India’s China Challenge: Foreign Policy Dilemmas Post-Galwan and Post-Covid

The paper analyzes the challenge to India from China, and the dilemmas faced by India in shaping an appropriate response. A two-level theory analysis indicates that some diminishing cooperation is possible at the global level, for example over environmental issues. However, regionally, this has been overtaken structurally by increasing sharp confrontation along the Himalayas and by rising geopolitical and geo-economic competition across Asia and the Indo-Pacific. This has been overlaid in 2020–2021 by the particularly negative effect on Indian relations with China of the clashes and casualties at Galwan and the impact of Covid-19. Given this sharpening challenge, the paper finds that India’s cherished axiom of full strategic autonomy now has to be tempered in its response by balancing dictates, particularly in the light of Stephen Walt’s balance of threat model. India’s responses pose various dilemmas in terms of effectiveness and counter-productiveness. Geopolitically, dilemmas continue to revolve for India around how far to invoke a Tibet Card and a Taiwan Card in its One China policy; and how far India can shape an immediate web (in effect around China) through strengthening security links with Vietnam, Mongolia and South Korea. Dilemmas also follow from how far India should pursue tighter security/military arrangements with more powerful China-concerned states like Australia, Japan, France, and above all, the United States. Geo-economically, India’s dilemmas revolve around how to respond to the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) and to China’s Maritime Silk Road scheme. Looking forward, an important factor will be how far India pulls away from Covid-19 disruption to the economy, and how far it will need to divert long-term economic funding away from immediate short-term military projects.