Balanced India-China economic relations cannot happen without balanced centre-state relations in India
Category Archives: Comparative Politics
A ‘Global Community’ with Chinese Characteristics
The Chinese Party-state’s regime interests and worldviews do not allow for the kind of global community that Beijing claims to support.
Indian Foreign Secretary’s Visit to Beijing Underlines New Delhi’s Limited Options
Originally published as ‘Vikram Misri’s Beijing visit underlines India’s limited options’, Deccan Herald, 4 February 2025. At the end of January, Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri visited China in the latest step in an unfolding thaw in the bilateral relationship. It should be clear, however, from the statements put out by each side on the meeting …
For China, Age is More than a Number
Originally published as ‘For China, Age is More than a Number’, India’s World, 9 December 2024. On one of his state visits to Egypt in the 1990s, then Chinese President Jiang Zemin is said to have discovered that the Egyptians showcased their civilization as being 5,000 years old. On his return, he ordered that Chinese …
Xi Jinping’s civilizational claims: foreign policy strategy and domestic panacea
It is important not to dismiss Xi Jinping’s reference to China as “a great country with a great civilization” as nothing more than domestic grandstanding.
India’s Xinjiang Abstention: Neither Morality nor Self-Interest Clear
Originally published as ‘What national interests has India achieved by abstaining at UNHRC vote on Xinjiang?’, Moneycontrol, 14 October 2022. In Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, George Smiley is asked a question about what morality was — whether it was a method or if it was “vested in the aims”. “Difficult to know what one’s aims …
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100 Years of the Communist Party of China, Special Issue 2
China Report Vol. 58, No. 3, August 2022100 Years of the Communist Party of China, Special Issue 2Guest Editors: Jabin T. Jacob & Bhim B. Subbahttps://journals.sagepub.com/toc/chra/58/3 CONTENTS 1. Introduction – ‘Carrying Forward the Great Founding Spirit’: Governance in the Communist Party of China Today Jabin T. Jacob & Bhim B. Subba https://doi.org/10.1177/00094455221108226 2. The Relationship …
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Lessons for India from Nancy Pelosi’s Taiwan visit
Originally published at Moneycontrol, 4 August 2022. How is United States’ House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan relevant to Indian citizens? One, it should teach Indians a thing or two about the value of separation of powers and the options it creates for conducting smart foreign policy. At a joint press conference …
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In the new cold war China is not Russia
China’s decades-long pursuit of asymmetric military capabilities garners a great deal of attention but the victory of the US at the end of the Cold War taught it much else
Thinking about China in India 