T.V. Paul, ed., China-India Rivalry in the Globalization Era

Excerpt

This book seeks to tackle one dimension—China-India rivalry—of the persistent three-country enduring rivalry, involving India-China and India-Pakistan in South Asia. China is permanently embedded in the India-Pakistan rivalry because it has used Pakistan to thwart India’s growing power in the region and the China-India rivalry is connected to India’s rivalry with Pakistan in multiple ways. Both rivalries were principally triggered by unresolved territorial disputes, which has now morphed into a broader conflict with global implications. T.V. Paul and the expert contributors to this volume contend that although the differing conceptions of 4056 km long border separating the two countries propels the China-India rivalry, the rivalry endures because it transcends the territorial dimension (p.6). The authors argue that India is engaged in a larger strategic competition with China in which economic power, global status, and conceptions of global order fuels this rivalry. However, the authors in this volume characterize this rivalry as being not as intense, as the India-Pakistan rivalry, despite frequent military stand-offs and skirmishes along the border area because China and India have learnt to understand each other’s sensitivities and take bilateral measures aimed at not provoking one another unnecessarily. Andrew Scobell reasons in his chapter on strategic culture that both India and China, “have come to recognize the need to prevent these tensions from leading to costly, overt rivalry” (p.181). …