China's shadow falls between India and ASEAN. It shouldn't

Amid a changing regional order, India and ASEAN should not fritter away the gains of the last three decades.

- C. Raja Mohan

Indian Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal's reported remarks last month – that some ASEAN member states are "China's B team" – underscore the strategic divergence between India and ASEAN amid a rapidly changing regional order.

Mr Goyal, who was speaking at the India Global Forum on June 19, made the comments in the context of the review of India's free trade agreement (FTA) with ASEAN.

Criticising the FTA, he said effectively it meant "I am opening up my market to my competitors, many of whom have now become the B team of China".

India, he added, was now more keen on agreements with other parties such as the European Union.

India's relationship with South-east Asia has seen its ups and downs. After the 1955 Bandung Conference on Afro-Asian Relations, India drifted away from South-east Asia towards the more global non-aligned movement.

It was only in the early 1990s that New Delhi opened a new chapter of productive re-engagement with the region.

India's "Look East" policy of the early 1990s was welcomed with much enthusiasm by Singapore and the other ASEAN member states. India was integrated progressively into ASEAN-led structures such as the Regional Forum, the East Asia Summit and the ASEAN Defence Ministers' Meeting Plus.

This was accompanied by deepening economic, technological, political and security engagement between India and the ASEAN region.

India's quiet intensification of bilateral ties with South-east Asian countries did not always meet the expectations of the regional elites. Comparisons of India's regional performance with Beijing were inevitable, for example, on trade volumes.

However, China's economy at US$20 trillion (S$25.6 trillion) today is nearly five times as large as that of India at about US$4 trillion. Unlike India, China is at the geographic heart of East Asia and will always remain a more important factor for the region.