Gradual yet seemingly planned warming of ties between India and Taiwan, which China sees as a renegade region, could soon become a new talking point in the choppy Sino-India relations.<\/p>\n
State-controlled media lashed out at New Delhi for signing an industrial collaboration MoU with Taipei this month, though China is yet to react officially.<\/p>\n
What could particularly annoy Beijing is that the MoU \u2013 as per the official statement in Chinese released by Taiwan \u2013 was signed between \u201ctwo nations\u201d.<\/p>\n
In the English version, it is referred to as one of the five bilateral agreements signed between \u201ctwo countries\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIndia and Taiwan island signed a MoU on December 14 to promote mutual industrial cooperation, an alarming move that could sabotage the recent smoothing of Sino-Indian relations, said Chinese experts,\u201d the nationalist tabloid Global Times, affiliated to the Communist Party of China, reported on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The MoU was the fifth bilateral agreement since President Tsai Ing-wen took over as Taiwan\u2019s first woman leader in May 2016.<\/p>\n
India has no formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan; the de facto Indian embassy in Taipei is the India-Taipei Association and the Taiwanese maintain the Taipei Economic Cultural Centre in New Delhi.<\/p>\n
Beijing opposes any official contact between Taiwan and other countries and has warned India earlier this year to strictly follow the \u201cone-China\u201d policy.<\/p>\n
The Chinese foreign ministry had then said it was against any \u201cupgrade\u201d in India-Taiwan ties.<\/p>\n
Following the 19th Communist Party Congress in October, there is no doubt that China has at least in words strengthened its plans to unify Taiwan with the mainland. Therefore, Beijing is expected to be more sensitive to any effort by India to inch closer to the democratically-run island nation.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll activities of splitting the motherland will be resolutely opposed by all the Chinese people. We have firm will, full confidence, and sufficient capability to defeat any form of Taiwan independence secession plot,\u201d President Xi Jinping had said in his opening speech at the party congress.<\/p>\n
\u201cIndia is using the Taiwan question as a bargaining chip in exchange for China\u2019s support and concession on its own territorial disputes,\u201d Wang Dehua, head of the Institute for South and Central Asian Studies at the Shanghai Municipal Center for International Studies, told Global Times.<\/p>\n
To mainland experts, President Tsai is exploiting India\u2019s strategic mistrust against China in an effort to expand trade ties with the South Asian giant.<\/p>\n
Taiwan, of course, seems happy with the progress in ties with India.<\/p>\n
\u201cRelations between India and Taiwan are close and cordial, especially as President Tsai Ing-wen initiated the New Southbound Policy to strengthen Taiwan\u2019s exchanges with India, as well as ASEAN member countries, in May 2016,\u201d an official statement from Taiwan said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gradual yet seemingly planned warming of ties between India and Taiwan, which China sees as a renegade region, could soon become a new talking point in the choppy Sino-India relations. State-controlled media lashed out at New Delhi for signing an industrial collaboration MoU with Taipei this month, though China is yet to react officially. What […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14780,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14779"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14779\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14781,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14779\/revisions\/14781"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}