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BEGINNING in 1950, Sino-Indian camaraderie reached its buoyant apogee with the Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s inaugural visit to Beijing in October 1954, the leitmotif of which was the spirit of Hindi-Chini bhai bhai (India and China are brothers). Since then, it has been marked by a gradual trajectory of decline, due to a host of controversial reasons. The course of Sino-Indian relations has been convoluted, contentious and indecipherable, hence making it difficult to tell where facts end and myths begin.

Subsequent to the 1962 Himalayan debacle, the epistemic predicament has been further compounded by the media-generated refrain of rivalry between China and India, rendering it almost axiomatic that the two Asian neighbours are to always remain at odds with each other. This discursive construction of unmitigated tension has been buttressed by statements of policymakers, strategic experts and scholars, Indian rather than Chinese, though — while India is deemed to have a ‘China problem,’ China doesn’t have a corresponding ‘India problem.’ According to the security analyst, Harsh V Pant, ‘It is the structure of global politics that by definition makes Sino-Indian competition inevitable.’ Also taking a structuralist approach, Ashley J Tellis, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, contends that as emerging Asian powers, China and India will continue to vie for power and influence in South Asia and elsewhere. In the view of Shashi Tharoor, the prolific Indian scholar-diplomat-politician, Beijing is ‘a formidable adversary’ of New Delhi. Some Indian analysts are even apprehensive that China poses ‘an existential threat’ to New Delhi’s strategic interests in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal, as well as inside India. The eminent American Sinologist, John Garver, argues that ‘India and China share a fundamentally antagonistic and competitive relationship in which conflict is inherent.’

That being said, it should now be interesting to delve into the matter and determine the validity of these above-mentioned observations and to what extent China is actually an ‘existential threat’ for India. An attempt will be made to broadly assess the state of Sino-Indian relations through the connectivity, economic, governance and strategic prism, the four themes underpinning them.

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Connectivity

ACCORDING to Smruti Pattanaik, Research Fellow at the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, ‘India and particularly the West view BRI [Belt and Road Initiative] as a geo-economic manoeuvre by China to assert control over the world’s economic arteries from a geopolitical standpoint.’ As far as infrastructure and connectivity are concerned, the Chinese-sponsored BRI, Indo-Japanese Asia-Africa Growth Corridor, and the US-led Indo-Pacific Strategy, (including its private sector, market-based derivative, the Blue Dot Network infrastructure project, launched in response to the Chinese variant), are essentially complementary, not conflicting: if BRI is seeking to influence the global economic highways, so is IPS, but unlike the Cold War, the goals of the two projects are not zero-sum. Rather, they are manifestations of what one scholar has characterised as ‘messy alternative pluralisms’ and, as such, deserve to be treated not in black-and-white but in a nuanced manner. Likewise, the International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC), a 7,200-km-long multi-modal connectivity initiative launched by India, Iran and Russia in 2000, seeks to connect Eurasia along a north-south axis; BRI, too, aims to do the above-mentioned, but in the east-west direction. Mutually reinforcing each other, according to one Indian diplomat, ‘North-South Corridor and BRI are not incompatible.’ It may be mentioned that both China and India are involved in infrastructure development in Iran, often in the same project, like the Chabahar Port, a prospective trans-regional economic hub. Analogously, they are also to invest, without any ‘collision,’ in the Mongla port improvement project in Bangladesh for the trans-shipment of (Chinese?) goods to India’s landlocked northeast.

Given the benefits that BRI would potentially bring and the prospects of China and India ultimately achieving a community of common destiny, it is not inconceivable that, in order to boost economic productivity, in the not-so-distant future, even India itself may participate in the Chinese initiative. Connectivity and globalisation being intertwined, greater linkage will enable both China and India to further explore Asian markets through trade and investment. Their active collaboration in Central Asia and the Persian Gulf to extract resources through the market mechanism, foregoing competition for exclusive access, is telling. Besides, an integrated transport network to connect the four countries under the Bangladesh, China, India, Myanmar (BCIM) Economic Corridor sub-regional initiative can only be achieved with the two Asian powers working together. Infrastructure development, like highways, railroads and energy pipelines, by both along the Sino-Indian Line of Actual Control (LAC), ostensibly for military purposes, can also, under amicable circumstances, foster regional connectivity, thus joint development and trade relations between them. Similarly, the planned BRI trans-Himalayan 75-kilometre railway route across the China-Nepal border may also invigorate Sino-Indian trade in the future.

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Economic

CHINA and India are being extolled for presumably redeeming their glorious pre-19thÌýcentury/pre-colonial heritage through their re-emergence on the world stage. Reality, however, is far more complex than this simple narrative suggests. The template of Western state and multinational corporation-led achievement of China’s historical ‘modernisation’ project is being applied in 21st century India, too. After all, BRICS, the acronym of the four emerging countries who are to play a key role in reshaping the global economy — Brazil, Russia, India and China (South Africa having been added subsequently), was coined by the investment bank Goldman Sachs as a marketing tool. Globalisation, having undermined the concept of a truly national and independent economy, valorises the optimisation of primarily production and, secondarily, consumption. As its beneficiaries, the multinational corporations are exploring the market opportunity the two Asian votaries of globalisation (with one-third of the world population, vast cheap labour, and one-fourth global consumer spending, whose combined GDP by the turn of the next century is expected to be about 43 per cent of the global), embody. Concomitantly, the corporate quest for diversification and a relatively secure but lucrative location for their operations, the ‘China+1 strategy,’ is coming to fruition. With more than 1.4 billion potential consumers and $3.5 trillion GDP, India is poised to be the prospective ‘+1’ option, as well as the next development powerhouse.

