NEW DELHI: There is no change in India’s position on Taiwan, with which New Delhi maintains economic, technology and cultural ties, people familiar with the matter said on Tuesday while responding to a Chinese foreign ministry readout that misquoted external affairs minister S Jaishankar as saying that Taiwan is part of China.
The readout, issued first in Mandarin after midnight, India time, following a meeting between Jaishankar and his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi in New Delhi on Monday, contained a lengthy paragraph with comments attributed to the external affairs minister. It included the line: “Taiwan is a part of China.” A subsequent readout in English contained a similar paragraph.
“There is no change in our position on Taiwan. We stressed that, like the rest of the world, India has a relationship with Taiwan that focuses on economic, technology and cultural ties,” one of the people cited above said on condition of anonymity.
“We intend to continue it [the relationship],” the person added.
During Monday’s meeting, Wang urged the Indian side not to deal with Taiwan, a second person said. Jaishankar responded by questioning how this would be possible when China itself was dealing with Taiwan in the same areas as India, the second person added.
The people said the external affairs minister had been misquoted in the Chinese foreign ministry’s readout. The remarks attributed to Jaishankar were widely reported by China’s state-run media.
A statement from the external affairs ministry acknowledged the Chinese side raised the issue of Taiwan and said the Indian side “underlined that there was no change in its position on this issue”. India, like the rest of the world, has a relationship with Taiwan that focuses on economic, technological and cultural ties, and this would continue, the statement said.
“The Indian side noted that China also cooperates with Taiwan in these very domains,” the statement added.
Beijing has often insisted that New Delhi should adhere to the “one-China” policy, contending that the Indian side has made political commitments regarding this. The people pointed out that India stopped referring to the “one-China” policy in official documents and pronouncements since 2011, after Chinese authorities issued stapled visas to residents of the border state of Arunachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir.
Wang is the first Chinese minister to visit India since the end of the military face-off between the two countries on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) last October. He is in New Delhi for talks on the border issue under the Special Representatives mechanism with National Security Adviser Ajit Doval. Doval and Wang are the designated Special Representatives, and the mechanism is the highest body for dealing with the long-standing border dispute.
The visit has assumed greater significance as Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to visit China for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit on August 31 and September 1 amid strains in India-US relations over the trade and tariff policies of the Donald Trump administration in the US.
India and Taiwan don’t have formal diplomatic relations, though both sides established representative offices in each other’s capitals in 1995. Taiwan has the Taipei Economic and Cultural Centre TECC in New Delhi, Chennai and Mumbai, and India has the India-Taipei Association (ITA) office in Taipei. These facilities are responsible for promoting cooperation in trade, investment, science and technology, tourism and education.
In 2023, two-way trade was valued at $8.2 billion, and India was Taiwan’s 16th largest trading partner. Taiwan’s exports to India reached $6 billion, positioning the country as its 12th-largest export market.
Taiwan has also emerged as key to India’s ambitious plans to become a hi-tech manufacturing hub for semiconductors, smartphones and green products. The Tata Group has partnered with Taiwan’s Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (PSMC) to establish a semiconductor fabrication facility in Dholera, Gujarat. Meanwhile, Foxconn Technology Group plays a key role in Apple’s iPhone manufacturing facilities in India.
In June last year, Modi responded to a congratulatory message from Lai Ching-te on his election victory by saying that he looked forward to closer ties between India and Taiwan as “we work towards mutually beneficial economic and technological partnership”.
Lai was among the world leaders who greeted Modi on securing a third term, a time when China’s top leadership had yet to issue a similar message.