INDIA AS RIVAL HUB TO CHINA
In another agreement, US chip giant Micron will invest US$800 million in a semiconductor assembly and testing plant in India, which is expected to reach US$2.75 billion after contributions from New Delhi.
A US official said the plant would advance a goal of diversifying supply chains of advanced semiconductors, as Biden leads a concerted effort to deny exports of top-end chips to China.
Micron nonetheless also recently announced a US$600 million investment in a factory in China, despite Beijing putting pressure on the company by declaring its chips unsafe for critical infrastructure projects.
India, a growing power in space, also agreed during Modi’s visit to join the Artemis Accords, a US-led multinational effort to put a human back on the Moon by 2025.
As part of the cooperation, India’s space program will work with NASA on a joint mission to the International Space Station next year, the White House said.
The United States has been seeking a closer relationship with India since the late 1990s, seeing the billion-plus democracy as like-minded on the challenges both of China and radical Islamism.
Biden already welcomed Modi to the White House as part of a summit of the so-called Quad – an initiative of four democracies including Japan and Australia that is widely seen as countering China’s influence in Asia.
RIGHTS CONCERNS
Modi had developed a close relationship with Biden’s predecessor Donald Trump, endearing himself by arranging a massive rally in his home state of Gujarat for the fellow right-wing populist.
The Biden administration has vowed a greater focus globally on human rights but has kept a light touch with Modi, who has exerted the Hindu majority’s identity in officially secular India.
The State Department in its latest report on religious freedom pointed to attacks by police and vigilantes against minorities and inflammatory statements by members of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party.
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a prominent progressive Democrat, said Wednesday she would boycott Modi’s speech, joining two of her congressional allies who are Muslim, Ilham Omar and Rashida Tlaib.
Ocasio-Cortez pointed out that Modi was banned from the United States during his tenure as Gujarat’s leader over riots in which mostly Muslims died, and that his government recently cracked down on the BBC over a documentary critical of his role on the 2002 violence.
Saying the US Congress should not invite leaders with “deeply troubling human rights records,” Ocasio-Cortez called for a boycott in support of “pluralism, tolerance and freedom of the press”.
But most Democrats are expected to attend the speech and the Biden administration has refrained from public criticism of Modi, seeing broader interests with India converging.