East Of India, South Of China by Amitav Acharya

East of India, South of China is an incisive analysis of the ebbs and flows of the geopolitical fortunes of India and China—the two Asian giants—in Southeast Asia. Amitav Acharya charts the key events and turning points in the triangular relationship between India, China, and Southeast Asia since the times of Jawaharlal Nehru, and unravels its importance in the construction of the Asian and global strategic order. The book shows how India’s pre-eminent role in designing the regional architecture in Asia was diluted after the Bandung era, especially post the Sino-India War in 1962, and how, by the 1980s, it had become a political and diplomatic non-entity—if not a pariah—in Southeast Asia even as China emerged as a dominant regional power over the next three decades. The last two decades, however, have seen India making substantial inroads into the ASEAN scene with its ‘Look East’ policies, altering power equations in the region to no small degree. Revisiting the question of contemporary Asian order and posing critical questions about the future of regional leadership in Asia, Acharya challenges the conventional wisdom that imagined the Asian order solely premised upon US–Japan–China relations and gave little attention to India–China–Southeast Asia relations.