Kanti Bajpai on Why China and India Are Not Friends

One year ago, Chinese and Indian forces traded blows in the remote Galwan Valley—resulting in the first deaths along the Line of Actual Control since 1975. Months later, India would be hit by the coronavirus, whose precise origin story in China we still do not fully understand. Indian public opinion towards China has soured and Beijing has nervously watched India double-down on its engagement with the so-called “Quad.” It’s against this backdrop that the scholar Kanti Bajpai has released a timely new book, India Versus China: Why They Are Not Friends. Kanti is the Director of the Centre on Asia and Globalisation and Wilmar Professor of Asian Studies at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore and he joins Milan on the podcast this week. The two discuss the untold pre-history of the Chinese-Indian rivalry, the sources of the trust deficit between the two countries, and China’s surprising soft power advantage. Plus, the two discuss possible scenarios for the China-India conflict and India’s pressing domestic reforms agenda.