In-regime manager: China’s strategy against nuclear India

Abstract

This paper examines China’s strategy toward India’s emergence as a nuclear weapons state that reflects boundary work and delineates Beijing’s bond and boundaries of solidarity among member states in the nuclear nonproliferation regime. China’s preferred approach toward India is to maintain an asymmetrical position, to continue with a group-based resistance, and to leverage the scope of conflicts. While many previous studies indicate that China’s foreign policy toward India was an offshoot of a Cold War rivalry and its competition with the United States, with which we agree, this study explores how China’s India policy has shaped a border zone that requires a separate risk management approach. Our study has two findings: First, while Beijing perceives India’s threat as moderate, there has been an increase in New Delhi’s capability to create greater space for future bargaining tasks. Second, to keep India’s threat circumscribed, China has built a challenge-proof group arrangement that proposes a group-binding policy agenda, thus lowering the diplomatic cost for members in the current regime structure. Thus far, Beijing’s strategic action has been more cost-beneficial than India’s counterapproach. Overall, this case study indicates that a regime matters between two competing global powers.