Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China

by Hal Brands

After Galwan, the backlash was sharp. Indian crowds destroyed Chinese smartphones and burned effigies of Xi Jinping. The nationalist press called for revenge. Modi warned that “the entire country is hurt and angry. . . . No one can even dare look towards an inch of our land.”3 It wasn’t just rhetoric. To shore up its defenses, India sought emergency purchases of Russian fighter jets and other military assets. To limit digital dependence on a rival, the Indian government banned dozens of Chinese mobile applications, including TikTok and WeChat, and barred Huawei and ZTE from its 5G network trials. Most important, India’s long, slow move toward America accelerated. The year after June 2020 saw a flurry of diplomacy around the Quad, a U.S.-Australia-India-Japan partnership that looks a lot like an anti-China alliance of Indo-Pacific democracies.