Tanvi Madan
By dint of their geographies, partnerships, development imperatives, and broader objectives, China and India have had overlapping strategic spaces since India became independent in 1947 and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) came into being in 1949. As their interests and capabilities—and thus reach—have grown, the theater of their strategic interaction has expanded to encompass a wider geography and multiple domains. It has evolved from primarily the bilateral space and a focus on their borderlands to include regional and global spaces, as well as the diplomatic, geopolitical, economic, technological, and ideological spheres.
There has been some Sino-Indian cooperation in these spaces, but more often there has been competition—and it has become more intense over time. The phases of cooperation and contestation have been sequential, with both elements present but one dominant. This essay outlines these periods of early competition and collaboration, of coexistence and cooperation, and then a return to contestation.
Cooperation or coexistence has dominated when China and India have seen the other, on balance, as enabling their broader interests. That was the case in the 1950s and the 2000s. These were periods when there was a sense, as reflected in a 2010 joint statement, that there was “enough space in the world for the development of both India and China and indeed, enough areas for India and China to cooperate.”1 But when Beijing or New Delhi has seen the other as constraining its diplomatic, geopolitical, or economic space—bilaterally, regionally or globally—this has led to contestation and even collision. That is the phase the countries are in today, and indeed have been in for the last decade and a half. There is not just one site of divergence (e.g., their border). Instead, the differences are about a sense of their own place and strategic space—and each country’s view that the other will impinge on rather than increase it.
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