"Need Predictable Ties": S Tharoor On China Amid ITBP Chief Remark Row

New Delhi:

Amid a political row over Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) chief Shatrujeet Kapur's purported remarks that the Army is successfully dealing with a "face-off (with China) in Arunachal Pradesh", Congress MP Shashi Tharoor on Friday said that India has very many frustrations with China for good reason.

"The way in which China has behaved on our borders, the way in which they've nibbled away at our territory, their overt support for Pakistan during the brief conflict (Op Sindoor) between our two countries last year is worrying," Tharoor said at NDTV World Summit.

"China not only supplied a vast amount of weapons, which is their legal right to do, but also supplied real-time data while the conflict was going on from their satellite spot above our territory, which was actually a hostile act. These are all things we have to really worry about."

Talking about India-China trade relations, Tharoor called the situation on the border as one interdependence without trust.

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"On our own borders we have the problem of interdependence without trust. I can't even say interdependence because our dependence on China is far greater than theirs on us and yet can we trust them?" he pointed out.

Shashi Tharoor with NDTV CEO and Editor-in-chief Rahul Kanwal

Photo Credit: NDTV Photo

"Galwan was not the only incident. There were other incidents in which China essentially unilaterally upended the understanding that had existed between the two countries of a tranquil border and this worries us. Why is it that they want to create this? It was initially supposed to be in their interest that the border situation remain tranquil while they dramatically expanded their exports to us. The exports are still expanding and they're still giving us a rough time."

Painting a worrying picture of India's dependence on Chinese imports, Tharoor pointed out that China has repeatedly shown that it can turn the tap off whenever it wants.

"Those exports, by the way, have also created another dependency, which is that the Chinese have shown us repeatedly they can be turned off when they want. They actually turned off, for example, the export of rare earths to India for a couple of years. We had developed a major dependence on the large-size tunnel-boring machines, 100% of which were coming from China. Now suddenly they decided not to export those to us as well. We could no longer bore holes into hillsides and construct our highways and so on for a couple of years until they chose to turn the tap back on again," Tharoor said.

Tharoor concluded that it's important to have a predictable relationship, where trade won't be weaponised against us.

"We need, as far as possible, predictable relationships. Relationships which won't be weaponised, and trade dependencies which won't be weaponised against us."