Nature — two civilizational states, one paradox

Both are civilizational states with long historical legacies that still shape perception. Alka Acharya: Buddhism travelled from India to China with the legends of Fa Xian, Xuan Zhang and Kumarajiva; in the 16th–17th centuries both were strong trading empires; the 19th–20th brought decline under imperialism.

Pardesi’s core claim

Manjeet S. Pardesi: India and China have been locked in intense strategic rivalry since the late 1940s. They hold the world’s longest unmarked land border and grapple with Tibet, China’s tie to Pakistan, and military-nuclear disparities. The rivalry is a contest for influence and status in overlapping spheres — South and South-East Asia, the Tibetan plateau, the Himalayan states, parts of Central Asia and the Indian Ocean.

The yin and yang of the relationship is a paradox — expanding engagement and rising trade alongside low mutual trust, with a persistent belief that Beijing aims to impede India’s ascension.

Alka Acharya

Typologies scholars use

• Zorawar Daulet Singh: competition–cooperation–discord. Manoj Joshi: the four C’s — conflict, competition, cooperation, containment. Shashi Tharoor: a “cold peace” turned icy.
• Shyam Saran, on China’s Middle Kingdom complex: China sees itself as the civilized centre; India never claimed such centrality (Bharatvarsha, with India as one petal, Jambudwipa) — a worldview gap that makes confrontation likelier than cooperation, worsened by India’s poor familiarity with China.
• Samir Saran: China wants to be the sole continental power — a Chinese adage, “one mountain cannot contain two tigers.” Zhao Gancheng: a prisoner’s dilemma left by the 1962 worst-case start; Panchsheel idealism no longer works.

The four phases — what actually drove each

The Modi years · and post-2020 deterrence

• The first year began badly — China left out of the swearing-in; Modi’s Arunachal visit drew objections. Xi’s Sep 2014 visit brought a $20 bn pledge but coincided with a Ladakh incursion; Modi declined APEC. Boundary talks (Doval–Yang Jiechi) produced little.
• At Raisina 2017 China pressed OBOR; India objected to CPEC through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and refused to join. The Doklam standoff (Jun 2017) raised alarm near the Siliguri Corridor. The Wuhan (2018) and Mahabalipuram (2019) informal summits were largely inconsequential.

Why Galwan mattered (Mayuri Banerjee)

June 2020 — 20 Indian soldiers killed. It broke the 1988 consensus that had kept the border separate from the wider relationship, moving the frontier to the centre of ties; with the border-management framework severely compromised, interaction becomes more adversarial and volatile.

• After Pelosi’s Taiwan visit India refused to reiterate its ‘one-China’ policy; Tawang clashes (Dec 2022) followed a new land-border law and objections to the India-US Yudh Abhyas.
• The disengagement (21 Oct 2024). Agreement on patrolling in Depsang and Demchok — the last two of six points the PLA had blockaded since 2020 (Galwan, Pangong Tso, Gogra and Hot Springs the others); it restored patrolling and grazing rights and added coordinated patrols to avoid face-offs. Two days later Modi and Xi met at Kazan (BRICS, 23 Oct 2024), the first bilateral since 2019, and directed the Special Representatives to meet.
• The thaw. Jaishankar told the Lok Sabha (3 Dec 2024) disengagement was “achieved in full” in eastern Ladakh, with de-escalation the next step (17 WMCC meetings, 21 senior-commander rounds since June 2020); the 23rd SR round (Doval–Wang Yi, Dec 2024) revived the channel. At Tianjin (SCO, 31 Aug 2025) — Modi’s first China visit in seven years — the two called themselves “development partners and not rivals”, and Modi invited Xi to the 2026 BRICS Summit in India. Direct flights, the Kailash Mansarovar Yatra and eased rare-earth-magnet curbs followed.

Disengagement is not resolution

The pool reads the deal as a pause, not a settlement. Saheb Singh Chadha (Carnegie India) shows progress came only when leader-level meetings framed the talks, with over 100,000 troops still facing off; Arzan Tarapore holds it did not restore the status quo ante — disengagement has not led to de-escalation or de-induction; Manoj Joshi notes it restored patrolling rights, but the harder task of thinning the massed forces (roughly 20,000–30,000 PLA forward-deployed, surge near 50,000) still lies ahead.

