Between Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China (PRC), with which India shares a contested land border, India and its civil society seem to have moved much closer to the former, notwithstanding the lack of official diplomatic relations.
The relationship between India and Taiwan is evident in the growing popularity of Taiwanese brands, from electronics to bubble tea. Taiwan has proved over the years that it is not only a technological miracle, but also a democratic miracle.
India and Taiwan have calibrated the relationship between the two in a substantive way, with burgeoning economic engagement and people-to-people contact leveraging shared democratic values.
India does not accord diplomatic recognition to Taiwan because of its “one China” policy. However, there has been simultaneous engagement with Taiwan within the framework of that policy.
In 1992, Taiwan’s External Trade Development Council, a semi-official institution affiliated with the Ministry of Economic Affairs, set up a Taiwan Trade Center in Mumbai as a liaison office in charge of promoting trade with India.
The relationship was deepened in 1995 when the Taipei Economic and Cultural Center was set up in New Delhi to provide consular services and to facilitate other functions similar to an embassy. India also established the India Taipei Association as an equivalent institution in Taipei.
India is slowly shedding its diffidence to reach out to Taiwan. A report of the Indian parliament’s Standing Committee of External Affairs, headed by Indian politician Shashi Tharoor and presented to parliament in the wake of Doklam incident in the India-China-Bhutan border area in 2017 observed: “It comes as a matter of concern to the Committee that even when India is overly cautious about China’s sensitivities while dealing with Taiwan and Tibet, China does not exhibit the same deference while dealing with India’s sovereignty concerns, be it in the case of Arunachal Pradesh or that of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir... The Committee strongly feel that the Government should contemplate using all options including its relations with Taiwan, as part of such an approach.”
In April 2021, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs offered condolences to Taiwan after a major train crash in Taiwan killed 51 people. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs thanked India “for the expression of sentiment and support and said this genuinely friendly gesture will touch the people and bring Taiwan and India closer in a real and lasting manner.”
Although Taiwan is not a member of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, a security partnership of India, the US, Australia and Japan, its imperative resonates in the constellation of the Indo-Pacific edifice, as it is a bulwark against Chinese expansionism.
A blockade of Taiwan would have catastrophic consequences not only on regional geopolitics, but also the geopolitics of the world at large. Taiwan lies astride major maritime routes in the region, and conflict in the area would affect shipping across the world.
India has urged restraint and avoidance of unilateral action to change the “status quo” in the Taiwan Strait and alluded to the militarization of Taiwan Strait. Freedom of navigation and sea lines of communication are seamlessly intertwined with Indo-Pacific architecture.
Rup Narayan Das is a former senior fellow at the Monohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, and was a Taiwan Fellow at National Chung Hsing University in Taiwan. The views expressed here are personal.
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