India's Security Concept and Its China Policy in the Post-Cold War Era

• The progressive strengthening of India's post-Cold War policy of détente towards China led the two nations to commit in 1996 to a constructive cooperation. After the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government took office in 1998, however, it referred to China as India's greatest threat, citing it as justification for conducting nuclear tests. This implied a turn for the worse in India's China policy, and that the two nations had entered a new era of antagonism and hostility. But the situation changed again when the Vajpayee government began making overtures towards China, and the two nations reached consensus on comprehensive bilateral cooperation in 2003 during Prime Minister Vajpayee's visit to China. Manmohan Singh's government took office the next year, and later established a strategic partnership with China geared towards peace and prosperity, but at the same time promoted nuclear agreement and joint military exercises with the United States and strengthened strategic cooperation with both the United States and Japan. Authoritative sources on Indian strategy interpret this as an explicit move to balance China.

  
  

  Understanding changes in India's China policy since the end of the Cold War is of obvious importance to International Relations scholars of all nationalities. This article takes India's security concept as a starting point, exploring the influence of India's security concept on its China policy, and interprets the substance of changes in India's post-Cold War China policy and the direction in which it is likely to evolve.