China in India’s Neighbourhood

Finally, it shall be endeavoured to provide a multilateral solution to augment the harmony of interests, while keeping in check the revisionist power, and avoiding the entrapment in the Thucydides’ Trap by preventing the rise of a Chinese equivalent of the Monroe Doctrine, that requires a greater understanding of the Chinese Marathon Strategy, especially the concept of shi. [...] The rapid growth of infrastructure, the development of Green Water Navy capabilities, as well as the burgeoning geopolitical influence of the Chinese PLA Navy, have not exactly gone unnoticed in policy circles and the muscle-flexing of the Chinese polity, albeit as the trailblazer of the 21st Century, and pushing forward a temporal discourse highlighting a teleological agenda of securing an ontolo. [...] Despite the Chinese diplomatic overtures to the Taliban, with formal recognition and enlisting their services in the Xinjiang region to counter the Uighur populace, the very anarchic modus operandi of the Taliban is surely going to be very detrimental to the requisite stability for pursuing the Chinese target of interconnectedness. [...] The need of the hour is the tackling of the pandemic, the climate change crises and serving some form of check or hindrance to the rapid expansion of Chinese influence in the Indo-Pacific, while securing noteworthy developments along the South China Sea region, and thereby expanding the scope of the Maritime Silk Roads (MSR). [...] Similarly, the withdrawal of US bases from the Philippines in 1994 led to the Chinese occupation of the Mischief Reef in South China Sea claimed by the Philippines.48 Today, it is opined that Xi Jinping’s China is confident about the decline of the West and USA following the Iraq and Afghanistan fiasco of USA, the Brexit and the election of Donald Trump to presidency in 2016.