Ever since the two ancient nations of India and China established modern states in the mid-20th century, they have been locked in a complex rivalry ranging across the South Asian region. Garver offers a scrupulous examination of the two countries’ actions and policy decisions over the past fifty years. He has interviewed many of the key figures who have shaped their diplomatic history and has combed through the public and private statements made by officials, as well as the extensive record of government documents and media reports. He presents a thorough and compelling account of the rivalry between these powerful neighbors and its influence on the region and the larger world.
This book examines India-China relations throughout history as well as in the context of current business cooperation and competition. It also explores geo-political and societal factors, such as religion or class models, that influence and shape bilateral relations, and provides thorough analyses and comparisons of networks between the two countries. This book will appeal to researchers and graduate students interested in India-China relations as well as Chinese and Indian business ties.
Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- List of maps -- Acknowledgements -- Notes on contributors -- Introduction -- Part 1 Bilateral perspectives -- 1 India's relations with China, 1945-74 -- 2 Foreign Secretary Subimal Dutt and the prehistory of the Sino-Indian border war -- 3 From 'Hindi-Chini Bhai-Bhai' to 'international class struggle' against Nehru: China's India policy and the frontier dispute, 1950-62 -- 4 The strategic and regional contexts of the Sino-Indian border conflict: China's policy of conciliation with its neighbours -- Part 2 International perspectives
"On 1 October 1949, the People's Republic of China came into being and changed forever the course of Asian history. Power moved from the hands of the nationalist Kuomintang government to the Communist Party of China headed by Mao Tse Tung. All of a sudden, it was not only an assertive China that India had to deal with but also an increasingly complex situation in Tibet which was reeling under pressure from China. Clearly, newly independent India, with Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru at its helm, was navigating very choppy waters. Its relations with China progressively deteriorated, eventually leading to the Indo-China war in 1962. Today, more than six decades after the war, we are still plagued by border disputes with China that seem to routinely grab the headlines. It leads one to question what exactly went on during those initial years of the emergence of a new China"--Publisher's summary.
Taking a long view of the three-party relationship, and its future prospects In this Asian century, scholars, officials and journalists are increasingly focused on the fate of the rivalry between China and India. They see the U.S. relationships with the two Asian giants as now intertwined, after having followed separate paths during the Cold War. In Fateful Triangle, Tanvi Madan argues that China's influence on the U.S.-India relationship is neither a recent nor a momentary phenomenon. Drawing on documents from India and the United States, she shows that American and Indian perceptions of and policy toward China significantly shaped U.S.-India relations in three crucial decades, from 1949 to 1979. Fateful Triangle updates our understanding of the diplomatic history of U.S.-India relations, highlighting China's central role in it, reassesses the origins and practice of Indian foreign policy and nonalignment, and provides historical context for the interactions between the three countries. Madan's assessment of this formative period in the triangular relationship is of more than historic interest. A key question today is whether the United States and India can, or should develop ever-closer ties as a way of countering China's desire to be the dominant power in the broader Asian region. Fateful Triangle argues that history shows such a partnership is neither inevitable nor impossible. A desire to offset China brought the two countries closer together in the past, and could do so again. A look to history, however, also shows that shared perceptions of an external threat from China are necessary, but insufficient, to bring India and the United States into a close and sustained alignment: that requires agreement on the nature and urgency of the threat, as well as how to approach the threat strategically, economically, and ideologically. With its long view, Fateful Triangle offers insights for both present and future policymakers as they tackle a fateful, and evolving, triangle that has regional and global implications.
