WITH the thaw in India’s relations with China at the recent summits at Wuhan and Qingdao, India has renewed its bio to apply for membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) at its plenary meeting in Jourmala in Latvia. China has so far been the stumbling block. Membership of the NSG, the top club of 48 countries, which control access to technology and guards against non-proliferation is important for India to secure cutting edge high nuclear technology. Delhi had reached out to China in April and tried to convince interlocutors in Beijing to lift their objections at the NSG. But China had maintained silence on the issue. In April, joint secretary (Disarmament and International Security) Pankaj Sharma had met Beijing’s top interlocutor Wang Xun, head of the Disarmament division of the Chinese Government. Two years ago, in 2016, Wang had blocked a proposal to include India in the NSG. The then foreign secretary of India, S. Jaishankar visited Seoul to lobby with the other NSG countries. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has requested Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit to reconsider his decision. Modi had then approached the four export control regimes.
China had clubbed India and Pakistan together on the basis of both being non-signatories to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. According to China, neither meets the criteria for membership of the NSG. Why India has not joined the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and refused to sign the Comprehensive Nuclear Disarmament Treaty may be globally debatable. Whether or not China will relent on the issue is open to question. It was for denuclearisation of a fellow communist country, North Korea.