PM Narendra Modi treads a thin line between rising China, uncertain US

Next week, Modi will travel to China again, for a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation

US Defense Secretary James Mattis described India as the “fulcrum” of security in the Indo-Pacific region as he travelled this week to an annual security conference in Singapore, attended for the first time by an Indian leader.
 
But if Mattis was hoping that Prime Minister Narendra Modi would use the platform to join the US, Japan and Australia — a grouping known as the Quad — in a more muscular challenge to China’s regional expansion, he was disappointed. Instead, India’s strongest leader in decades navigated carefully between the two regional military powers.
 
Modi studiously avoided any mention of