This book examines the dynamics of the modern relationship between China and India. As key emerging powers in the international system, India and especially China have received much attention. However, most analysts who have studied Sino-Indian relations have done so through a neorealist lens which emphasizes the conflictual and competitive elements within the overall relationship. This has had the effect of obscuring how the China-India relationship is currently in the process of transformation. Drawing on a detailed and systematic analysis of the interlinked and increasingly important issues of maritime security in the Indian Ocean region, energy demands and concerns, and economic growth and interchange, Amardeep Athwal shows that not only is there an absence of mutual threat perception, but Sino-Indian bilateral trade is increasingly being framed institutionally and China and India are also beginning to coordinate policy in important areas such as energy policy. He concludes that neorealist accounts of Sino-Indian relations have difficulty in explaining these recent developments. However, rather than rejecting neorealist explanations in their entirety, he points towards a theoretical pluralism with an appeal to ‘soft’ realism and theories of neoliberalism and peaceful change. China-India Relations will be of interest to scholars of international relations and politics, international business and Asian studies.
Relations between China and India underwent a dramatic transformation from Buddhist-dominated to commerce-centered exchanges in the seventh to fifteenth centuries. The unfolding of this transformation, its causes, and wider ramifications are examined in this masterful analysis of the changing patterns of the interaction between the two most important cultural spheres in Asia. Tansen Sen offers a new perspective on Sino-Indian relations during the Tang dynasty (618–907), arguing that the period is notable not only for religious and diplomatic exchanges but also for the process through which China emerged as a center of Buddhist learning, practice, and pilgrimage. Before the seventh century, the Chinese clergy—given the spatial gap between the sacred Buddhist world of India and the peripheral China—suffered from a “borderland complex.” A close look at the evolving practice of relic veneration in China (at Famen Monastery in particular), the exposition of Mount Wutai as an abode of the bodhisattva Mañjuśrī, and the propagation of the idea of Maitreya’s descent in China, however, reveals that by the eighth century China had overcome its complex and successfully established a Buddhist realm within its borders. The emergence of China as a center of Buddhism had profound implications on religious interactions between the two countries and is cited by Sen as one of the main causes for the weakening of China’s spiritual attraction toward India. At the same time, the growth of indigenous Chinese Buddhist schools and teachings retrenched the need for doctrinal input from India. A detailed examination of the failure of Buddhist translations produced during the Song dynasty (960–1279), demonstrates that these developments were responsible for the unraveling of religious bonds between the two countries and the termination of the Buddhist phase of Sino-Indian relations. Sen proposes that changes in religious interactions were paralleled by changes in commercial exchanges. For most of the first millennium, trading activities between India and China were closely connected with and sustained through the transmission of Buddhist doctrines. The eleventh and twelfth centuries, however, witnessed dramatic changes in the patterns and structure of mercantile activity between the two countries. Secular bulk and luxury goods replaced Buddhist ritual items, maritime channels replaced the overland Silk Road as the most profitable conduits of commercial exchange, and many of the merchants involved were followers of Islam rather than Buddhism. Moreover, policies to encourage foreign trade instituted by the Chinese government and the Indian kingdoms contributed to the intensification of commercial activity between the two countries and transformed the China-India trading circuit into a key segment of cross-continental commerce.
The circulations of knowledge -- The routes, networks, and objects of circulation -- The imperial connections -- Pan-Asianism and the (re)new(ed) connections -- The geopolitical disconnect -- Conclusion
The hardline view of Sino-Indian relations found in the published reports of Indian and Chinese security analysts is often at considerable odds with the more tempered opinions those same analysts express in private interviews and conversations. What is the reality of the increasingly important security relationship between the two countries? The authors of this new study address that question in depth. Sidhu and Yuan explore a range of key issues, including mutual distrust and misperception (perhaps the most important factor), the undemarcated border, the status of Tibet and Sikkim, trade, the tussle over various nonproliferation treaties, terrorism, the regional roles of the U.S. and Pakistan, and the impact of domestic public opinion and special interests. They do see a trend toward a more pragmatic approach in Beijing and New Delhi to managing differences and broadening the agenda of common interests. Nevertheless, they conclude, significant obstacles remain to the amicable relationship necessary for regional peace and stability, posing a daunting challenge to policymakers in these two rising powers.
