India Softens Its Portrayal of China, and Talk of a Eurasian Axis Returns

India's popular culture is shifting its treatment of China. After the 2020 Galwan Valley clashes turned Indian public sentiment sharply against Beijing, Bollywood is now dropping China as a default villain, a change the South China Morning Post describes as a sign of improving official ties and a possible step toward closer coordination among Russia, China and India.

From Moscow, the framing is more explicit. Gennady Zyuganov, leader of Russia's Communist Party, argued in a broadcast that peace depends on the combined strength of Russia, China, India, Vietnam and North Korea, language that recasts a loose grouping as a deliberate alliance to oppose the West.

These are signals, not a settled bloc, and India in particular guards its strategic independence and remains wary of subordinating itself to Beijing. Taken together with separate moves by Indonesia and others toward Eurasian trade arrangements, they point to the gradual, uneven movement toward a multipolar order that underlies much of today's geopolitics.