India has become negative asset at fora like BRICS, SCO: China's Global Times

NEW DELHI: India has become a negative asset at fora like the Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa (BRICS) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, the Chinese state-backed Global Times said in a piece on Friday.

The piece by Global Times came hours before the first-ever meeting of the leaders of the Quad or Quadrilateral Security Dialogue countries comprising the US, Japan, India and Australia on Friday. China has dubbed the “Quad” as the Asian version of NATO or the US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organisation that was during the Cold War years ranged against the Warsaw Pact Communist bloc countries lead by Moscow.

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The Global Times said in recent years India had been moving closer to the US “worsening India-China and India-Russia relations and affecting the development of some China-led or Russia-led groupings…such as BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).”

While India wanted to use the financial platforms of BRICS and SCO such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the New Development Bank, “to win as much financial support as possible”, in other respects, "India has basically adopted a non-cooperative attitude, which has greatly restricted these groupings' development in recent years.” the Global Times article said.

“India has become a negative asset of these groupings,” it said adding that China had last month backed India’s hosting of this year’s BRICS summit. But New Delhi had failed to “understand China's goodwill” and was taking China’s support for granted, it said. India is to host the BRICS meet later this year.

The piece accused India of giving more importance to the Quad, and its core demand of the US' Indo-Pacific Strategy was “to counterbalance, contain and deter China.”

“India cannot compete with China on its own, and thus it hopes to contain China together with like-minded countries,” it said.

“India is now very inclined toward the US' Indo-Pacific Strategy…. If it goes further down this road, it will eventually lose strategic autonomy, completely become the US' hatchet man against China in the Indo-Pacific region, or even cannon fodder,” the article warned.

Noting that Biden upgraded the Quad to the leaders' level not long after being sworn into office, “It's expected the US will continue to strengthen the four-country grouping in the future,” the article said.

“No matter how it expands, the regional security structure it wants to establish is exclusive to China and Russia,” it said.

For India, its advice was “that its time to stop and pay more attention to the reactions from China and Russia.”