The distinguished speakers who spoke in the conclave were:

• Mr Peter Rimmele, Resident Representative to India, Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung
• Ambassador Gautham Bambawale, Former Indian Ambassador to China
• Lt Gen SL Narasimhan, PVSM, AVSM, VSM, Director, CCCS and Member of the National Security Advisory Board, India
• Mr Santhosh Pai, Partner, Link Legal
• Mr Rajaram Muthukrishnan, Director, Voice Snap Services Pvt Ltd
• Mr Pankaj Madan, Deputy Head-India Office & Head-Programmes, Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung

The panel discussions were moderated by Commodore R Seshadri Vasan, Director, Chennai Centre for China Studies. Group Captain Dr R Venkataraman (Retd), General Manager, MMA anchored the proceedings and introduced the speakers.  Mr Ravichandran Purushothaman, Chairman, MMA delivered the welcome address.

Introductory Remarks

Mr Peter Rimmele, Resident Representative to India, KAS delivered the Introductory Remarks in which he emphatically brought out the grave dangers that China is posing to the rest of the world and more so, to the democratically governed nations by flouting all rules of the game, in its march to become an economic super power, and coercing other nations that dare to question its practices.  

He pointed out that China also poses a political challenge to global good governance. He highlighted the need for liberal democracies to recognise the scale of threat posed by China and to counter it. “The best countermeasure available to our liberal and open societies is to be vigilant and to combat China’s illiberal threats by exposing them,” he said and noted that media and counterintelligence have a big role to play in debunking the CCP’s disinformation war and influence campaign. 

India, he said, has a major role to play in countering China as it shares a long border with China. He was optimistic that liberal democracies have the necessary tools to deal with the China challenge. However, he felt, that they have to strengthen the instruments.  

Panel Discussion

Initiating the panel discussion, Commodore Vasan drew the attention of the audience to Prime Minister Modi’s Independence Day speech about the need to counter terrorism and expansionism, the latter alluding to China’s strong-arm tactics. He observed that India enjoys a big advantage from its natural geography but wondered if it was making the right use of the geographical factors, to become a dominant player.

Ambassador Gautham Bambawale stated that April 2020 was an inflection point in Indo-China relations. By using force, China gave three signals, he contended and listed them out:

To establish China as a pre-eminent power.

To violate many Indo-China agreements without any repercussions.

To convey a message that China will determine its boundary by force.

Though China has pulled its troops from some places in the Leh-Ladakh area, the Chinese threats at the border are far from being over. Asymmetry between India and China in economy, military power and technology has increased a lot, he said and ascribed this to China’s dominance.

He recommended that India needs to focus on maintaining 8% GDP growth year-on-year for the next 20 to 25 years to bridge the GDP gap. He suggested that India must speed up its reforms process and that all companies must have a level-playing field.

Lt Gen SL Narasimhan spoke about how China deals with different groups of countries especially in South Asia and how it increases its global influence by acquiring commercial interests in global ports and terminals. He talked about China’s huge influence in the United Nations and its aggressive role in digital and health silk roads, and its dominance in standards setting.

On dealing with China effectively, he suggested that India must engage with friendly countries, focus on innovation and R&D, increase its risk taking approach, access Chinese acquisitions and have a long term view.

Mr Santhosh Pai gave an overview of the driving forces of China’s Xi era, its external forces and domestic priorities- political, economic and strategic.  Personalization of power, centralization of institutions, doing away with the Politics-Economics divide and emergence of data as a power differentiator have marked the Xi-era, he explained and added that the private industry has been cut to size in China.

Dual circulation, three child policy and avoiding the middle income trap have become China’s top domestic priorities, he pointed out. The trust that nations had in China has decreased while the risks of dealing with it have increased. Due to this, the global supply chains are trying to move away from China towards intermediates. To counter the China challenge, he recommended, not just a ‘whole-of-government’ approach but a unified ‘whole-of-country’ approach.

Mr Rajaram Muthukrishnan spoke about the economic challenges India currently faces in dealing with China. He dealt with three broad areas:

A qualitative look into the China-India bilateral trade trend.

The strategic intent in the Chinese investment strategies in India and its neighbourhood.

The economic options available to India and ones that are now being currently pursued.

He suggested that India must focus on manufacturing, modernising agriculture using AI, improving the startup ecosystem and investing massively in infrastructure. He opined that these will reduce the economic gap between India and China. He also welcomed Prime Minister Modi’s announcement in the Independence Day speech that the government will invest about 15Bn USD in infrastructure projects.

Q&A

There was a Q&A session in which the members who attended the session in MMA and online posed various questions and the panellists answered them. Some of the questions were:

How can we leverage China’s grand strategy to India’s advantage?

How has India fared in chairing UN Security Council during its turn on rotation basis?

How does the leadership of EU see the role of India in countering the challenge posed by China to western nations?

Will the Afghan developments be exploited by China? What should India do?

In a climate of distrust, how can we bring China back to the table and restore diplomatic relations?

Is democracy a weakness for India since China has shown what it can achieve with autocracy?

Has India failed to capitalise economically on the anti-China backlash?

Will Germany be a major player in global security?

What will happen to the future of Hong Kong and how will the rest of the world be affected by the developments there? Has the one nation, two systems concept failed there?

Concluding Remarks

In his concluding remarks, Mr Pankaj Madan, Deputy-Head, India Office & Head-Programmes, KAS summed up the views shared by all the panellists. He was of the opinion that the Afghan crisis will have a major impact on India. He said that the world has at last woken up to China’s designs of placing its people in key positions in multilateral platforms to subvert the systems and institutions to its advantage. He appealed that India must follow the ‘whole-of-country’ approach as advocated in the panel discussions, and leverage its culture to take on the China challenge.   

Group Captain R Vijayakumar (Retd) VSM proposed a vote of thanks. MMA Coffee Table books were presented as mementos to all the panellists. The session which started at 5.30 pm ended at 7.45 pm, which was followed by a dinner. Over 1000 participants watched the programme live on various social media platforms, apart from those who attended in person, in MMA.