ABSTRACT
This chapter, drawing on the writer's decade in China reporting for the Indian media, analyzes the brief expansion and subsequent decline in China–India media relations in the period from 2008 until 2024 and the broader consequences of politicized media coverage. Media exchanges between India and China flourished starting in 2008, when China opened up to foreign media organizations and growing bilateral trade between the neighbors spurred greater media interest. In this period, Indian and Chinese media organizations opened offices and stationed reporters in Beijing and New Delhi, enabling greater breadth and depth in reportage beyond politics to economic and social issues. With a deterioration in relations and the return of border tensions to the center of the relationship following the Doklam stand-off in 2017, journalists’ access became linked to broader political disputes. Visa restrictions on journalists and tit-for-tat expulsions followed. The continued absence of a political agreement or understanding between India and China to protect the work of the media has left journalists from the two countries vulnerable to geopolitical tensions.
