Critically assess the evolving convergence of India and China in the areas of trade and environment. (2018, 15 Marks)
The convergence in question is one of positions in global regimes, not of bilateral harmony. As large developing economies under pressure from a Western-written rulebook, India and China have repeatedly stood together in the WTO and climate negotiations, a coalition of interest in the liberal-institutionalist sense, even as their rivalry deepened. The record shows convergence on rules and divergence on interests.
Trade: aligned in the regime
- In the Doha Round both defended special and differential treatment and food-security safeguards; the July 2008 ministerial collapsed over the special safeguard mechanism India pressed, with Chinese support.
- American protectionism has renewed the alignment. Hit by US tariffs in 2025 (India’s peaking at 50%), Narendra Modi and Xi Jinping agreed at Tianjin in August 2025 that the two are “development partners and not rivals”, and the New Delhi Declaration of the BRICS summit (September 2026) criticised unilateral tariffs and sought WTO reform.
- Bilateral trade reached $151.1 billion in FY2025–26, and China displaced the United States as India’s largest trading partner. At the New Delhi BRICS summit (September 2026), Xi and Modi pledged to address the imbalance.
Environment: the deeper convergence
- Both insist on common but differentiated responsibilities and historical responsibility. As BASIC they blocked binding developing-country targets at Copenhagen (2009) and shaped the nationally determined design of the Paris Agreement (2015); at Glasgow (2021) they secured coal “phase down” instead of “phase out”.
- Both oppose the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism as a unilateral trade measure; COP30 at Belém (2025) opened dialogues on such measures. The shared stance is that both accept a duty to mitigate, but not on the developed world’s terms or timetable.
The limits of convergence
- Trade divides more than it unites. India’s deficit hit $112.16 billion in FY2025–26, built on imports of electronics, machinery and pharmaceutical ingredients. India left RCEP (2019) largely over Chinese goods, makes China its most frequent anti-dumping target, screens Chinese capital under Press Note 3, and felt China’s rare-earth export controls in 2025. In October 2025 China took India to WTO consultations over its battery, auto and electric-vehicle incentives, and its pledge (September 2025) to seek no new special treatment splits their developing-country front.
- Climate interests are separating. China’s per-capita emissions and income now resemble an industrialised economy’s; it targets neutrality by 2060 and a 7–10% cut from peak by 2035, while India’s net-zero year is 2070. Chinese dominance of solar and battery supply chains makes climate cooperation and industrial competition the same sectors.
- Realists such as Joseph M. Grieco (1988) stress relative gains: cooperation stops where one side gains more. Kanti Bajpai (India Versus China, 2021) adds the power gap as a structural barrier, and Vijay Gokhale’s description of India (2019) as “an aligned state, but based on issues” fits: the China convergence is issue-based and tactical.
Conclusion
The convergence is real but multilateral and issue-specific; it never spills over into bilateral trust, as functionalists would expect. It is strongest on climate rules and weakest on the trade balance, and narrowing as China graduates from the developing world India still inhabits.