Today in the world of contemporary geopolitics a staunch belief of conflict between two superpowers is always floating. For the recent years post 1962 betrayal by China, the narrative of China and India engaging in a full scale war is always a possibility! But what if we step back from breaking news and noises and view the board through grand strategy? We will then encounter a profound paradox! The two most populous countries India and China are the twin engines of the 21st century ! They command nearly 36% of the global population and yet both the countries are stuck in a classic security dilemma allocating billions of dollars on defence spending, intellectual capital and hundreds and thousands of troops in himalayan border.
Today we pitch an opinionated, realistic and unpopular idea that India and China must be friends ! Not because it feels good, not to fit in but instead taking actions based on hard facts!
Shreya Das, National Defence
17th June 2026, New Delhi
In the current trajectory, two emerging superpowers India and China are constantly distracted to compete with each other which acts as a waste of money! For India to attain its dream of becoming a fully developed economy by 2047 and for China to overcome the hurdle of transitioning into a high income state while overcoming the western containment, cooperation is not a luxury, it’s a necessity! To understand why there is a huge scope of possible friendship between the two nations we need to unlearn the recency bias post 1962 era. For over a period of 1000 years, the relationship between the two civilizations was not defined by friction but by seamless cooperation and understanding. As Harvard economist and historian Amartya Sen elegantly documented in his work The Argumentative Indian, the flow of knowledge along the Silk Route was profoundly bidirectional. Between the first and seventh centuries CE, Indian Buddhism completely reshaped the Chinese philosophical cosmos. Monks like Xuanzang and Faxian braved treacherous high-altitude terrains not to conquer territory, but to acquire knowledge at the ancient university of Nalanda. Indian advancements in mathematics, medicine, and astronomy quietly integrated into Chinese society. Historically, our baseline is one of cultural confluence, not political conflict.
When modern architects emerged, they incorporated newly independent nations, their belief with the traditional historically rooted design! Back in 1954 New Delhi and Beijing signed the Panchsheel : The Five Principles of peaceful coexistence which also gave rise to the feeling of “Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai”. But this idealistic relationship between the two soon collapsed due to the poorly drawn borders by the British Empire , leading to a catastrophic war of October 1962. The 1962 war acted less like a conflict but more like a traumatic scar that left the Indian strategic psyche in dismay. For decades, the ghost of 1962 has haunted every diplomatic table, convincing both sides that any gain for one must inherently mean an absolute loss for the other. For decades, the ghost of 1962 has haunted every diplomatic table, convincing both sides that any gain for one must inherently mean an absolute loss for the other. Yet true strategists know that the statecraft is driven by practicality not grudge holding ! Yet both the countries have historically tried to regain stability. Look at the Dec 1988 Rajiv Gandhi’s visit to Beijing. g. It was during this pivotal meeting that paramount leader Deng Xiaoping offered a piece of timeless wisdom that remains the ultimate blueprint for Indo-China relations. Deng noted that the upcoming century would only be the “Asian Century” if India and China cooperated. He famously suggested that future generations could find a solution to the border issue, while the current generation focuses on economic development and mutual cooperation.
This meeting resulted in fruitful results and yielded border management agreements being signed between the two states in 1993 and 1996. This kept the nations peacefully coexisting without a single shot being fired for nearly 2 decades. Even bilateral trade exploded to over 100 billion dollars annually.
When the Doklam standoff of 2017 threatened to spark a wider conflagration, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping recognized the abyss they were staring into. The response? The 2018 Wuhan and 2019 Mamallapuram informal summits.These were not mere photo opportunities. The choice of Mamallapuram – an ancient Pallava port city that historically traded with China’s Han dynasty – was deeply symbolic. It was a deliberate elite-level signal to the world: We are too big, too old, and too powerful to let tactical border disputes derail our historical trajectory.
Even during the period of the Galwan crisis in 2020, look at the underlying reality , while popular media channels and agencies called it a total economic boycott, the data tells a different story. Bilateral trade has consistently broken records during that period of time proving the Asian economy is structurally interdependent. You cannot easily decouple two giants who share a single economic ecosystem. So let’s address the question , why the present day rivals actively pursue a propitiation. The answer is hidden in 3 distinct strategies.
First,let’s look at the macroeconomic aspect. India possesses a demographically vibrant, consumption driven economy with a huge software, services, pharmaceutical market. China on the other hand is the undisputed manufacturing, logistics, and hardware capital of the world. A geopolitical freeze forces India to look for alternative supply chains while not being able to utilise the Chinese market! An Indo China trade and economic corridor would create a great alternative to the western bloc, cutting down the transactional cost, time duration and generating wealth creation!
Second, both nations have from time immemorial wanted a multi polar world order. For a century all the greater organisations like the World Bank. The IMF, UN security Council has been dominated by western blocs. But with the formation of BRICS and Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, India and China found themselves countering the West and promoting the global south. When New Delhi and Beijing fight, the West arbitrates, when New Delhi and Beijing agree, they set the global agenda.
Third, the future can be rewritten. With India’s top software engineering talents and human resource merged with China’s capacity of scaling hardware and manufacturing infrastructure, Asia can lead the 4th Industrial revolution. The next decade is of Quantum Computing, Artificial intelligence , Green hydrogen and advanced semiconductor manufacturing, where collaboration between the two is highly beneficial!
Although let’s look at the realistic obstacles. A real analysis demands an overall perspective of the situation hence why this friendship is difficult to sustain! The structural imbalance between India and China is entirely real. India views China’s closeness with Pakistan as a trigger and security threat while China views India’s growing closeness with QUAD alongside the USA, Japan, and Australia as an attempt to encirclement!
China must recognise that a powerful, independent India is an historical inevitability, and treating New Delhi as a secondary power or a Western proxy is a profound miscalculation.
While current friction between India and China are a desirable situation for several capitals, foremost amongst them is Islamabad ! Pakistan’s contemporary grand strategy is to prove as a two-front threat to India in the long run. By positioning itself as China’s “all weather friend” and the geostrategic hub for the multibillion-dollar China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), Pakistan derives immense leverage, military hardware, and diplomatic cover from Beijing. A genuine friendship between India and China would mean neutralizing these benefits from China.
Next comes the United States who would be the next in line to be anxious if there is a friendship between India and China. While America always feared a hot war in the Himalayan region that could destabilise the global market and trigger a nuclear escalation, America post cold war era always attempted to stop any sought of emergence of alternative dominant groups of friendship or bloc. An Indo China partnership would mean an emerging threat and de dollarisation of the western led institutions.
The boundary dispute between India and China remains a big hurdle for any progressive thinking towards a growing proximity in a shifting multipolar world. And the owners largely remain with China as territorial expansionism cannot be tolerated in a nationalistic India, and China has to address the Indian concern! But if India China remains locked in personal rivalry they will successfully exhaust each other and their resources by utilising each other’s potential for their benefit! But despite all these hurdles if India and China stay firm upon starting and maintaining this friendship the global balance of power shifts towards the south !The choice before New Delhi and Beijing is stark. They can either remain prisoners of their past mistakes, or they can become the primary architects of their shared future. History is watching.
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