China in India’s Neighbourhood: Shifting Regional Narratives

This book explores the scope and extent of the growing Chinese influence in India’s neighbourhood and its impact on India as well as on Asian power politics.

Through theoretical narratives and detailed case studies, it examines Chinese bilateral relationships in the Indian neighbourhood and looks at the extent and significance of Chinese influence through the lens of strategic, economic and infrastructural arrangements and Chinese interventions in South, Southeast, and Central Asia. The book takes into account regional voices and domestic political compulsions in understanding what they make of the Chinese narrative and examines how and whether the narrative has changed in recent years through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as an instrument of Chinese public diplomacy. The volume also discusses how domestic narratives and compulsions in the Indian neighbourhood remain significant and how these, in turn, would impact the trajectory of Chinese public diplomacy. Intertwined through all these themes is a focus on the extent to which these could become potential flashpoints for India.

This book will be a useful resource for academics and researchers working on Asian geopolitics and geo-economics, Chinese foreign policy, Chinese politics, international relations of Asia, Asian dynamics and Asian studies.

Anita Sengupta is an area studies specialist engaged with the study of the Eurasian region. Her areas of interest include issues of identity politics, migration, gender, borders, critical geopolitics and logistics. Priya Singh is the Associate Director and Programme Coordinator at Asia in Global Affairs (AGA), Kolkata, India. She is currently Director, Asia in Global Affairs, Kolkata.

Priya Singh is Associate Director at Asia in Global Affairs (AGA), Kolkata, India. She is a political scientist with a linguistic understanding of some of the regions she covers. Her research encompasses issues pertaining to nationalism and post-nationalism, colonialism and post colonialism, modernism and post modernism, identity, state formation, ethnicity, gender, migration, marginalization, indigenous and minority communities in West Asia in particular and a broader Asian context, in general.