‘The relationship between India and China is characterised by high levels of conflict and cooperation.’ Comment. (2008, 20 Marks)
The statement describes what John W. Garver called a protracted contest (2001) between two states that each see themselves as Asia’s natural leader, yet who have never let rivalry end engagement. In 2008 the pairing was visible in miniature: a “strategic and cooperative partnership” (2005) and booming trade alongside Chinese protests over Arunachal Pradesh. Both levels have since risen, but they are not of equal weight.
The conflict dimension
- The boundary: some 3,488 km of unsettled frontier, with China holding Aksai Chin (about 38,000 sq km) and claiming about 90,000 sq km in the east. Depsang (2013), Doklam (73 days, 2017) and Galwan (June 2020, twenty Indian soldiers killed) mark an escalating curve.
- The Pakistan axis: CPEC through Gilgit-Baltistan, arms and nuclear assistance, a decade of blocking the UN listing of Masood Azhar, and support to Pakistan during Operation Sindoor (May 2025) create the two-front problem.
- Tibet: the Dalai Lama’s statement of 2 July 2025 reserving his succession to the Gaden Phodrang Trust sets up a future clash with Beijing’s state-approved reincarnation rules.
- The Brahmaputra: construction of the roughly 60 GW Medog project began on 19 July 2025, while the flood-data memoranda had lapsed.
- Status: China blocks India’s NSG entry and has not endorsed its Security Council claim; their navies now overlap in the Indian Ocean.
The cooperation dimension
- Economic entanglement: trade grew from about $339 million in 1992 to make China India’s largest trading partner in 2025–26.
- Shared institutions: BRICS, the SCO, the G20, the New Development Bank and the AIIB, where India is the second-largest shareholder and the largest borrower.
- Common Southern positions: through BASIC they defended common but differentiated responsibilities from Copenhagen (2009) to Paris (2015), and both favour a multipolar order.
- Crisis management: the 1993, 1996, 2005 and 2013 border agreements; the October 2024 patrolling understanding; Narendra Modi’s visit to Tianjin (August–September 2025); the 25th Special Representatives round (August 2026), which yielded an eight-point consensus and two more military hotlines; and Xi Jinping’s visit for the New Delhi BRICS summit (September 2026), where both leaders committed to a “fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable” boundary settlement.
Reading the duality through theory
- Realism explains the conflict as a security dilemma sharpened by power asymmetry: China’s economy is about five times India’s.
- Liberalism explains the restraint: interdependence and institutions raise the cost of war, which is why the border saw no combat deaths between 1975 and Galwan.
- Constructivism adds identity: the memory of “Hindi-Chini Bhai-Bhai” and of 1962 coexist.
- Kanti Bajpai (India Versus China, 2021) traces the friction to perceptions, the border, rival partnerships and a widening power gap: China expects deference as Asia’s leading power, India wants recognition as an equal.
- S. Jaishankar reduces the management task to “three mutuals”: respect, sensitivity and interest.
Where the statement needs qualification
- Asymmetric cooperation: India’s deficit reached $112.16 billion in FY2025–26, up from $99.2 billion in 2024–25, and the 2025 rare-earth controls showed that interdependence gives China leverage. Post-Galwan curbs blocked Chinese capital but not Chinese goods.
- Conflict is structural, cooperation transactional: the 1988 bargain to set the boundary aside while the rest of the relationship grew was broken in 2020. India now holds that border peace is the precondition for normal ties.
- Multilateral parallelism: in BRICS and the SCO the two often run side by side rather than together.
Conclusion
The statement is accurate but understated: conflict sets the limits of the relationship and cooperation supplies its texture. The best description is competitive coexistence, a managed, armed and commercially intimate rivalry. Its stability depends on India narrowing the power gap, not on goodwill.