US-India Partnership Just Focused on 'Stopping China's Rise', Rahul Gandhi Complains

Indian federal opposition leader and Congress Party parliamentarian Rahul Gandhi has complained that New Delhi’s relationship with Washington is only focused on enhancing defence ties in order to “fight China”, with little economic incentive offered to the South Asian economy to “create prosperity” for its population.

“When the West speaks about China and when the United States speaks about China, they always talk about stopping China’s rise. They have a sense that you have to stop this thing”, Gandhi says in a video which he shared on his Twitter account on Thursday.

The video was shot this week at Cambridge University, where the Indian opposition leader addressed an event during his visit to the United Kingdom.

“That’s fine. But my question is what alternative are you (the US) giving?” Gandhi asks.

The former Congress Party president observed that New Delhi’s relationship with the US is “hugely about defence”.

“We don’t talk about how we will jointly create prosperity and create a democratic model that will make people rich", Gandhi said.

“You can’t say to India that 'look, we will have a defence pact and we will fight China', without the prosperity part”, he further suggested.

He said that New Delhi’s interest was to have a strong economic component to its partnership with the US, besides a “defence angle”.

“And currently, I don’t see the economic angle”, he stated.

The US Strategic Framework for the Indo-Pacific document, declassified by the Trump administration last January, says that a “strong India” would act as a “counter-balance to China”. It also said that maintaining India's pre-eminence in South Asia and the Indian Ocean region was in Washington's strategic interest.

Gandhi also underlined the need for the US to have a “vision” to compete with Beijing’s rising economic influence in the region.

“What China is offering to countries around it… China is saying that 'allow us to build your infrastructure. Allow us to put in the communications’ backbone, allow us to put in 5G… We will give you the money. You build your infrastructure. And then, we will have prosperity together'”, noted Gandhi in reference to various connectivity and infrastructure projects that China has backed in Asia and Africa under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Gandhi described China’s concessional financing options under the BRI framework as a “powerful thing that they are offering”.

“But it is not in India’s interest that China expands like this”, he added.

Gandhi has been highly critical of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi over his handling of the border standoff with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in eastern Ladakh, accusing the government of not being transparent about the situation on the ground.

Based on media reports, Gandhi has claimed on several occasions that China is “illegally occupying” Indian territory in Ladakh, a charge that Prime Minister Modi and the country’s Defence Minister Rajnath Singh have denied.

Gandhi’s criticism of the India-US relationship comes just a couple of days after the Quad Leaders’ Summit in Tokyo, which was attended by Prime Minister Modi in person.

During his Tokyo visit, Modi also attended the launch of discussions of the US-led Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF), which American officials have said is aimed at presenting “alternatives” to China for businesses in the Asia-Pacific region.

US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan has said that the IPEF will lend “shape and coherence to the economic pillar of our Indo-Pacific Strategy”.

According to a joint statement, 13 countries—Australia, Brunei Darussalam, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, the United States, and Vietnam—have agreed to be part of the IPEF negotiations.

Beijing, meanwhile, has described the IPEF as an American ploy to “disrupt regional cooperation” and advance its own “geopolitical interests”.

“The fact is, many countries in the region are worried about the huge cost of decoupling with China”, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said on Wednesday.