As anticipated China did not yield ground in its sustained opposition to India's admission to

the 48-member Nuclear Suppliers Group and has successfully had the matter deferred by at
least a year. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's request during a 50-minute personal meeting
with Chinese President Xi Jinping at Tashkent also predictably failed to make a dent in
China's position.
Worth noting is that on this occasion Beijing's opposition has been direct and overt unlike in
the past where it preferred to avoid being the sole country opposing India. Its stance,
however, did shift often.
From insisting that there should be no exception for India, to advocating parity in treatment
for India and Pakistan, to asserting that India is ineligible since it has not signed the NonProliferation Treaty, it finally suggested that India and Pakistan must both comply with the
pre-condition of signing the NPT.
Beijing stayed consistent in its opposition to India's entry though it sought to retain a
gossamer-thin facade of acting 'on a matter of principle'. Other countries later joined China in
opposing India's entry.
The main factors motivating Beijing's action are:
1. Its ambition to remain the only nation in Asia with unrivalled international influence and
membership of elite groupings like the United Nations Security Council and NSG;
2. Signalling to the US that its writ is no longer unquestioned across the world and can be
successfully challenged by China -- which Beijing hopes will bolster its effort to get the US
to acquiesce to its proposal of a 'new type of big power relations.'
3. Prevent India from elevating its global stature by entering the NSG, thus reinforcing its bid
to enter the UNSC;
4. Trying to keep India's growth restrained by Pakistan and treating the two as on par;
5. Demonstrating to Pakistan -- and other countries that it has designated as 'friends' after the
closed-door Conference on Peripheral Diplomacy held in Beijing in October 2013 -- the
benefits that accrue from allying with China.
China's enhanced relationship with Pakistan has been a definite additional factor. A series of
indicators over past months showed that Beijing will not waver in its diplomatic and other
support to Pakistan.
In the case of the NSG, therefore, it has not so much been a case of Pakistan lobbying China
as China using Pakistan to keep the pressure on India while cementing its bonds with
Islamabad.

he first public demonstration of Beijing's hardened attitude towards India was when in

April 2015, Xi Jinping announced the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.

The decision to build numerous infrastructure projects in Pakistan occupied Kashmir, Gilgit
and Baltistan effectively meant China had dispelled its decades-long ambiguity on the
Kashmir issue and sided with Pakistan.
Xi thus ignored India's sovereignty and territorial claims. Since then China began describing
Pakistan as its 'only friend and ally.' High-ranking Chinese interlocutors also clearly
conveyed in May 2015, that 'India must ease tensions with Pakistan and resolve the Kashmir
dispute' for India-China ties to improve.
China additionally quite obviously put settlement of the Sino-Indian border dispute on the
back-burner.
There have been other indicators and of particular interest was the meeting scheduled
between Xi and Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on the sidelines of the Nuclear
Security Summit in Washington on March 31-April 1. While Sharif finally could not travel to
Washington, there was a credible report that Xi and he were to discuss 'extending diplomatic
or other substantive support' to Pakistan to counter US insistence that Pakistan goes slow on
development of its tactical nuclear weapons.
This implied not only that Beijing was gearing to take on the US, but that the two would
collude to prevent India's entry to the Nuclear Suppliers Group.

hina placing a hold at the UN Sanctions Committee on the case of Jaish-e-Mohammed

chief Masood Azhar was another indicator. It came after Modi had earlier personally raised
with Xi the case of China blocking India's request asking Pakistan how Lashkar-e-Tayiba
terrorist Zaki-ur Rahman Lakhvi had posted bail and its courts had set him free.
These actions came after China had earlier blocked India's requests to list Syed Salahuddin of
the United Jihad Council and investigation of the source of Lashkar-e-Tayiba terrorist
Muhammad Saeed's funds despite financial sanctions. China's actions demonstrated that
China's selective attitude towards counter-terrorism and support to Pakistan had not changed.
The visit by a Chinese navy nuclear submarine to Karachi -- the first to a port in South
Asia -- late this May similarly publicised the very close military ties forged between China
and Pakistan. It additionally exhibits China's ambitions in the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea
and Pakistan's readiness to cooperate.

While China and Pakistan worked together to prevent India's entry to the NSG -- as they are
colluding to block India's admission to the UN Security Council -- if India is denied its
rightful membership of the NSG it would mean that the NSG has also chosen to ignore the
continuing brazen violations of international missile and nuclear non-proliferation norms by
Pakistan and China.
China's actions will certainly taint India-China bilateral relations and enhance suspicion of
China's intentions.
A fresh clear-eyed and objective evaluation of the India-China relationship is necessary,
especially as India tries to correct adversely balanced bilateral economic ties and the two
countries engage over the long term.