About the Talk:
India-China relations have long been a mix of cooperation and conflict. The dynamics between the two countries, often known as the heralders of the Asian century in international relations are defined by a long-standing boundary dispute, economic cooperation, issues of trade dispute, mutual suspicion and the need for securing each other’s support in a plethora of regional and international institutions. Newer thorny issues beyond the boundary dispute and trade imbalances have risen in the form of China’s increasing suspicion of Indian activities in the South China Sea, which is met by an equal suspicion from the Indian side of Chinese activities in South Asia and in the Indian Ocean region, in particular. The two countries nevertheless have always stressed the need for establishing trust and peaceful relations in general.
In this context it becomes pertinent to question whether the thorns in the relationship are symptomatic of international relations in general which is represented by the theory of the security dilemma or is it more than that. in this context, the talk will reflect on issues of mutual distrust between India and China, issues of the Tibetan government in exile, memories of the 1962 border conflict, trade deficit, India in South China Sea and other associated issues in the bilateral relationship to find out whether the security dilemma is an apt lens to describe India- China relations. The key questions that will be deliberated are:
1) What are the current cause of tensions between India and China?
2) Can these tensions be understood through the prism of security dilemma wherein any attempt by either of the two countries triggers insecurity in the other?
3) What calls for the mutual suspicion in the bilateral discourse between India and China
About the Speaker:
Dr. Sriparna Pathak, an Adjunct Faculty in the Jindal School of International Affairs, at O. P. Jindal Global University. Previously, she was a Visiting Faculty at the Centre for Southeast Asian Studies, Gauhati University and has also been an Assistant Professor at Assam Don Bosco University. She was a Consultant at the Policy Planning and Research Division at the Ministry of External Affairs, New Delhi. She is also a Fellow at the South Asia Democratic Forum in Brussels, Belgium.
She holds a Ph.D in Chinese Studies from the Centre for East Asian Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. She has been a recipient of the joint scholarship awarded by the Ministry of Human Resources Development, India and the China Scholarship Council, Government of the People’s Republic of China. She is fluent in Mandarin. Her areas of interest are China’s domestic economy, trade and economic relations between India and China and China’s foreign policy and economic linkages with the world.
