By Suvam Pal
Two significant but contradictory issues related to the India-Taiwan relationship have come to light recently. The much-talked-about combined presence of three former Service Chiefs, General Manoj Naravane (Retd), Admiral Karambir Singh (Retd) and Air Chief Marshal RKS Bhadauria (Retd), at the Taiwan government-hosted security event, Ketagalan Forum, in Taipei, has already triggered some speculations. Meanwhile, US-based Pew Research Center’s findings of 43 per cent of Indians’ unfavourable view about the country facing an increasing “national reunification” threat by Chinese President Xi Jinping after he formally began his constitutionally amended unprecedented third term in March have raised some eyebrows.
Of course, the three four-star ranked retired Indian defence officials were not in Taiwan — a country with no official diplomatic ties with India — to play the board game of battleship or taste some bubble teas in the country’s famous night markets. At a time when the Chinese dragon is breathing more fire in terms of breaching the self-ruled island’s Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) with an increasing number of sorties by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) aircraft almost every single day, the three recently retired Service Chiefs’ participation at an event inaugurated by Taiwan’s president Tsai Ing-wen was more than meets the eye.
However, the survey conducted by the Washington DC-headquartered think tank turned out to be a spoiler at a time when the growing unofficial bonhomie between India and Taiwan has been one of the flavours of the geopolitically hot season. The survey’s outcome has baffled many in Taiwan, but it’s not entirely unexpected from India’s perspective if one keeps the microscopic sample size of the survey for a nation of 1.4 billion population aside. Several factors can be blamed for this so-called “unfavourable” view about Taiwan of that 43 per cent from a minuscule number of people of a country where even large-scale election surveys such as exit polls and opinion polls by on-ground Indian organisations go horribly wrong almost every year.
The biggest of them all is undoubtedly ignorance. The very existence of a self-governed tiny island nation of 23 million people has been both inconspicuous as well as ambiguous among a large number of Indians. For decades, the One-China policy-adhering successive Indian governments didn’t publicly and officially engage with Taiwan on even matters beyond diplomacy. Thus, Taiwan has predominantly been staying away from the domestic news-focused Indian media and, as a result, from the public memory. At the same time, the United Nation’s de-recognition of Taiwan’s official United Nations status in the 1970s has added to the problem. Taiwan has been historically known by its Portuguese name of Formosa for about three centuries, but when Chiang Kai-shek-led Kuomintang retreated to Taiwan, they carried the Republic of China (ROC) tag from the mainland to rule the Ilha Formosa or ‘beautiful isle’ after the Japanese ended their century-old occupation.
However, after the International Olympic Committee (IOC) passed the Nagoya resolution in 1979 to recognise the CCP-ruled mainland’s People’s Republic of China as the one and only China, Taiwan was forced to take part in the Olympics and every other international sporting event under the irrational name of Chinese Taipei with its capital finding a place in the country’s name. Almost two decades later, another international body, the World Trade Organization (WTO), welcomed Taiwan as the “Separate Customs Territory of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu in 2002. So, one country and multiple names of its existence in different times and different world bodies have created a cloud of confusion about the world’s 21st economy among the hoi polloi in India for a long time.
Personally speaking, since relocating to Taiwan last year, I have been quite regularly asked by many friends, family members and acquaintances to clear their confusion about Taiwan and its geopolitical status. In fact, a couple of very senior Indian journalists even asked me to explain the difference between Chinese Taipei and Taiwan. Recently, another senior newspaper editor checked with me about the difference between the proper nouns of Chinese Taipei and New Taipei City.
Therefore, the name Taiwan has been floating in an ocean of notions among many Indians, and it’s been adding to the confusion. But why only blame the Indians? According to a recent study by Taiwan’s National Chengchi University’s (NCCU) Election Study Center, the number of people identifying as ‘Taiwanese’ in their own country is declining. Moreover, Taiwan is still somewhat caught in a KMT-era time warp as the country, carrying forward its Chiang Kai-shek-era official ROC status, still doesn’t recognise Arunachal Pradesh and Aksai Chin as part of India in its official maps.
But thanks to the recent streak of growing trade and economic relations and an increasing number of Indians finding educational opportunities in Taiwan, there is a slight wind of change. In addition, the Galwan incident, resulting in fatalities among both the Indian and Chinese soldiers in June 2020, has started acting as a catalyst in expediting the process of bringing India and Taiwan closer. The India-China relations have nosedived significantly and substantially since the bloody clashes on the border. Even though many over-optimistic geopolitical or strategic affairs experts are either predicting an imminent restoration or suggesting an early resolution, the fact of the matter is only a game-changing manoeuver by either of the two neighbours can reboot the bilateral relationship that has been frozen up for more than three years.
Moreover, if someone has been closely following the diplomatic cold shoulder the S Jaishankar-spearheaded Ministry of External Affairs under Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has been giving to China since the hand-to-hand engagement broke out during the peak of COVID-19, India has been quite unabashed about it. But when it comes to Taiwan, the Modi government has been practising quiet diplomacy. Even though it satisfies every criterion to be an amicus meus, inimicus inimici mei between India and Taiwan, the former is yet to publicly endorse the view of “enemy of my enemy is my friend” on the country that has been viewed as a recalcitrant and breakaway province by the Chinese Communist Party and its regime since Chiang Kai-shek’s great retreat with the Kuomintang or the Nationalists in 1949.
Unfortunately, the Modi government’s Taiwan policy has been somewhat inconsistent and swinging like a weather vane depending on the wind blowing from China from time to time. When he became the Prime Minister for the first time in 2014, in a significant move, he invited Ambassador Chung Kwang-Tien, the then Representative of Taiwan, to India. But after having back-to-back heart-to-heart talks with Xi Jinping in Wuhan in 2018 and Mamallapuram in 2019 to bolster the bilateral relations, Modi had a change of heart as he chose not invite Taiwan’s de facto mission head in Delhi to his oath-taking ceremony as he assumed the second term following his party’s resounding victory in the general elections in 2019.
But post-Galwan, it seems like the elephant has already entered the room. China’s belligerence against India at various geopolitical groupings and international platforms has been drifting the Modi government away from Xi’s Communist regime further. India has traditionally stuck to the One-China Policy and hardly made any public overtures with the country that has only 13 diplomatic allies. Despite calling out China on many occasions since the Galwan episode at various international forums, India has predominantly maintained a strategic restraint on the Taiwan issue. But if multiple signals, including the Taipei trip of the three former service chiefs, and sources are to be believed, India is waiting for the right opportunity to play its potential trump card publicly. Instead of jumping the gun and providing more ammunition to China, the Modi government is practising both practicality and pragmatism until the appropriate time arrives. Despite the Pew survey’s ‘unfavourable’ findings with questionable numbers, Taiwan is the pachyderm seen by everyone, but hardly anybody in the Indian government openly talks about it. Maybe it will be a matter of when, not if, India is likely to reveal its T card.
The author is the first-ever Indian journalist to work for Taiwanese media.
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