A judgment applicable to China also applies to India, that is, within the changing nature of world politics, peaceful development has its relatively solid foundation. Moreover, Pakistan’s weakness, India’s “all-encompassing diplomacy,” and the strategic hope placed on India by the United States against the backdrop of China’s rise, all enhance the position of India.
However, India’s serious weaknesses along with its strengths are obvious. First of all in their international dimension in longer term is its existing discord and looming rivalry with China, with substantial current complications in bilateral and regional politics aggravated by shadows of historical resentment. China in a certain sense is a major strategically constraining factor that India has to consider (and has sometimes excessively considered), though both countries are willing to selectively develop relations, determined to avoid repeating the past conflicts.
At present, although the US-China-India triangular relationship is characterized by uncertainty, its overall structural features are still that the three countries all only commit to relatively limited policy goals. Therefore, China should dispel the sense of siege, and ironically the ˝G2˝ illusion, striving for developing relations with India as well as with U.S., changing the two-titled diplomacy toward the latter. Conversely, a similar advise can be given to India. It is a common task for both countries to diligently reduce the mutual excessive geo-strategic suspicions, historical rievances, current jealousy, and the possibility of strategically economic competition, if they really want entitled great future for themselves.