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ABSTRACT
China views India as an asymmetric (‘lesser’) rival that has the ability to obstruct China’s grand strategic goals. China’s long-term goals are domination in East Asia followed by Asia-wide domination, and finally global pre-eminence. The asymmetric dimension of their rivalry is rooted in the ego-relevancy cognitive bias in the Chinese elites’ perceptions of Indian history and statehood. Consequently, China does not consider India as a ‘peer’. This perceptual dimension pre-dates their material power asymmetry. Nevertheless, China perceives India as an ‘imperial’ rival that interferes in China’s Tibet. Furthermore, India’s ‘hegemonic’ ambitions in Southern Asia pose a challenge for China at the pan-Asian level, and may even undermine Chinese domination in East Asia. Thus understood, there are three implications for the Sino-Indian rivalry. First, the positional and territorial dimensions of their rivalry are now intertwined and will be difficult to resolve. Second, this is not just a dyadic rivalry as it will interact with their relations with the United States, Japan, and Pakistan, thereby creating new uncertainties. Finally, the military undertones of this rivalry are spilling over into other regional countries. This rivalry will intensify if India pursues internal or external balancing, or if India charts a distinct path to politico-economic modernisation.
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Notes
1 These images change only in response to changes in physical interaction capacity of the belligerents.
2 Xi became the Chairman of the CMC in 2012 and has since become the ‘Commander-in-Chief’ of the CMC joint battle command center. See Ramzy Citation2016.
3 However, in contrast to my cognitive approach, Norris (Citation2016) assumes that China behaves as a ‘rational actor.’
4 The writings of China’s leading scholars are available in the English language as are the articles published in the journals mentioned above.
5 On the distinction between hegemony and primacy, see Walt (Citation2018).
6 Yan was named among the Top 100 public intellectuals in the world in 2008 by Foreign Policy/Prospect.
7 Wang was named among the Top 100 public intellectuals in the world in 2012 by Foreign Policy.
8 On the wide and varied views in the discipline on what a rising China seeks, see Toje Citation2018.
9 I would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for helping me articulate this point better.
10 This is implied in Garver Citation2002 and Fang Citation2013.
11 For example, see ‘Article by Hu Chin in World Culture,’ (extract), 9 September 1949; and ‘‘The Nehru Government Cannot Explain Away the Plot to Annex Tibet,’ article by Chinese Jurist Ho Hsu-ching’ in People’s Daily as broadcast by Peking Radio,’ 13 September 1949, in Jain (Citation1981, 6–7).
12 China’s GDP was $239,903 million whereas India’s GDP was $222,222 million in 1950. See Maddison (Citation2003, 259).
13 For a different argument that China is in fact ‘underbalancing’ against India due to its domestic politics, see Mastro (Citation2019).
14 On the historical status of Tibet, which is beyond the scope of this article, see Sperling (Citation2012).
15 The SFF was created sometime between 26 October 1962 and 13 November 1962. See Conboy and Morrison (Citation2002, 284) and Avedon (Citation1994, 21).
16 See the website of the Tibetan Youth Congress. Available: https://www.tibetanyouthcongress.org/about-tyc/ (accessed: 30 September 2020).
17 In the 1970s and 1980s, the Dalai Lama shifted his demand of Tibetan independence to genuine Tibetan ‘autonomy’ as a part of the PRC.
18 Aksai Chin, an extension of the Tibetan plateau, is administratively a part of Xinjiang today.
19 For the full-text, see Jain (Citation1960, 17–18).
20 On ‘issue-linkage,’ see Wiegand (Citation2011, 45–49).
21 On ‘complex rivalry,’ see Thompson (Citation2015, 7–9).
22 Pakistan is also an important partner for China for other reasons such as its geostrategic location and its assistance with China’s internal security issues in Xinjiang. See Small (Citation2015).
23 This observation was first made almost a decade ago by Garver (Citation2011).
24 The US-Pakistan relationship which is a partnership despite its multiple tensions will add to this complexity.
25 These five crises occurred in 2013, 2014, 2015, 2017, and 2020. See Green (Citation2020).
26 India clocked in higher growth rates than China every year between 2014 and 2018 (7.4%, 8.0%, 8.2%, 7.2%, and 6.8% for India compared to 7.3%, 6.9%, 6.7%, 6.8%, and 6.6% for China). See the World Development Indicators, The World Bank, available: https://databank.worldbank.org/source/world-development-indicators (accessed: 25 May 2020).
27 Both India and China also face significant structural economic issues and it remains unclear whether or not they will be able to maintain high growth rates into the future.
28 On China’s meritocratic-authoritarian political system, see Li (Citation2013a). On the different versions of capitalism (including state capitalism), see Buzan and Lawson (Citation2014).
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Manjeet S. Pardesi
Manjeet S. Pardesi is Senior Lecturer in International Relations and Asia Research Fellow at the Centre for Strategic Studies, Victoria University of Wellington.