Two meanings of ‘normalcy’

• India holds that the state of the border sets the state of the relationship (‘border first, development always’); China wants the boundary question not to define or hold back the overall picture. Swaran Singh places ties in ‘management mode’ — neither breakdown nor recovery; Ghulam Ali reads the rapprochement as durable, Shanthie Mariet D’Souza as unstable given deep distrust.

“They reaffirmed that the two countries were development partners and not rivals, and that their differences should not turn into disputes.”

PMO / PIB, Tianjin readout, 31 August 2025

“With China you have to compete, cooperate, co-exist, confront and contest.” — Gen. Upendra Dwivedi, Chanakya Defence Dialogue, 1 October 2024

The boundary dispute — three sectors

China’s package proposal, and Shyam Saran’s formula

• In 1985 China reinterpreted the package proposal — India to concede in the east (the largest disputed area) for undefined western concessions — and made an explicit demand for the “restitution” of Tawang, hardening its position.
• Shyam Saran suggests an LAC-plus solution — a limited Chinese territorial concession on the Indian side against free access to Tawang for Chinese pilgrims — a ‘Package Proposal without Tawang’ meeting somewhere in the middle.

Areas of cooperation

Economic

• Reforms (China 1978, India 1991) built trade: China is India’s third-largest trading partner, India China’s thirteenth; two-way trade crossed US$ 100 bn (2022) and reached US$ 127.7 bn by FY2024–25. Investment rose in IT, pharma and automobiles; a combined market of 2.7 billion people and 20% of world GDP holds large potential.
• The tie is deeply asymmetric — India exports raw materials while importing manufactures; the trade deficit reached a record US$ 99.2 bn in FY2024–25.

Multilateral, climate & energy

• Both work through the G20, BRICS (NDB, CRA), the AIIB, the SCO, the Russia-India-China trilateral and BASIC to dilute Western dominance of the IMF, WTO and World Bank.
• At COP26 they aligned to turn a coal ‘phase-out’ into ‘phase-down’; both sit in BASIC and the Like-Minded Group. China is the largest solar manufacturer, and India depends on it for panels and chips.
• Energy: the Oil Buyers’ Club (2018), a Joint Working Group on energy (2019), ITER, and GAIL’s 10% stake in China Gas Holdings.

Areas of contestation and competition

The trade deficit

• FY2024–25 was a record — the deficit reached US$ 99.2 bn on two-way trade of US$ 127.7 bn (imports US$ 113.5 bn against exports US$ 14.25 bn), with India dependent on China for about 70% of pharmaceutical ingredients. Causes — dumping of steel and low-quality goods, sanitary and phytosanitary barriers, undervalued farm exports, curbs on Indian pharmaceuticals even where US, EU and Japanese regulators approve, and limited IT market access.
• Amit Kumar (Takshashila) argues almost all Chinese exports to India are substitutable, so Beijing’s coercive room is limited and de-risking, not decoupling, is the sensible course; after 2020 India used investment screening and app bans, but the 2024 Economic Survey and business lobbies pushed to ease curbs to serve ‘Make in India’ — selective opening under caution, the deficit itself a standing concern.

Structural contests

• Political — India’s reluctance to endorse the One-China policy on Taiwan and Tibet; Chinese opposition to India’s permanent UNSC seat and NSG entry.
• Regional — rival influence in South Asia (Sri Lanka, Gwadar) and the Indo-Pacific.
• Cyber & technology — alleged cyberattacks and espionage; concern over Chinese telecom equipment such as Huawei in 5G.
• Perception, military build-up and investment — mutual encirclement fears, the enduring effect of 1962, escalation risk, and apprehension about Chinese investment in sensitive sectors.

The China–Pakistan axis

• The axis has damaged India’s rise and complicated its Afghanistan policy. Boundaries were demarcated before 1962; an entente formed before 1965; China threatened a second front in 1965.
• China has assisted Pakistan’s nuclear programme across three decades — fissile material in the 1980s, missiles in the 1990s, reactors thereafter — and in 1969 set up a ‘coordination bureau’ to arm Indian insurgents; Andrew Small holds this policy was never fully abandoned.

