A 'confident' India attempts to strike a difficult balance with both US and China

A confident India wasn't so sure about engaging its biggest neighbour, China. After regarding the US with suspicion for decades, India has felt compelled to align more closely with Washington and its allies as China's military might and economic influence have grown. India has also pursued better ties with Asean nations under its Act East Policy, a move that makes Beijing uncomfortable since it believes this could eventually lead India to play an outsize role in the South China Sea. If Jaishankar's 11 days of diplomacy reveal anything, it is that India is trying to strike a balance, strengthening its US ties to counter China while striving to rebuild its relationship with its powerful and hostile neighbour. Most countries in the Global South have chosen not to take sides as the US-China geopolitical competition intensifies, but India - a member of both BRICS, which includes China, and the Quad, a US-led security bloc aimed at countering China - finds itself in a tricky situation. B. R. Deepak, a sinologist at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, has said that border incidents in 2017 and 2020 with China likely "Pushed India to rethink its involvement in the Quad" and "Played a decisive role in India's move to incorporate the Quad and the Indo-Pacific strategy into its military and foreign policy". "While India had a twinge of envy for China's rise, it saw opportunities for win-win cooperation. Yet over the past two decades, India has become increasingly wary of the dangers of widening economic, military and technological asymmetries between the two countries," he has written.