"Superficial Closeness": China's Digs Over US Response To India Crisis

President Joe Biden on Sunday met growing calls in India to provide aid, with his administration pledging raw materials for vaccinating and finance to boost production of Covid-19 shots.

With the US dragging its feet in offering India help to combat the world's worst virus crisis, China is moving to drive a wedge between the democratic security partners. #Opinion: US' image among Indian public is crumbling as India's COVID-19 cases soar, yet US failed to offer any solid assistance. Indians feel betrayed. The rising anti-US sentiment will become an alarm bell to pro-US Indian elites. https://t.co/VyPUO68igo Respected @POTUS, if we are to truly unite in beating this virus, on behalf of the vaccine industry outside the U.S., I humbly request you to lift the embargo of raw material exports out of the U.S. so that vaccine production can ramp up. Your administration has the details. ???????? #Opinion: US' image among Indian public is crumbling as India's COVID-19 cases soar, yet US failed to offer any solid assistance. Indians feel betrayed. The rising anti-US sentiment will become an alarm bell to pro-US Indian elites. https://t.co/VyPUO68igo In a barrage of editorials, political cartoons and social-media posts in recent days, the Communist Party-backed Global Times newspaper blasted the US for failing to provide aid while calling on India to improve ties with Beijing. Highlighting the desperate situation in Delhi, where hospitals and crematoriums are overwhelmed, it suggested that India can't rely on the US. "This pandemic shows that the West's getting closer to India is more in a geopolitical sense," the Global Times, which serves as a key platform for China to send messages to the world, said in an editorial over the weekend. "Their closeness to each other is fragile and superficial." The comments out of China, coupled with the severity of the crisis in India, show how the imbalance in vaccinations between richer and poorer nations has the potential to reshape geopolitics as parts of the world start to reopen. Washington and New Delhi have strengthened ties over the past year amid a border clash in the Himalayas and India's efforts to attract companies looking to diversify away from China.