210 : Regional Security Cooperation in South Asia: The China Factor
Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury, Senior Research Fellow at the ISAS
2 July 2013
In this vast swathe of the Asian region, China and India are two global ‘mega states’, home to a third of the world’s population. They are both rising stars in the contemporary international firmament, particularly against the backdrop of America’s and the West’s perceived ‘elegant decline’, as Robert Kaplan would have us believe. Theirs is a relationship that could largely define the politics of our age. It is an acknowledgment of the importance of this relationship that caused India to be the country that Premier Li Keqiang chose to make his first foreign visit.