Pakistan’s real value is that “an India that is forced to look nervously over its shoulder at its western neighbour is easier for Beijing to manage.”

Andrew Small

“China-Pak friendship is higher than the Himalayas and deeper than the deepest sea in the world and sweeter than honey.”

Nawaz Sharif

• After the abrogation of Article 370, China helped internationalise Kashmir; CPEC, Gwadar and OBOR through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir are read as encirclement using Pakistan as a proxy. Manjeet S. Pardesi: Gilgit-Baltistan borders China, and PLA presence there has raised talk of ‘de facto control’. Pakistan is thus both a Chinese pawn against India and a platform for power projection.

India, China & the United States · and the Russia triangle

• Manjeet S. Pardesi: China’s biggest concern is India’s growing strategic link with the US — it noted Clinton’s call to India to ‘engage East and Act East’ and resented the 2008 NSG waiver for a non-NPT India.
• China equates the Quad with AUKUS; India’s Yudh Abhyas 2022 within 100 km of the LAC was a show of strength, and the Tawang clash followed. The trade war since 2018 helped push Beijing toward the Wuhan reset.

To check China, India needs a ‘Go West’ strategy — using its Gulf goodwill — while the security dilemma risks a “vicious cycle of competition, arms race and conflict.”

C. Raja Mohan

The India–China–US triangle and hedging

• Harsh V. Pant & Atul Kumar describe a triangle of apprehension held together by mutual mistrust, each power fearing it will be outflanked; they read Modi’s China outreach as hedging and calibrated multi-alignment, sharpened by a sharp downturn with Washington — 50% US tariffs (Aug 2025: a 25% reciprocal tariff plus a 25% Russian-oil penalty), the revoked Chabahar waiver and a US$100,000 H-1B levy.
• Anna Maria Treifeldt (ICDS) reads the same outreach as continuity, not departure — a return to India’s familiar hedging inside the older US–China–USSR triangle; Ashley J. Tellis is the sceptic — Washington’s hope of turning India against China stays unrealised, and multi-alignment limits any joint effort. Both hedging readings agree: the China opening buys room to manage Washington, and is no strategic tilt to Beijing.

“New Delhi’s aim is simply to maintain short-term stability with Beijing while it manages uncertainty with Washington.”

Anna Maria Treifeldt, ICDS, 2026

India in the Russia–China–US triangle

• India manages this through strategic autonomy, but the Sino-Russian “no-limits” convergence unsettles Delhi: Russia turned to China after Western isolation; India’s Russian arms share fell from 60% to 45%; Russia and China together rejected a G20 consensus statement under India’s chair.
• India promotes itself as a Global South leader and has rejected the BRI; China remains its top strategic rival. Manoj Joshi: Delhi is a Eurasian swing power — military ties with Moscow, economic weight of Beijing, America as counterweight.

India, China & the neighbourhood — the ‘five fingers’

• John Mearsheimer: a state secures itself only as a regional hegemon, and a rising power seeks to change the order — a pessimistic reading of China’s rise. Ye Hai Lin: Indian and Chinese ‘surrounding areas’ overlap, and South Asia is the contested space.

The five-finger policy

Attributed to Mao’s vision — Tibet is the palm, the five fingers are Ladakh · Nepal · Sikkim · Bhutan · Arunachal

• Country picture: Bhutan (a Buddha statue built; China wants diplomatic ties), Nepal (connected to Tibet), Bangladesh (loans, BCIM), Myanmar (junta-era help), Sri Lanka (Hambantota), Maldives (drift), Pakistan (Gwadar, CPEC). T. Singh: Chinese naval presence has narrowed India’s sphere (Djibouti base, Hambantota). Pattnaik: today’s competition is fiercer than before through large BRI projects; RN Ravi calls it neocolonialism through debt traps.

Bhutan — the border as India’s security issue

• Bhutan is one finger; the 470 km boundary is disputed in four areas — Doklam (west), Charithang, Sinchulimpa and Dramana. China seeks the western sector near the tri-junction, close to India’s Siliguri Corridor (the ‘chicken’s neck’); the Chumbi Valley matters equally to China. Japan will open a mission in Thimphu, and Bhutan is no longer an Indian protectorate — Indian policy must be carefully calibrated.