China’s huge consumption market too has not escaped Indian policymakers’ attention, especially when it has replaced the US as India’s largest trading partner. When asked by an interviewer about the possibility of ‘very soon’ Bollywood producing films more responsive to Chinese rather than local sensibilities, the Indian minister of external affairs, Dr Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, responded unequivocally, ‘If [we] can make money on it, why not?’ Emerging separately but parallelly, they are practically ‘two peas in a pod,’ with India being a new China in the making: manufacturing is being outsourced to China and services to India, in which it has an advantage (though in the recent years, manufacturing is increasingly occurring there, too). The remarkable complementarity between their developmental evolution having hardly left any room for competitiveness and the economic relations between them operating synergistically, the two countries are considered to be the most yin and yang in the world, with China regarding India as a partner (albeit junior) rather than an adversary. Jairam Ramesh, a Congress leader, has even employed the portmanteau word ‘Chindia’ to denote the virtual symbiosis of China and India, having ‘separate beds but same dream.’ It should be noted that, flying under the radar and without any official acknowledgement, it’s difficult to gauge the magnitude of their bilateral trade volume and other economic transactions, which are far more robust than is reported.

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Governance

DESPITE enduring belief in binary ideologies, treading the same path, Chinese and Indian political systems are beginning to appear comparable, what with New Delhi’s authoritarian but pro-business ‘billionaire raj’ government, a la Chine, which may be an incipient reflection of what is quipped to be India’s ‘dictator envy for China.’ Since the 2014 election of prime minister Narendra Modi, the Chinese president Xi Jinping has been optimistic about rekindling the dormant Hindi-Chini bhai bhai ethos. Furthermore, renegotiating the post-1947 Nehruhvian consensus under the current political dispensation, the tenor of Indian democracy is attuning itself to the Chinese concept of democratic system. One can thus be forgiven for wondering whether the likelihood of Chinese values, norms and preferences subtly permeating the Indian body politic is farfetched. As an ‘autocratising’ country, the V-Democracy Institute regards ‘India [to be] on the verge of losing its status as a democracy,’ while a 2020 Freedom House report states that ‘the Indian government’s alarming departures from democratic norms under […] Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party could blur the values-based distinction between Beijing and New Delhi.’ In that case, India’s claim to be a democratic alternative to China becomes debatable.Globally too, China and India are working in tandem, both enjoying a shared vision for the 21st century, and are integral to a multipolar and multi-aligned global system, having compatible approaches to Myanmar, the Rohingya issue, trade negotiations at the World Trade Organisation, the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and climate change. Besides, both of them are benefiting from the Ukraine War alike. Their armies have also held joint military exercises, while the Indian Navy and the PLA Navy have been coordinating their counter-piracy missions in the Gulf of Aden since 2008. Mutual interests in jointly monitoring the maritime global commons, charting their future cooperation in the ocean economy, and underwriting regional stability for sustained economic growth, as well as facilitating regional integration through finding an institutional expression in the Indian Ocean Region, could further elevate their partnership.Ìý

Not opposed to China’s interest in expanding BRICS membership, India’s active role in the group’s Development Fund and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank is also advancing its collaboration with China, with both sharing a common approach towards international trade in agricultural goods and intellectual property rights. Given New Delhi’s aspiration to play a leadership role in global governance, there’s also a high probability of it participating in the Beijing-led Global Development Initiative, Global Security Initiative and Global Cultural Initiative, which would have profound implications for the deeply troubled liberal international order.

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Strategic

ASTONISHINGLY, despite the long-term perceived threat to India and the emergence of a panoply of research centres, think tanks and academic programmes dedicated to studying the People’s Republic, New Delhi has not produced a coherent China policy. Bombastic Chinese rhetoric aside, Beijing too has failed to demonstrate its naval prowess and launch its much-heralded Indian Ocean fleet, which is not commensurate with its presumed image as a great power. Curiously enough, despite both China and India resolutely professing to have divergent strategic cultures, research indicates there to be hardly any distinction between the two. In the realm of maritime security, regardless of bellicose posturing, neither of them is actually pursuing a containment policy. The Indo-Pacific expanse being vast enough to accommodate both, rather than forming an anti-Chinese coalition, these factors may prompt New Delhi to come to a tacit agreement with Beijing to share the pivotal maritime space between them, with India having an unchallenged pre-eminence in South Asia/Indian Ocean Region, and China in East Asia and Western Pacific. In fact, such a scenario is already looming on the horizon.

