India’s overtures to the island have coincided with a breakdown in its relationship with Beijing.
In the week since he staked his claim for a third term as India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi’s official account on X (formerly Twitter) has been replete with replies to congratulatory messages from dozens of global leaders—from Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky to U.S. President Joe Biden to Pakistan’s Shehbaz Sharif, and even the likes of Bill Gates and Elon Musk.
But one post in particular raised hackles in China and eyebrows everywhere else. Taiwan’s recently elected president, Lai Ching-te, was among the first to congratulate Modi last week in a message that touted “the fast-growing” Taiwan-India partnership. Modi responded by endorsing “closer ties” between the two governments as well as a “mutually beneficial economic and technological partnership.”
China, predictably, did not take it well. “China opposes all forms of official interactions between the Taiwan authorities and countries having diplomatic relations with China,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told reporters, reiterating Beijing’s stance that “Taiwan is an inalienable part of the territory of the People’s Republic of China” and adding that “China has protested to India about this.”
Modi and Lai’s interaction didn’t take place in a vacuum. India and Taiwan have been inching closer in recent years, driven largely by technologies such as semiconductor chips and mobile device manufacturing.
Taiwan’s Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (PSMC) is building a chipmaking plant in partnership with the Indian conglomerate Tata in Modi’s home state of Gujarat, while Taiwanese manufacturing giant Foxconn—which assembles a big chunk of the world’s iPhones—has significantly expanded its manufacturing base in India. The two governments also signed an agreement in February to bring Indian migrant workers to Taiwan to ease the island’s long-standing labor shortage.
“Some of it is India’s own technological goals, and a recognition that Taiwan is one of the largest and most advanced economies in the world,” said Tanvi Madan, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. “It fits India’s search for like-minded partners, particularly in strategic technologies.”
Apple’s elevation of India as both a market and a manufacturing base has also played a key role, Madan added, given that the U.S. tech giant relies heavily on Taiwanese firms for components and assembly. “Apple is almost midwifing this business-to-business relationship,” she said.
On the other hand, Modi’s decision to publicly respond to Lai was unprecedented in many ways, and it was likely meant to send a subtle message to China, with whom India’s relations have dramatically frayed over the same period that its Taiwan links have deepened.
Military clashes at the India-China border in 2020—in which nearly two dozen soldiers were killed—unraveled the bonhomie that Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping built during their respective first terms in office. Both countries have been building up troops and infrastructure at the border since, and India’s retaliation also included banning TikTok and dozens of other Chinese apps. (Notably, Xi has not officially congratulated Modi on his victory yet—unlike after past elections.)
“That was the time when [India] realized that if China is not paying attention to our red lines, why do we have to pay attention to China’s red lines?” said Sana Hashmi—a fellow at a Taipei-based think tank called the Taiwan-Asia Exchange Foundation—who has previously worked with the Indian and Taiwanese foreign ministries. “Over the years, we have seen China give India ample reason to focus on Taiwan,” she added.
India, like the United States and many other countries, officially adheres to a “One China” policy that recognizes the government in Beijing as China’s sole global representative—though New Delhi has not publicly reiterated that stance for more than a decade. (Modi’s reply to Lai, notably, did not include any possible trigger words, such as “Taiwan” or “president.”)