Competition in the Indo-Pacific · and the South China Sea

• Indian Ocean sea lanes and chokepoints — Hormuz and Malacca carry more than half the world’s maritime oil. India is the region’s most important naval power and aspires to be the net security provider; its Andaman & Nicobar position gives it a hold over Chinese commerce through Malacca, which is why the maritime theatre suits Indian strategy better than the continental one.
• South China Sea: China claims the Nine Dash Line (71% of cargo passes through); the Hague Tribunal (2016) rejected it in Philippines v. China, and China rejects UNCLOS. India’s position rests on freedom of navigation (the 2015 Joint Strategic Vision), Vietnam oil exploration, and opposition with Japan to any unilateral change of status quo.
• Restraint is deliberate — India is more reserved on the South China Sea and Taiwan than on the LAC, which invites the criticism of asymmetry with its own insistence on rules at the border.

Scholars · theory · policy (China)

Views of scholars

• Manjeet S. Pardesi: a contest over both territory and status; India should deal with China as a great power and an independent pole by building its own power. Shivshankar Menon: ‘manage’ ties — both negotiate assuming a better future position, so neither closes the deal; the modus vivendi “no longer holds.”
• Shyam Saran: the asymmetry keeps widening; India must field asymmetric capabilities and enmesh itself in the US-led coalition. C. Raja Mohan: cooperate wherever possible, contain wherever necessary. Brahma Chellaney labels Beijing’s posture the ‘three-no’ policy; Kanti Bajpai lists the 4 Ps — perceptions, perimeters, partnerships, power.
• Ashok Kantha: build capacity and deterrence rather than confront head-on; B. Chengappa: use soft power and shed the image of an “arrogant, overbearing patriarch.”

India must be open-minded and imaginative; the trade deficit is unsustainable, the border is best managed by infrastructure and asymmetric capabilities, and equilibrium needs “three mutuals” — respect, sensitivity and interest.

S. Jaishankar

Theoretical lenses: Realism / realpolitik · Balance of power · Complex interdependence · Constructivism — identity · Security dilemma

Policy direction

• India works from ‘peaceful coexistence’, China from Mao’s ‘five fingers’. Both block each other — China on the UNSC and NSG, India on OBOR and the Quad. China prefers to “manage” not “resolve” the boundary, Tibetan refugees and river-water sharing, and is reluctant to build a consultative mechanism for South Asia even as it opposes Japanese investment in Arunachal while investing in Pakistan-administered Kashmir.
• Practical steps: blend deterrence, agile deployment and diplomacy; shift competition seaward through naval modernisation and coalitions (Quad, SAGAR, the Indo-Pacific Oceans Initiative); and deliver faster on connectivity under Neighbourhood First.

Assessment — where each relationship stands

What the five have in common

• Each was frozen by the Cold War and thawed by the same three events — the Soviet collapse, the 1991 reforms, and the rise of China. The systemic level explains the direction, the domestic level the pace, and India’s economy sets how much it can absorb.

The three triangles

• India’s real bargaining now runs through India–US–China, India–Russia–US and China–Russia–India; India’s room to manoeuvre rests on being wanted by more than one party and committed to none. The binding constraint across all three is capability — Shyam Saran on the widening asymmetry with China, Paul Staniland on the limits of what a hard-pressed power can deliver.

Conclusion

India’s engagement with the great powers is no longer about choosing sides but about managing several relationships that pull in different directions at once — the US supplies technology and maritime weight; Russia, platforms and a veto; Japan, capital and a stake in the Indo-Pacific; Europe, markets, standards and investment; China, both the largest trading relationship and the principal security threat.

None can be treated in isolation, because each is now a variable in the others. What holds the strategy together is neither non-alignment nor alignment, but the insistence on retaining the freedom to choose — and that freedom is a function of capability.

Partnerships convert into influence only to the extent that India can absorb technology, deliver projects, and close the power gap — India will be judged by the quality of its delivery.