Portraying China as the ‘greatest shared strategic challenge,’ New Delhi has succeeded in cementing its security links with the Indian Ocean Region littoral countries through the Colombo Security Conclave (CSC), the minilateral arrangement, composed of India, Sri Lanka, Maldives and Mauritius, Bangladesh being the most recent member. The CSC is expected to play a crucial role in consolidating India’s regional primacy, which is further leveraged through the US call for a ‘new maritime statecraft’ and endorsement of India’s centrality as the regional security provider in South Asia. By bringing the IOR countries within its orbit, the threat perception of the member-states cannot but resonate with that of New Delhi, nor can they circumvent strategic dependence on it. ‘China is balancing against India’s regional hegemony by increasing its influence through [the] small states’ — such media trope, stoking anti-China animus and exaggerating the China threat perception is untenable, since India stands to gain from such dire projections. Considering that India is evidently having its metaphorical strategic cake and eating it too, the key question, whether Chinese engagement in these smaller South Asian countries is necessarily antithetical to India’s interests, can only be answered in the negative. The perception of China’s naval aggrandisement in this strategic hub validating New Delhi’s role in maritime governance, its leadership of the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC), the potential regional Indian strategic framework, has been instrumental in institutionalising security-related matters, including bringing the IOR/ Bay littoral largely under the IndianÌý coastal radar surveillance network. Similarly, the anodyne Security and Growth for All in the Region (SAGAR), the operational articulation of India’s Act East Policy (2014), foregrounds the strategic dimension, thus enabling India to project power in the IOR maritime domain.

In view of China’s modest global military footprint, it has been dubbed a ‘minnow’ in comparison to other big powers. However, in Indian narratives, Chinese capabilities have been magnified, hence perpetuating the perception of tension and the optics of conflict in the high Himalayas, which serve to further accentuate the putatively intractable nature of the dispute. According to the late Indian journalist Kuldip Nayar, there have been ‘manufactured tales of trouble on the disputed border’ to create mischief. It’s indeed perplexing why the remote but otherwise negotiable ‘intangible value’ Sino-Indian border issues have been allowed to remain ambiguous and left unresolved despite prolonged efforts.

By the same token, the reported skirmishes on the undemarcated LAC, as well as perceived Chinese assertiveness in the Indian Ocean Region (where Beijing does not have any vital strategic interest), have provided the impetus for India’s strategic engagement with the West. The conclusion, within a two-decade span, of four long-pending foundational defence agreements with the United States has ushered in unprecedented bilateral security collaboration, thereby allowing Indian policy entrepreneurs to radically transform New Delhi’s diplomatic orientation. By steering it away from its more than a half-century foreign policy moorings, India’s much-vaunted tradition of non-alignment has been all but jettisoned in favour of a decidedly pro-Western tilt, though under the fig-leaf of a vague concept called strategic autonomy. How China could be blindsided by the consequences of its confrontational but counterproductive stance detrimental to its interests is incomprehensible. That Beijing, a would-be superpower, ‘lacks a consistent and coordinated foreign policy’ is acknowledged by the Chinese leadership, though.

Despite Garver’s misgivings about the notion of an US-China-India ‘ever-shifting, flexible, three-cornered minuet,’ such an outcome is not implausible, with the three countries constantly moving through the revolving strategic door. Neither is it beyond the realm of the possible to see American, Chinese and Indian interests coinciding (if they haven’t already), thus adding another layer of complexity to animate the regional geopolitical landscape. Notwithstanding their current power imbalance, cooperation between China and India is likely to shape the future world order, and with the probable inclusion of the US, even result in a trilateral security partnership to approach regional and global contingencies in a concerted manner. On the face of it seemingly counterintuitive, but how the smaller regional states can pull their supposedly astute balancing act without the interests of the three big powers being aligned remains an intriguing question.

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Concluding thoughts

THE key takeaway from this brief survey is that, by and large, their common interests far outweigh whatever peripheral bilateral issues they may have. The Sino-Indian relationship is imbued with a promising spirit of cooperation. Significantly, the scaffolding of the claims of the structural basis of their ‘conflict,’ China to be an ‘existential threat’ for India as ‘a formidable adversary,’ the inevitability of competition between them, or their antagonism to be organically embedded, proved to be too fragile to weather the intellectual scrutiny they were subjected to.

Despite inordinate focus on the military-strategic dimension, the fact remains that the global paradigm shift from geopolitics to geoeconomics has to be factored in, along with what that entails for Sino-Indian relations. With economic imperatives emerging as paramount in the globalised setting and walking in the same direction as partners, China and India are on the threshold of graduating from bhai bhai status to ‘twin titans,’ where their border dispute strikes a discordant note (to the untrained ear, that is). Veiled behind the recital of rivalry, the cornerstone of their amity is being reinforced to provide leadership to a new politically transformational, digitally driven, Sino-centric, but business-friendly global order. With power dynamics moving in favour of the Big Tech, advanced technologies are the vectors through which the very concept of security could be redefined in the calculus of their bilateral relations. In sum, paraphrasing the late English philosopher-economist, John Maynard Keynes, in the long run, despite occasional hiccups, instead of being dead, Sino-Indian relations are expected to thrive famously.

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Professor Ruksana Kibria is an international affairs analyst.