China and India

Abstract

Does the rise of India and China represent competing hegemonies in the emerging world or do they represent alternative and new trends in the contemporary world that seek to promote structures of cooperation and equity, autonomy and self-determination? The neo-realist paradigm only talks of India and China as rivals, enemies or allies, but there is also an alternative geo-civilisational view that sees the complex of linkages between these two from historical times to the present day. The probable scenario is the simultaneous unfolding of both the trends—the rise of India, China and some other countries and their entry to the big power club, on the one hand, and those very policies being increasingly challenged and the demand for democratisation growing in strength at various levels within countries and across the world, on the other.