S. Jaishankar

India, the United States and China

• David M. Malone → a growing India, a declining Pakistan and an increasingly powerful China combined to motivate the entente. One feature of the new American South Asia policy was the conceptual decoupling of India and Pakistan; China, not Pakistan, gradually emerged as the third party in the relationship.

‘when the first and second-ranked powers fight, the first often ardently courts the third.’

Ashutosh Varshney, on ‘a new triangle’

• Shared concerns — China’s rapid growth, heavy investment in military capabilities, and progress in artificial intelligence and 5G telecommunications.
• Condoleezza Rice, well before the rebalance, argued the U.S. should pay closer attention to India as ‘an element in China’s calculation’. The Bush administration recalibrated South Asia policy, counting India among the ‘major powers’ with Russia and China, and grooming India to support the U.S. against a rising China, in censuring Iran, and as a partner in controlling the Indian Ocean.
• Hillary Clinton in Hanoi (July 2010) → “the United States has a national interest in freedom of navigation, open access to Asia’s maritime commons, and respect for international law in the South China Sea.”
• Technology hedging — both banned Huawei, a company with suspected links to the PLA, protecting domestic 5G capability; Western companies moved out of China toward other Asian countries including India; the U.S. tightened market access for China after realising that increased trade had strengthened Beijing’s hand, an area where India had already banned Chinese companies and apps.
• Partnership for Quality Infrastructure in the Indo-Pacific. America’s national security strategy under Biden reaffirmed China as its greatest threat.
• Shivshankar Menon → there has been a conviction that a true India-US strategic partnership serves India’s national interests in the changed geopolitical situation; though neither states it explicitly, China’s ascent has been a significant motivating factor.
• Doctrinal overlap — India’s Act East and SAGAR against America’s ARIA and FOIP; a declassified 2018 US Indo-Pacific strategy paper called for India to become “a net security provider”.
• Harsh V. Pant → India is “key to US efforts to preserve a stable balance in the Indo-Pacific”, yet may keep the “principled distance” that safeguards strategic autonomy. Limits of ‘natural’ convergence: India’s ties with Russia and Iran, the S-400 and CAATSA, trade and visa frictions, and Indian insistence on strategic autonomy.
• Residual worry in India that Washington does not share its concern over Chinese irredentism in the Himalayas and splits attention toward Russia.

From Asia-Pacific to Indo-Pacific

Geopolitical imagination

A mental map in which there is no single way of framing the world — and power contests change this mental topography. “Asia-Pacific” and “Indo-Pacific” are two such constructs defining twenty-first century geopolitics; despite overlap and efforts to change the official vernacular, a tension remains between them.

Two constructs, two centres of gravity

• Asia-Pacific emerged in the 1960s and was institutionalised through the formation of APEC in the 1980s. Two shortcomings: it was not inclusive of important regional countries such as India, and it did not take into account the growing importance of the Indian Ocean for world maritime trade.
• It was Japan that saw the need to accommodate both shortcomings and, with support from Australia and the United States, championed the concept of the Indo-Pacific. Debate over the shape of the region is far from settled, and with that lies the promise of ongoing rivalry.
• The Indo-Pacific has emerged as the geopolitical epicentre of the twenty-first century, shaping global trade, security dynamics and normative contestations over regional order. It encompasses a vast maritime space stretching from the eastern coast of Africa to the western shores of the Americas, hosting nearly 60% of global GDP and facilitating two-thirds of global energy flows and over 90% of international trade by volume (Brewster, 2021). Its significance lies not only in economic centrality but in the intensifying rivalries that traverse it — between a rising China and a recalibrating United States, and in the strategic responses of middle powers such as Japan, Australia and, increasingly, India.
• The conceptual emergence of the Indo-Pacific as a unified construct represents a shift from the earlier Asia-Pacific paradigm, reflecting the securitisation of the maritime commons and the growing salience of the Indian Ocean in global power politics. The region houses 38 states, about 62% of global GDP and half of world trade.
• Authorship — Shinzo Abe’s “confluence of the two seas” and “broader Asia” supplied the intellectual frame, drawing on Dara Shikoh. Chokepoints such as Hormuz and Malacca carry more than half of maritime oil trade.
• Strategic content — joining the Pacific and Indian Oceans into a single theatre is what makes the Quad, FOIP, IPEF and the EU’s Indo-Pacific Strategy coherent. Indian stake — it moves India out of the South Asia box and beyond South-East Asia, where the Look East policy had stopped, and supports the ambition of being net security provider. The change of vocabulary is a change of strategy.

