Just speeches won't cut it: Modi needs to follow up on China's $20 bn investment pledge to India

Prime Minister Narendra Modi would be exactly ten days away from his first anniversary in office when he would be exiting China after his maiden three-day official visit to the Middle Kingdom (14-16 May). His China visit is his biggest foreign policy challenge yet. The big question glaring in his face would be the tall promises that Chinese President Xi Jinping made during his maiden India visit in September 2014 which he symbolically began from Modi’s home state Gujarat. Xi is cleverly returning the favour as he is facilitating Modi’s China visit to begin from his own home province Xian. But these are mere optics. When Xi came calling to India, Modi  had been in office for less than four months. In many ways, Xi’s India visit and the optics that followed – the ‘jhoola’ and the walk along the Sabarmati river front in Ahmedabad and acres of media coverage of the summit-level talks in New Delhi – are now a distant past. That was almost eight months ago. [caption id=“attachment_2228328” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  President of China Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. APxI jIN[/caption] Now when Modi lands in China four days later, none of these theatrics and optics are going to work. It will be time for some stock taking. Speeches and grand theatrics, as Modi government has planned for him in Shanghai in the Madison Square Garden mould, are not going to cut much ice this time. In fact, a potent danger is that a repeat of Modi the rock star in Shanghai may boomerang if speeches are not substituted by concrete deliverables during his China visit. Besides, Modi must not forget that in an unprecedented development the Congress party has already threatened to send its “observers” during Modi’s upcoming three-nation trip to China, Mongolia and South Korea to ensure that the opposition party rebuts him on real time basis should he choose to continue to throw barbs on the opposition from the foreign soil. Therefore, Modi will not only be under a microscope from the opposition during his China visit but also runs the risk of sharing political space with the opposition if he were to pass uncharitable remarks at the previous governments. Modi will find political space for him far more constricted during his upcoming three-nation tour. Gone will be the days when he could make any remark during his extempore speeches on foreign soil. He will have to be not only cautious about what he speaks but will also have to mindful that concrete deliverables flow out of his foreign tour, not just high-sounding rhetoric signifying nothing. He will have to be painfully aware throughout his China trip of the concrete follow-up on Xi’s promise of pouring in  $20 billion into India. Till date, there is no clarity on what happened to China’s $20 billion investment pledge and how much of it has been pumped in the last eight months and in which sectors. In any case, Chinese president’s pledge of investing $45 billion in Pakistan has already eclipsed his $20 billion investment promise for India over the next five years. In contrast, Japan had pledged investment of $35 billion in India over the next five years when Modi had visited Japan a fortnight before he received the Chinese president in India. But the effect of the Japanese investments in India is visible across the country while the Chinese promises still remain opaque. This will be a major challenge for Modi during his China visit. He will have to do some plain talk and conduct the unpleasant task of a diplomatic audit with his Chinese interlocutors. This is easier said than done. It is clear that no major breakthroughs will spring up during his China visit and all the political problems in India’s bilateral ties with China will remain unresolved – boundary dispute, staples visas and Chinese troops’ presence in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir, to name a few. For its part, China is leaving no stone unturned to make the Modi visit a success. One only has to have a look at China’s state-controlled media which for past few weeks has ensured that no anti-Modi or anti-India story appears. Besides, the Line of Actual Control too has become as cool as a cucumber and the People’s Liberation Army has been instructed to put up a model behavior. However, Modi’s famous remark of 56 inches chest, made in specific context of China during his election campaign last year as the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate will inevitably come to haunt him during his China visit. The opposition will surely be working overtime to poke Modi during his China visit.