It’s one of the ironies of India-China relations: despite the freeze after the 2020 Galwan clash, the bilateral green trade grew and flourished.
Pooja Ramamurthi, and Shruti Jargad, researchers at the Centre for Social and Economic Progress, told SNG on The Gist said that they tracked three decades of the India–China engagement on climate and clean energy, identifying three distinct phases of cooperation and detailed their findings in a jointly authored paper titled “Framing India’s China Strategy on Climate and Clean Energy.”
Phase-Wise Breakdown
In the period from 1990s to 2007, India and China coordinated closely in global climate negotiations around the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities. The cooperation between the two nations was largely technical and exploratory, with limited institutional depth. This phase saw the signing of the vital Brahmaputra and Sutlej river data-sharing agreements.
The findings of the paper suggest that the ties were at a peak in the 2008–2015 period, when joint statements at the highest political level were routine and sectoral dialogues ranged from biodiversity and oceanography to hydrological data‑sharing and sister‑city partnerships. Engagement diversified across mitigation and adaptation domains. This phase involved a broader set of actors, including planning bodies, cities, research institutions, and enterprises, signalling the potential for deeper institutionalisation. The drawbacks were that implementation remained uneven, and cooperation was often more aspirational than actionable.
Border Clashes
However, geopolitical alignments and economic differences led to bitterness between the two nations long before the Galwan clash.
“In our interviews, we found that diplomatically, India and China began moving apart starting in 2015. China emerged as a major manufacturer and a dominant exporting power whereas India lagged in these sectors after 2015,” Jargad said.
However, the final nail in the coffin was the 2020 border clash that led to a complete halt of any bilateral exchange. Even the preexisting agreements on sharing of hydrological data were not renewed. While a cautious reopening of climate-related dialogue has begun now, geopolitical vulnerabilities and economic differences prevail.
Ramamurthi suggests, “We are already doing so much green trade with China. So why not have a win-win situation where we bolster our own clean energy sector while engaging with them?
Start Small
However, to ensure that co-operation does not translate into heavy dependence and expose vulnerabilities for New Delhi, the authors also recommend leaping cooperation in sectors that aren’t competitive. “It is difficult to expect tech transfer in sectors where China has taken an extreme lead, such as technology. In the green trade, Chinese dominance prevails across the value chain, and it seems unlikely that China would be willing to give up this dominance.
“We can exchange our learnings around safer sectors such as mobility, sustainable cities, climate resilience and even agriculture, as both nations are large agrarian economies.” They also suggest exchanges between India and China at a subnational level for a triangular cooperation, bringing in policy banks, researchers and private players into this conversation.
They remain optimistic that these trust building exercises may pave the way for both countries to eventually discuss more sensitive topics such as technology transfer.
