India’s perspective towards China in their shared South Asian neighbourhood: cooperation versus competition

ABSTRACT

India’s top foreign policy priority is its neighbourhood of South Asia and the Indian Ocean, which it shares with China. This article seeks to understand how India views its largest and most powerful neighbour China in their shared neighbourhood. In view of the nature of the geographical location of the two major rising powers, India seeks to engage China through a mix of cooperation and competition. An unprecedented growth in Sino-Indian bilateral trade has taken place, with China becoming India’s largest trade partner. Yet, this dominant geo-economic narrative until the mid-2000s is increasingly being challenged by the dynamics of competition between the two countries in their shared neighbourhood. This has sharpened over their border dispute impacting Bhutan, new dramatic Chinese economic-focused initiatives in South Asia and an expansion of Chinese influence and presence in the Indian Ocean.

KEYWORDS:

• India-China relations
• South Asia
• Indian Ocean

Acknowledgements

The author would like to express his deep gratitude to Viraj Solanki, Research Analyst for South Asia, IISS, for his painstaking research, inputs and contribution to this article. The author would also like to thank Antoine Levesques, Research Associate for South Asia, IISS, for his policy-relevant inputs on this issue.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Rahul Roy-Chaudhury is the Senior Fellow for South Asia at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), based in London. His research focuses on India's domestic politics and security; India's neighbourhood foreign and security policy; and the Indian navy and the Indian Ocean. Earlier, he served in the National Security Council Secretariat in the Prime Minister's Office in the previous BJP government in India. He organises several ‘track 1.5’ conferences on South Asia, which are held in Islamabad, New Delhi, Oman, Singapore, Bahrain and London.

Notes

1 Statistics from: Government of India, 2010; Government of India, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, 2001, 2016, 2017b; Yuan, 2016, p. 36.