Table Of ContentCoping
with
China-India
Rivalry
South Asian
Dilemmas
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Coping
with
China-India
Rivalry
South Asian
Dilemmas
editors
C Raja Mohan
Hernaikh Singh
World Scientific
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Raja Mohan, C., editor. | Singh, Hernaikh, editor.
Title: Coping with China-India rivalry : South Asian dilemmas / editors C
Raja Mohan, Hernaikh Singh.
Description: New Jersey : World Scientific, [2023] | Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022049657 | ISBN 9789811263712 (hardcover) |
ISBN 9789811263729 (ebook) | ISBN 9789811263736 (ebook other)
Subjects: LCSH: China--Foreign relations--India. | China--Foreign
relations--South Asia | India--Foreign relations--China. |
India--Foreign relations--South Asia | South Asia--Foreign
relations--India. | South Asia--Foreign relations--China.
Classification: LCC DS341 .C666 2023 | DDC 327.51054--dc23/eng/20221019
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022049657
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© 2023 World Scientific Publishing Company
https://doi.org/10.1142/9789811263729_fmatter
Preface
For close to two decades, the Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS) in
the National University of Singapore has been tracking the rapidly
growing interactions — economic, political and strategic — between East
Asia and the South Asian subcontinent. Of special interest to ISAS has
been the impact of a rising China on the South Asia’s international
relations. Although China has been an important external actor in South
Asia since the middle of the last century, it is only in the 21st century
that China became a decisive influence on the region’s evolution.
The emergence of China as the world’s second largest economy has
naturally made it the largest trading partner for most of the South Asian
countries. China’s rapid military modernisation, facilitated by its expansive
economic growth, has a major impact on the region’s security politics.
China’s political and diplomatic weight is now visible sharply not only in
the economic, foreign and security policies of the South Asian nations but
also in their domestic politics.
Meanwhile, India has emerged, albeit at a slower pace than China, as
a major power over the last two decades. Like Beijing, New Delhi’s
geopolitical aspirations too have steadily risen during that period. This has
set the stage for growing strategic friction between India and China. The
friction has enveloped many regional and global domains, but its greatest
expression has been in the shared South Asian neighbourhood. India is
determined to sustain its traditional primacy in the region and China is set
on consolidating its growing influence in South Asia. The sharpening
friction has also begun to intersect with the growing great power tensions,
especially between the United States and China. Many elements of these
v
vi Preface
new dynamics have drawn academic engagement, in particular from the
major power perspectives. However, the voices of the smaller South Asian
nations have not been sufficiently heard or analysed. This volume seeks
to address that major gap in the current discourse on the Indian
subcontinent and its changing role in great power politics.
This volume brings multiple regional voices to assess how the various
South Asian nations are dealing with the growing rivalry between India
and China. Many of the chapters in this volume were initially published
as shorter essays by ISAS in its South Asia Discussion Papers series in
2020. Those essays have been updated and expanded in this volume.
Additional contributions have also been commissioned to enrich the
special perspectives that this volume presents.
We thank Associate Professor Iqbal Singh Sevea, ISAS’ Director, for
his support for the project. We also express our gratitude to the chapter
contributors to this volume. Several of our colleagues at the ISAS also
provided their assistance to the project. We are thankful to Ms Wini Fred
Gurung, Ms Harpreet Kaur, Ms Claudia Chia and Ms Shavinyaa
Vijaykumarr in this respect. Finally, we owe special thanks to World
Scientific Publishing for bringing out this publication.
C. Raja Mohan
Hernaikh Singh
November 2022
6"×9" b4905 Coping with China–India Rivalry: South Asian Dilemmas
© 2023 World Scientific Publishing Company
https://doi.org/10.1142/9789811263729_fmatter
Contents
Preface v
Chapter 1 Introduction 1
C. Raja Mohan and Hernaikh Singh
Chapter 2 India and China in Afghanistan: A Renewed
Theatre of Contestation 7
Shanthie Mariet D’Souza
Chapter 3 Bangladesh’s Balancing of China and India:
Navigating Between Scylla and Charybdis 19
Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury
Chapter 4 The Egg between the Two Rocks: How Bhutan Has
Engaged India and China in Very Different Ways 29
Suhasini Haidar
Chapter 5 Drivers of the Maldives’ Foreign Policy on India
and China 43
Athaulla A. Rasheed
Chapter 6 India–China Rivalry in Nepal 55
Pramod Jaiswal
vii
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viii Contents
Chapter 7 China and Pakistan: From Tactical Alliance
to Strategic and Economic Interdependence 65
Touqir Hussain
Chapter 8 Competing for Influence: China and India
in Post-COVID-19 Sri Lanka 77
Chulanee Attanayake
Chapter 9 China: Exploring Certainties in Uncertain
Sino-Indian Relations 93
Zheng Haiqi
Chapter 10 India Meets China in Its Periphery 107
S. D. Muni
About the Authors 121
Index 125
© 2023 World Scientific Publishing Company
https://doi.org/10.1142/9789811263729_0001
Chapter 1
Introduction
C. Raja Mohan and Hernaikh Singh
Scholars of Sino-Indian relations have long argued that Beijing and
New Delhi are locked in a permanent structural rivalry.1 Yet, there has
been consistent ambition in both New Delhi and Beijing that they should
work together to build a new Asia. This aspiration dates to the early
20th century when Indian and Chinese nationalists gathered at the
1927 anti-imperialist Congress in Brussels and vowed to jointly build
the post-colonial order in Asia.2 However, the new forces rising out of
China and India struggled to build a steady and cooperative relationship as
the Second World War put them on the opposite sides of the Asian divide.
While the Indian nationalists focused on throwing the British out of India,
the Chinese nationalists were engaged in ending the occupation of
Japanese imperial forces. The Indian and Chinese eagerness to collaborate
and their inability to do so persisted through the 20th century.
In fact, the contradictions between independent India and the People’s
Republic of China became sharper as they found themselves sharing a
frontier after Mao Zedong gained control over Tibet. Their inability to
settle the dispute over the new boundary and the divergence over the Tibet
question saw the Sino-Indian bonhomie of the 1950s end in military
clashes in 1962. The normalisation of bilateral relations in the late 1980s
saw relative peace and tranquillity on the long and disputed frontier and a
steady expansion of bilateral economic and political relations as well as
regional and multilateral cooperation. However, that phase began to break
1
