At a recent foreign policy roundtable in London, a prominent Chinese public intellectual clarified that the Chinese leadership does not view India’s rising status in the Indo-Pacific as a threat to China’s own global great power aspirations. Instead, for an ‘Asian century’ to truly materialize and the ‘decolonization’ of Western power structures to be a finished business, it is necessary for India to simultaneously rise as a global great power. In line with Wang Yi’s statement earlier this year, it was reiterated that the relationship between the dragon and the elephant must be cooperative. While this resurgent Pan-Asianist discourse sits well with a post-colonial yearning to reclaim Asia’s rightful place in the international order, it comes with a key caveat: China gets to decide the rules.
China’s worldview today unquestionably draws upon essentially Sinocentric elements. Like multiple nations globally, this implies a ‘China-first’ approach to foreign policy, which comes with protecting Chinese interests against any foreign incursion and legitimizing a unified position to strengthen its capabilities to push back against a repeat of a West-led period of ‘humiliation.’ Despite this being rather rhetorical, when it feeds into practical policy calculus, it helps create a brand of Chinese diplomacy that is molded to act in terms of advancing and entrenching China’s interests. This has wider implications for the ‘Asian century’ dream, as the Chinese version—while supportive of a geopolitical pivot to Asia—approaches it as vital only insofar as it leads to the dawn of a ‘China century.’
Situating India in China’s ‘Asian Century’ Promise
Underpinning China’s inclusive pan-Asianist façade lies an exclusive strategic intent—best reflected in the significant historical dissonance between diplomatic rhetoric and actual behavior that has been the hallmark of the Sino-Indian relationship. This strategic duplicity has manifested itself in two ways. Firstly, China has taken a rather euphemistic outlook towards its border disputes with India, which it has claimed to be of secondary importance in their bilateral ties, despite showing resolve and consistency in unilaterally claiming and ‘renaming’ Indian territories. Secondly, it has tied its contemporary foreign policy direction to a civilizational legacy drawn upon Confucian ideas of peaceful coexistence and value-based partnerships, while heavily prioritizing developmental credit to small states in India’s immediate neighborhood and taking a more assertive position along the border and across several significant zones of commercial interest for India in the Indo-Pacific, most notably in the Taiwan Strait. Indian foreign policy—wary of Chinese dissonance after the 1962 experience that followed decades of anti-colonial solidarity building and a shared post-colonial commitment to panchsheel—is naturally wary of such behavior and sees it as undermining the very norms that China seeks to represent.
With time, this has resulted in a massive trust deficit in the bilateral relationship. China’s growing emphasis on a homogenous ‘Asian century’ is its best bet to establish strategic convergences with an India it is increasingly in a strategic competition with and regards as a non-equal partner—something analysts like Chietigj Bajpaee have called ‘perceptual asymmetry.’ Indeed, a 2024 survey of Chinese public opinion conducted by Tsinghua University revealed that over 30% of the respondents saw the nation as ‘less influential,’ with a further 13% claiming India was ‘irrelevant’ in world politics. This can be read well with views in Beijing that have sought to, on the one hand, contest India’s claim to act as a global south leader and, on the other, rhetorically relegate its western partnerships, especially with the US, to a ‘geopolitical trap’ to prevent India from working with China.
In a sense, thus, the ‘Asian century’ promise has an element of strategic deception that cautiously seeks to hide China’s perceptual notion of India as a ‘junior partner’ by overemphasizing the importance of their shared growth in cementing an Asia-led world order. Every single step that forces a nation like India to rethink its current partnerships and de-align with the US-led West, which it is seen to represent in the Asian context rather than being an autonomous center, is a strategic win for Beijing. India’s promised position in the Chinese version of the ‘Asian century’ is rhetorical, not realistic. That China does not see India as a co-anchor is made evident by its recurrent infrastructural incursions into much of India’s immediate neighborhood that precisely threaten the multipolarity it promises—within South Asia itself—and risk downgrading India into a junior partner in a China-led Asian order by undermining its regional security and economic footprints.
Wooing India as a Strategic Necessity
Nonetheless, India remains a key element of the Asian Century promise, precisely since its current position is perceived as a geopolitical obstacle to China’s growth. India has become an active member of the Quad, a defense supplier to Indo-Pacific states like the Philippines that face more assertive Chinese aggression, and a supply chain alternative for multiple Western manufacturers. While it continues to maintain its traditional stance of strategic autonomy through its period of emergence as a regional behemoth, strategic circles in Beijing miscalculate India’s position as a vital front for the United States in its Indo-Pacific strategy to contain China and consequently approach it competitively.
This implies that China would want closer Sino-Indian ties—which the Asian Century is purposed to facilitate—to necessitate trade-offs in India’s relations with the United States, particularly in the areas of strategic and defense cooperation. Recent calls for economic cooperation from Beijing, for instance, have accompanied an explicit desire to offset the “hegemonism and power politics” that the United States is thought to represent. India’s continued reluctance to condone anti-Westernism within groupings like the BRICS and the SCO—which, for China, represent an alternative internationalism and instruments of diversification from the global north—is viewed as an outcome of its pro-Western tilt.
In the current landscape, marked by growing confusion among traditional partners of the United States—including India—employment of the ‘Asian century’ rhetoric as a strategic tool to woo India could effectively serve two primary ends. Firstly, it could motivate a shift in the key focus of Indian strategic thought from the Sino-Indian competition in South Asia to the geopolitical uncertainties triggered by the second Trump administration. It is likely hoped that such a shift in optics would silence Indian criticism of Chinese violations of the international rules-based order in an endeavor to seek greater collaboration arising out of India’s increasingly insecure footprint in the Indo-Pacific. And secondly, to utilize the unsubstantiated rhetoric of cooperation over competition—a policy of realist deception—to co-opt India into a world order uniquely defined by China’s outlook and priorities.
Conclusion
For China, the ‘Asian century’ promise is a vital subset of the ‘Chinese century’ dream its leadership has envisaged. India’s pro-Western leaning and growing capabilities to posit an alternative economic and security architecture for the Indo-Pacific are seen as vital obstacles to its ambitions. For instance, the proposed IMEC (India-Middle East-Europe economic corridor)—touted by Prime Minister Modi and President Biden at the India-led G20 summit in New Delhi—has been under fire from Beijing for its apparent disregard of the all-embracing character of China’s BRI (Belt and Road Initiative), with India facing particular criticism for ‘pandering’ to the US here despite being wary of the BRI.
Importantly, much of this criticism continues to ignore that Sino-Indian rapprochement and cooperation in infrastructural initiatives like the BRI are far-fetched precisely because of the systemic lack of reciprocity in the ties. An Asian Century cannot be a reality so long as China continues to freely pursue its infrastructural expansion in direct violation of Indian territorial sovereignty and unconditionally support Pakistan on the question of Kashmir—including in the recent conflict after Pahalgam—while protesting India’s ties with Taiwan and demanding strict adherence to the Chinese version of border demarcations. China is aware of this asymmetry—and of India’s developing capabilities—and this is exactly why its strategic calculus approaches the question of decoupling India from the Western powers by wooing it to commit to a shared Asia-led world order as a vital one. For all the friendly talk of trust, mutual respect, and cooperation, and the global south development rhetoric, this is precisely what China’s Asian Century promise is purposed to do.
Author’s note: Views represented are the author’s own and do not speak for the affiliated institutions.
