SANTA CLARA: China will never treat India as an equal partner and by amassing troops on the border, Beijing is forcing New Delhi to spend more money on defence than capital investment, Mukesh Aghi, the head of a top US-based India-centric business and strategic group has said.

The militaries of India and China have been locked in a standoff since May 2020 and a full resolution of the border row has not yet been achieved though the two sides have had several rounds of talks at the diplomatic and military levels.

“What we are witnessing today is for the first time in a human race, a democratic nation of 1.4 billion people has shown exponential growth in the economic arena,” Aghi, the president of the US-India Strategic and Partnership Forum (USISPF), said.

Reader correspondent