China’s military capabilities along the border.
And finally…
A year on from the Wuhan lockdown, a BBC documentary, 54 Days, has just come out telling the story of what led to that momentous decision.
I would also highly recommend Ai Weiwei’s documentary, Coronation, which has some really powerful footage from Wuhan right as it was going into lockdown, including from hospital ICUs.
Thank you for reading.