On 21 May, in the wake of a series of border skirmishes between China and India, Chinese electronics major Xiaomi quietly added a new page to its Indian website. Titled ‘Made in India’, the page does its best to paint Xiaomi, the country’s best-selling smartphone brand, as an Indian success story.
It touts the scale of Xiaomi’s manufacturing in India, the number of Indians it employs, and its Indian investments, including social media platform ShareChat. It goes further still, highlighting the company’s philanthropic activities in the country. These include donations to the families of martyred soldiers and the PMCares fund set up by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to help fight Covid-19.