Jaishankar: US-China rivalry pushes India to de-risk and diversify
S Jaishankar said the US and China are in a competitive mode, prompting India and others to de-risk and diversify, while India-US trade talks have reached a broad understanding.
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has offered his first public assessment of last week's meeting between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, saying the two powers remain fundamentally in a competitive mode despite any points of convergence.
Speaking at the Asia Society Policy Institute in New York on Monday, after a week of high-level diplomatic engagements at the United Nations, Jaishankar said there are limits to what the world's two largest economies can agree upon, and that other countries are adjusting to a changed global landscape.
He said nations, including India, are seeking their own optimal arrangements by looking at how to de-risk, diversify, find new partners and draw greater value from existing relationships. Countries respond, calculate and adjust to difficult circumstances, he added, and that process is what the international order is currently witnessing.
On the India-US trade negotiations, Jaishankar acknowledged the complexity of the exercise, noting that India is a society of small producers, small agricultural holdings and small factories, and that its production and social structures differ substantially from those of the United States. He said the expectation of rapid progress had been tested against a more complex ground reality, and that the two sides have now reached a situation where there is more or less an understanding on the trade agreement.
Jaishankar also flagged terrorism emanating from Pakistan as a central Indian concern, describing it as a deliberate and conscious policy followed by a neighbour over many decades. He said that if a matter of such deep importance to India is not adequately understood or appreciated by its partner, it inevitably has an impact on the relationship.