The road ahead for India-China relations will undoubtedly be challenging, as the late Prime Minister Manmohan Singh articulated in a posthumously published essay set for release in September 2025. Part of a new book, the essay highlights China’s ‘arrogance of power,’ a stance Singh deemed utterly unacceptable to India. While adopting a pragmatic approach to political and diplomatic challenges with Beijing, Singh also strongly advocated for enhanced economic ties between India and its South Asian, Southeast Asian, and East Asian neighbors, emphasizing the importance of platforms like the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).
“China projects an arrogance of power, demanding deference that India will never concede. It is improbable that India-China relations will see a positive trajectory anytime soon, and our national policies must reflect this reality,” Singh declared in his essay, ‘A Decisive Decade for India.’ This insightful piece is a part of India’s Tryst with the World: A Foreign Policy Manifesto, a collection edited by former External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid and human rights advocate Salil Shetty. The book also features contributions from other prominent voices in Indian foreign policy, such as former Vice-President Hamid Ansari and former National Security Advisor Shiv Shankar Menon.
Throughout his ten years as Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh engaged extensively with numerous high-ranking Chinese officials. His final visit to China as Prime Minister occurred from October 22-24, 2013, at the invitation of then-Premier Li Keqiang, during which he also met President Xi Jinping. In his essay, Singh recalls that these discussions forged a mutual understanding where both nations committed to not perceiving each other as threats. However, he starkly noted, “This understanding is now obsolete, a fact brutally underscored by the recent and unparalleled border confrontations in eastern Ladakh, which began in 2020 between the two countries’ armed forces.”
Singh characterized China as not just a material challenge, but an ideological one. He observed that Beijing no longer merely asserts its right to its unique social and economic development model. Instead, China’s undeniable economic achievements and its rapid containment of the COVID-19 pandemic have emboldened its leadership to actively promote what some academics term ‘authoritarian state capitalism.’ Dr. Singh pointed out that China is now openly disparaging liberal democracy while championing its own developmental and political systems. Labeling the allure of the Chinese model as “dangerous,” he countered, “We have vividly proven in the recent past that democracy is entirely consistent with achieving rapid economic growth.”
Despite his strong warnings regarding China, Singh also championed increased economic collaboration with regional blocs, specifically mentioning the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). The last SAARC summit took place in Kathmandu in 2014; the subsequent 2016 summit planned for Islamabad was cancelled after India and several other member states withdrew their participation following terrorist attacks in Uri. While acknowledging India’s relationship with Pakistan as “complex and adversarial,” Dr. Singh contended that, “The advancement of trade and economic cooperation between India and Pakistan holds immense potential, a fact consistently supported by various studies. This objective must remain a priority for us, even if it appears difficult to achieve at present.”
India withdrew from the RCEP in 2019, citing concerns that participation would not alleviate its trade deficit issues, particularly with China. However, Singh argued that free trade and economic collaborations should not be narrowly perceived through the lens of exports and imports alone. He stated, “By opting out of RCEP, India risks isolating itself from the most dynamic segment of the global economy, which is increasingly concentrated in Asia.”