The author, M.K. Narayanan, is a former National Security Advisor who has held official talks as a Special Representative with his Chinese counterpart, the State Councillor, Dai Bingguo, to resolve the differences over the Indo-China border. Narayanan writes that while he could achieve some degree of progress in these talks (including the signing of the Agreement on Political Parameters and Guiding Principles for the Settlement of the Border Dispute) further progress has been extremely slow. To arrive at a modus vivendi on the border issue at an early date is, therefore, likely to be difficult. This is because a rare geopolitical phenomenon of two powers—India and China—rising together is generating a new set of challenges. Both countries have competing and contradictory approaches to the existing world order, as China uses the wei qi strategy, or “the encirclement game,” and India participates in a new security architecture for the region.

The former Special Representative of China for border talks with India, the State Councillor Dai Bingguo, presents his country’s perspectives on the issue, taken from his book of memoirs, Strategic Dialogues: Reminiscences of Dai Bingguo.

The String of Pearls theory, ever since its inception in 2004, has raised serious concerns in New Delhi about the rapidly increasing activity of China in the Indian Ocean Region and in the Indian Subcontinent. The theory put forwards a hypothesis of the strategic encirclement of India by China, thereby posing serious (yet assumed) threats to Indian interests and sovereignty. This paper analyses the fundamental tenets and variables of the String of Pearls theory, in the context of the latest developments in Indo-Sino relations and Chinese activities in South Asia in the last decade (2008-2018). The paper attempts to answer the question: “does the String of Pearls, as stated in the academic literature, pose an immediate threat to India?” The paper answers this question by using both quantitative and qualitative methods. Indian behavior vis-à-vis China’s activity has been mainly reactionary because of the influence of this ambitious theory. The authors question the viability and necessity of this behavior fourteen years after the publication of this developing phenomenon. The Indian Ocean Region is considered to be the next flashpoint and a theatre of geopolitical conflict, and it is prudent for India to safeguard its interests.

The processes of informal or soft regionalism driving China’s regional engagement are resulting in nuanced understandings of state, security and the conduct of international relations in China. The paper looks at a set of three interrelated processes that made this engagement possible—the informal processes driving China’s engagement; the graduated manner in which China has re-engaged with the regional economy; and the process of decentralisation of decision-making powers aimed at providing local incentives for growth. The paper argues that lowering the research and policy gaze can throw up interesting instances of a growing bottom-up engagement by China’s border states with its subregional neighbourhood. The paper will attempt a preliminary typology of subregional policy networks with its own distinctive local governance particularities and set of stakeholders. It argues that their role as bridge-builders in transborder governance with an innate capacity to jump scales as well

The author, a retired Lieutenant-General of the Indian army who has served extensively in India’s North East and in Arunachal Pradesh, explains the causes of the deterioration of Sino-Indian relations, and he recommends a slate of measures both sides can take to restore normalcy. Both nations must harmonise their foreign policies, to the extent feasible, so as to avoid belligerency and to facilitate a resolution of their territorial dispute. India would have to be prepared to follow a policy of give and take in reference to the actual dispute while bearing in mind the sentiment of the Indian people, particularly those of Arunachal. Notwithstanding the pursuit of a more accommodative foreign policy, India must be in a position to negotiate with China from a position of strength, i.e. military strength backed by adequate border infrastructure.

The diasporic Chinese communities in Canada have displayed their acts of resistance in innovative ways by employing food to assert cultural agency and différance (the relationship between text and meaning). The novels of the Chinese-Canadian writer, Judy Fong Bates, perform resistance effectively. She was born in December 1949 in Kaiping, Guangdong, and immigrated to Canada with her mother in 1955 to reunite with her father in Allandale, Ontario. In her novel, Midnight at the Dragon Café (2004), and her memoir, The Year of Finding Memory (2010), she explores the fast-evolving Chinese-Canadian identity, and she confronts the dislocation, dysfunction, disempowerment and dispossession that is symptomatic of the larger Asian-Canadian immigrant experience through foodways. Her two works are animated by a momentous historical event: the implementation of the exclusionist immigration policy of the Chinese Head Tax that caused hundreds of Chinese-Canadians to suffer ignominy and shame.