India is Losing South Asia to China
As the most populous and historically most economically and strategically powerful state in South Asia, India for decades has wielded considerable influence throughout the subcontinent. In some places, like Bhutan, it essentially controlled the country’s foreign policy for decades and still has massive influence. In Nepal, India for years wielded so much power, through its investments in the country and dominance over much of Nepal’s economy, that Nepal often seemed like a vassal state, at least until the late 2010s and early 2020s
In others, like Sri Lanka, India had tried to build on old ties with new deals, such as plans to upgrade the port of Colombo. ln Bangladesh under the long rule of Sheikh Hasina and the Awami League, the country was too big for India to directly control policy, but India built deep and broad-ranging security cooperation with Bangladesh. This security cooperation, which was matched with a sharp uptick in bilateral trade and closer economic ties, at times led Sheikh Hasina’s government to battle insurgents from northeastern India who had fled into Bangladesh, hoping for some safe haven. Hasina’s government aggressively jailed and often deported such fighters back to India, pleasing the Indian government.
In a relatively short period of time however – roughly the last two years – the tide on the subcontinent has shifted dramatically against India. Pakistan, of course, has long been India’s adversary while also being one of China’s closest partners in the world. Now, as China modernizes, that partnership benefits Pakistan in its balancing against India; in recent India-Pakistan battles, Pakistan used modern Chinese air-to-air missiles, defense systems, and advanced fighter planes to reportedly significant effect.
Other parts of the subcontinent that had enjoyed close ties to India have quickly shifted, in recent times, to building warmer links to China. Sheikh Hasina and her pro-India government no longer rules Bangladesh; she was ousted by massive protests against her rising authoritarianism and corruption last year.
After her ouster, the hastily formed interim government led by Muhammad Yunus has turned to China, which has offered billions in aid and infrastructure projects, all while anti-India sentiment is spiking in Bangladesh as people are freer to speak and to condemn India’s ties to Hasina. (India gave Hasina asylum after she fled Bangladesh, which further rankles Bangladeshis).
In the past two years, leaders who favored India also have lost power In Sri Lanka, the Maldives, and Nepal. Last year, the party of Maldives president Mohamed Muizzu won a landslide victory in parliament. Muizzu had won the presidency the year before on a platform of “India out,” a campaign against India’s longstanding influence over the island country. Muizzu has openly welcomed much closer links to China, and made a visit to Xi Jinping earlier this year. The indebted archipelago state badly needs external financing and is looking to China for it (it already owes much of its debt to China.)
As Al Jazeera reported, a former top Maldives government official said that “China may now be more amenable given Muizzu’s landslide win. ‘China has a lot of leverage,’ the ex-official said, and will likely seek favors in return, including the ratification of a Free Trade Agreement [with the Maldives] that has languished since 2014 and access to key east-west trade routes that Maldives straddles. Indian and Western diplomats have previously expressed worries this access may pave the way for China to secure an outpost in the Indian Ocean.”
In Nepal and Sri Lanka, too, Indian influence has shifted amidst change in domestic politics. In a shocking victory in Sri Lanka last year, a leftist alliance, the National People’s Power (NPP), not among the usual political contenders, won both the presidency and control of parliament. The alliance has not stoked anti-India sentiment as has occurred in the Maldives or Bangladesh, and this year it signed a defense cooperation agreement with India.
Still, the NPP clearly favors Beijing and has aggressively wooed China , which surely worries India. Soon after being elected president, NPP leader Anura Dissanayake lavished praise on China. The Sri Lankan ruling alliance held a pro-China rally on May 1 with guests from the CCP. Moreover, the president has regularly emphasized that Sri Lanka should follow China’s economic model and that China is the most trusted economic partner for Sri Lanka. China has reciprocated with aid, investment, and closer diplomatic links.
And in Nepal, K.P. Sharma Oli, the head of the Communist Party of Nepal, has been prime minister since last July. He is a true believer in communism – probably much more than most Chinese senior officials – and in his last time as prime minister in the mid-2010s, he rapidly upgraded ties to China and was vociferously anti-India. This time around, Oli has already visited China and Xi Jinping, even though Nepalese prime ministers traditionally make India their first foreign trip, but has yet to visit India at all. Oli also has relaunched joint military drills with China and a framework for significant BRI investment into Nepal.
India is still an enormous force on the subcontinent, and far beyond. Indeed, it is a major strategic and economic factor in Southeast Asia, an increasingly powerful player in global multilateral institutions, a close U.S. partner, and consistently the fastest-growing major economy in the world, one that has already surpassed Japan to become the fourth-largest, by GDP, on earth. But even with all of this growing global might, the fact that India is losing its neighborhood to China limits India’s ability to project power farther, since it has to invest so much more now – in resources, diplomacy, and other areas – to win back neighbors and keep itself feeling at least somewhat stable at home.
