India Cannot In The Name Of Economy Be Doing Business With A Country That Is Laying Claim On Its Territory: Jaishankar

Foreign Minister S Jaishankar targeted China, which is claiming a large part of Indian territory in the northwest, Ladakh, and in the east, the entire state of Arunachal Pradesh.

In an interview with the Economic Times, he said, “I cannot, in the name of open economy, open up my national security to work with a country which is laying claim on my territory.”

He was replying to a question about Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent remarks regarding abnormal relations with China in an interview with Newsweek, and whether India is planning to have a more nuanced approach towards investment from China after the elections.

Jaishankar asked, “If there is no peace and tranquillity on the border, how can you have workable relations with any neighbour?”

He explained that, “it is entirely within our rights to protect the interests of our manufacturers, particularly our SMEs, and our labour and working classes.”

The minister further clarified, “don't get me wrong. We want to see global companies come to India. If global companies have prior vendors and supply chains, we are not impervious. Nobody has said that Chinese companies cannot come to India. On the contrary, we only said we will examine, scrutinise, try to understand who is coming here for what. I would actually point to Apple as a case which has had a good experience in India, not a difficult one.”

He also said that India's foreign policy under former prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru did have some flaws.

"Let's be very clear on that. Most of us who, for example, dealt with China felt that there was a fundamental misreading of China in the 1950s, the whole Panchsheel era," Jaishankar said.

Notably, Indian troops are in a standoff with China for the past four years after a clash between Indian and Chinese troops in the Galwan Valley in June 2020 that killed 20 Indian and an unknown number of Chinese troops.

Since then, India and China have mirror-deployed more than 90,000 troops in the icy heights of the Himalayas.

21 rounds of meetings have been held between the corps commanders of both armies and have seen some progress, but the legacy issues of Depsang and Demchok are still not resolved, giving indications that the Chinese are in no mood to retreat.

The rapid pace of infrastructure construction — from tunnels, roads, bridges, and the extension of runways to ammunition depots and border villages — also gives credence to this assertion.