ABSTRACT
China’s overarching strategy on India since 1949 has been to balance three goals: to hem in Indian power, to prevent it from dominating South Asia, and to avoid it drifting too close into an alignment with other great powers, meaning the Soviet Union during the Cold War and more recently the United States. The chapter identifies four variables that mainly shape the importance of India in China’s grand strategy: the situation on the border and the potential threat India represents to stability on China’s volatile western frontier, the balance of power in the international system, the geographic thrust and direction of China’s foreign policy, and Beijing’s shifting priorities towards power and wealth. Depending on changes in these variables, Beijing has to various degrees pursued different balancing strategies (proxy balancing, balancing through public-goods substitutions, binding and wedge strategies) towards India.
