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Friday, March 29, 2024

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Friday, March 29, 2024

India in, China out

By The Editor

After taking over as Prime Minister (PM) of the United Kingdom (UK), Rishi Sunak the British Indian leader expressed his desire to promote British values of freedom and openness around the world and accordingly came out with his first major foreign policy. Sunak has recently reiterated that his country is deeply committed to free trade agreement (FTA) with India and hopes that India’s response will be positive. It may be mentioned that Sunak’s grandparents came to UK via East Africa. Before joining politics, he invested in business around the world especially in Indo-Pacific region which paid rich dividends and according to his observation by 2050 Indo-Pacific will contribute more than half of global growth. Hence his priority for FTA with India to be followed soon with Indonesia. Negotiations for FTA with India were started as early as January 2022 with an aim to conclude discussion by Diwali but due to unforeseen obstacles the deadline was missed. Sunak wishes to restart negotiations as early as possible for benefit of both countries.

Governments sometimes set up barriers to international trade in order to protect domestic products against competition from outside nations and one of these is import duty. Trade barriers are also introduced for political reasons. But with improved technology and availability of enough skilled manpower within the country many of the barriers have been done away with by many countries. At present, focus of FTA negotiations is on reducing the barriers to international trade, slashing tariffs, and extending assistance to importers and exporters while at the same time maintaining healthy balance of trade. China’s aggressive and expansionist policy has attracted world’s attention and many affluent countries have strongly condemned its militarism tactic trying to control territories in the South and East China Seas. Beijing has also made substantial progress in militarizing its man-made islands during last few years. Its neighbouring countries like Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Phillipines, Brunei and Taiwan have become greatly alarmed and are on their toes for any hostile activities.

UK, however, admits that it cannot just simply ignore China’s significance in world’s affairs through it terms the so-called ‘golden era’ to be over and no longer maintain any more relationship. China’s harsh handling of the on-going anti-lockdown protests in the country and the recent beating of BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation ) journalist has invited strong criticism world-wide. Nevertheless, China does not pay any heed at all to all these remarks and protests but instead becoming more aggressive to the extent of even threatening to invade neighbouring Taiwan prompting the United States (US) to assure Taiwan’s government with all possible assistance. President Xi Jinping after being re-elected has become more arrogant and dictatorial who did not like any opposition. Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in February last year initially acted as an impetus to him but after Russia’s failure even after more than nine months seems to make him think otherwise.

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