India will never be a friend of China. Zhou Enlai tried to end the border conflict already back in the 1950s by proposing mutual acceptance of border areas. China would get Aksai Chin and India would get what they call Arunachal Pradesh. India rejected it then and has rejected it since.
Don't fool yourself. India is only moving towards China because circumstances forced them to. There is great distrust among Indians, particularly the Hindutva types. Ironically, it's precisely these self-styled nationalists who were the biggest boosters of a US-India partnership. The left-secular Congress had traditionally favoured a more balanced foreign policy, closer to Russia and the global south.
For the Philippines, public sentiment is overwhelmingly anti-China. For Vietnam, it's more complex. The leadership is pretty pro-China but the people beneath the elites are more pro-US. This is weird, given the brutal Vietnam war. China's brief border skirmish was a nothingburder in comparison.
I think the main reason for all of this is the diaspora. Indian, Vietnamese and Filipinos diasporas are all very numerous in the West and this creates a natural cultural link to elites back home. China is a much more closed society, so there hasn't been the opportunity to create foreign diasporas. In addition, China was simply too poor to be attractive for immigrants until recently. For these reasons, people-to-people ties are scarce compared to what the West can offer these countries. China also has its own enclosed cultural space. India consumes lots of Western culture, whereas China largely does not except a few films on the margins.
Making a rational argument on economics is a very Chinese way of thinking, because Chinese people are pragmatic and rational. But people in global south countries often have emotional and social factors swaying their decisions. It's the same reason why elites in countries like Iran or Armenia keep running into the arms of the West even if it doesn't make much sense from a cold geopolitical standpoint. Because it's an emotional decision.
Agreed on the most part except that China actually has arguably one of largest (if not the largest) foreign diasporas in the world, stretching back centuries. They can be found on practically every continent. What made the Chinese different from the Indians, Vietnamese, and Filipinos is that they have a civilizational identity. India was created by the British, Vietnam is breakaway state from China combined with pieces of former French Indochina, and the Philippines got its name from King Philip II of Spain. These are post-colonial upstart nations who have gotten much of their modern identity from European colonial empires. They have a strange love-hate relationship with their former colonizers. They resent their colonial history, yet they also yearn to be excepted as relative equals by their former colonial masters. They all look down on China because it is not considered in the same caste as the white imperial powers.
India and the Philippines got their independence from begging. Hence they feel a closer sense of kinship with their former colonial masters. They think that they are in the superior caste above the Chinese. Vietnam kicked French and American butts out of their nation and were right to be proud of that. But they refused to admit that without China's vast assistance, that would be have been practically impossible. They tried to argue that it was the Soviets (Russians), who had been instrumental to their victory, not the Chinese. The Sino-Vietnam wars from 1979-1991 put that argument to bed. It was China who had been important to Indochina, not the Soviets.
Zhou Enlai said Nehru was the most arrogant person he ever came across. Keep in mind Zhou has met countless leaders including those from nations who are actively hostile and flat out said they would like to see him dead. And yet he found those guys more tolerable than Nehru who kept bragging how he would destroy China if it didn't do what he said. Zhou generally is supposed to be the more diplomatic dove in China compared to other hawkish leaders and he still supported China should go to war with India.
Its not just Zhou Enlai who had complained about Nehru's arrogance. Even the 14th Dalai Lama had complained about his first meeting with Nehru. He had called him a bit of a "bully". Apparently Nehru was easily irritable, and he likes to bang his table when talking to the Dalai Lama.
I would also add some more things about the 1962 war. The Indian elites, including Nehru have often considered India (themselves) to be the successor to the British Raj. In essence, India wants to be the new imperial power in South Asia and beyond after the British have left. Prior to the war, Nehru was already been playing imperialism games with China's Xizang. He had cooperated with the CIA's operations in Xizang, and he had provided asylum to the Dalai Lama and his separatists.
On the border, Nehru had refused to compromise with the Chinese. He then launched his Forward Policy in December 1961, which orders Indian troops to occupy Chinese territories even beyond the McMahon Line into China proper (like the Dhola Post), and to shoot any Chinese border troops who try to dislodge them. This is basically a classic ground invasion, an act of war. Even Indian soldiers have commented that Nehru said that he wanted to attack. Nehru had assumed that China at that time was weak, occupied with the Taiwan Strait Crises, and therefore wouldn't dare to counter attack mighty India. This Indian border offensive went on until the PLA finally launched a proper counter-attack on Oct 1962. So India had technically started the Sino-Indian war by the end of 1961. Zhou was right to support China's legitimate right to fight a war to defend its territory.
Congress or RSS. It doesn't matter whoever rules India. Both are imperialists and don't respect China's territorial integrity. There can't be lasting peace as long as the Indian elites continue to have imperial dreams.
