NEW DELHI: External affairs minister S Jaishankar on Saturday said that India’s relationship with China should not be viewed through the prism of its ties with the United States. Speaking at The Economic Times World Leaders Forum 2025, Jaishankar said, “What I want you to understand is it’s not black and white. It’s not that something has happened with America, so therefore, immediately, something has happened with China. There are different timelines of different lengths on different problems.” He added that it would be a “mistaken analysis” to assume events with Washington automatically dictated New Delhi’s stance with Beijing. “There is a flow of that relationship. There are other relationships, but don’t make this connection so tight, don’t make it a causality. That’s not the reality,” he said. The minister’s comments come against the backdrop of trade tensions with Washington after the Trump administration sharply raised tariffs on Indian goods, in response to New Delhi’s purchase of Russian oil. Jaishankar said India remained committed to protecting its farmers and small producers, calling the tariff hike “unjustified and unreasonable.” He argued the issue had been mischaracterised as an oil dispute, pointing out that larger importers such as China and European nations had not faced similar criticism. “The same arguments that have been used to target India have not been applied to the largest oil importer, which is China, and have not been applied to the largest LNG importer, which is the European nations,” he said.Jaishankar’s remarks came soon after his visit to Moscow, where he met President Vladimir Putin and senior Russian officials, and ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s scheduled trip to Japan and China later this month for the SCO summit.