India’s response to the Indo-Pacific

• Formulation — given by PM Modi at Shangri-La (June 2018), resting on “inclusiveness, openness and ASEAN centrality and unity” — deliberately not a containment framework.
• Institutional participation — the Quad, upgraded to summit level; IPEF, where India joined the Overarching Agreement and Pillars 3 and 4 in 2024; the Indo-Pacific Oceans Initiative, which the United States has joined; and the Indian Ocean Rim Association.
• Doctrinal instruments — Act East, SAGAR, Project Mausam, and the “net security provider” ambition.
• Bilateral architecture — the 2015 Joint Strategic Vision for the Asia-Pacific and the Indian Ocean Region with the United States; the Act East Forum with Japan; the Joint Strategic Vision with France for the Indian Ocean Region (2018).
• Maritime capability — Malabar with Japan as a permanent participant since 2015, the Andaman and Nicobar build-up, and associate partnership in the Combined Maritime Forces from 2023.
• European dimension — the EU’s Indo-Pacific Strategy (2021) and the national strategies of France, Germany and the Netherlands have brought Europe back into Asian waters, which New Delhi now welcomes. India has accepted the geography, joined the institutions, and refused the alliance.

CPEC and the China factor

How Sino-Pakistan ties were built

• 1950s–60s → contacts at governmental, professional and intellectual levels, thin in political and economic content. Pakistan served as China’s main bridge to the Islamic world and helped bridge the communication gap between the PRC and the West.
• 1960s–70s → Pakistan’s disenchantment with the West coincided with trouble from India; the relationship was built in the aftermath of the 1962 border war. In 1963 Pakistan ceded the Shaksgam Valley to China, which then supplied arms, materials for the nuclear weapons programme and economic aid.
• 1965 war → of all Pakistan’s supporters China spoke loudest, linking the Sino-Indian and Indo-Pakistan conflicts and asserting a single Indian design of expansionism. In 1971 China treated events in Pakistan as an internal affair to be settled without foreign intervention.
• 1990s → Li Peng’s April 1999 visit defined a broad consensus on regional and international issues.

CPEC and its consequences

• CPEC, a flagship of the Belt and Road Initiative, passes through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.
• Geostrategic → transforms China’s Malacca Dilemma into India’s Gwadar Dilemma.
• Geo-economic → undercuts India’s stance towards Pakistan, shifts Pakistan away from South Asian integration, and reduces the value of economic isolation as an Indian instrument.
• Manoj Joshi and P.S. Raghavan → India could consider participating in regional trade if Pakistan and China open cross-South Asian routes. Hardeep S. Puri → maintain resistance to CPEC to safeguard sovereignty.

The relationship raises the specter that India may, in the future, face a two-front war, a scenario that would have been implausible a decade ago.

Manjari Chatterjee Miller

Implications for India

• Jayadeva Ranade → with Chinese military power flowing into Pakistan, China straddles India on the northern, eastern and western borders, raising the prospect of a two-front war and positioning China to play a role in Kashmir. Since 2010 Pakistan is the only country with which China has an “all-weather strategic partnership”.
• Under Xi Jinping, China’s earlier practice of managing or deferring contentious issues has been discarded for a direct and aggressive approach.
• The ‘Rejuvenation of the great Chinese nation’ means “the recovery of territories that China feels it has lost through the imposition of unequal treaties by hostile foreign powers” — hence the framing of the border question as a colonial legacy, and claims to Aksai Chin, Ladakh, Jammu and Kashmir, Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim, reinforced by stapled visas.
• The relationship is not problem-free → Chinese wariness about Islamist militants in Xinjiang and their Pakistani links, attacks on Chinese citizens in Pakistan, sporadic opposition to CPEC, and Chinese caution on Kashmir. It is nevertheless no longer a mere relationship but a genuine partnership.