Foreseeing India-China Relations: The ‘Compromised Context’ of Rapprochement

Research Fellow, IDSA, Dr. Jagannath Panda's co-authored article titled ‘Foreseeing India-China Relations: The Compromised Context of Rapprochement’has been published by ‘Asia-Pacific Issues’, a peer-reviewed publication of the East West Centre, Honolulu, USA.

The article essentially argues India-China relations which witnessed a new wave of optimism for a progressive and engaging partnership, following the Wuhan Summit, the informal 2018 meeting between Narendra Modi and Xi Jinping. Key to this has been continuous exchange of political and official visits from both sides. However, these exchanges might not be sufficient to remove uncertainty and suspicion from their relations. As long as China’s relationship with the United States remains adversarial, China will embrace India—without guaranteeing that it will not adopt a confrontational posture in the future. Their shifting relations, though suggesting an official longing for an upward trajectory, are based on a compromised context. External circumstances have pushed them to rapprochement, but could also drive them apart. Whether India and China will sustain this rapprochement is difficult to foresee.

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