EVENTS

Abstract

States need to be overly cautious to design strategies to engage powers to maximize one’s interests. A shortsighted and flawed approach can be determinantal. Independent India followed the ‘non-aligned’ strategy to engage poles of the cold war, the United States and the Soviet Union. India and China formulated ‘panchsheel’ for bilateral engagement. Since then, the relationship has grown to encompass regional and global dimensions. Today’s world politics presents similar scenarios but in different settings. Rise of China is bringing structural adjustment to the post-cold-war word system and regional security architecture. Being a neighbour and emerging power, India has to devise smart strategies to engage China. A set of strategic choices, Balancing, Soft balancing, Hedging, Hard hedging and even Non-Alignment have been discussed by scholars. The talk intends to test all these strategies and also to examine China’s strategies to engage India. For instance, if China is hedging India then New Delhi’s approach to balancing Beijing delivers little payoff. Besides, India’s strategic choices to engage China is independent of the US’s options to check China.

About the Speaker

Dr. Rajiv Ranjan is an Executive Director at the Institute of Global Studies, Center for South Asian Studies and Associate Professor at the College of Liberal Arts, Shanghai University, Shanghai. He is also an Adjunct Fellow of the ICS Delhi. and was visiting scholar at Shandong University, Jinan and Research Fellow at ICWA, New Delhi. His research interests include Government and Politics in China, Chinese Foreign Policy, Chinese Society and Culture, Ancient Chinese Philosophy and Strategic Thoughts and New World Order.

His publications have appeared in Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Contemporary International Relations, Political Studies Review, China Report, International Affairs, etc. His commentaries also featured in Hindustan Times, Prabhat Khabar, The Diplomat, TheWire, ThePrint, China-India Brief, Scroll, South China Morning Post, Madras Courier, Satyagarha etc.