The Sino-Indian Contest: Factors Shaping India's Balancing Strategy

The Sino-Indian rivalry presents an enduring, carefully managed competition between two leading Asian powers. Conventional balance-of-power logic suggests that a weaker state facing a rising, capable adversary should engage in robust hard balancing through alliances or arms buildup. Yet India’s response to China’s expanding military and economic influence diverges from these expectations. Instead, India pursues “constrained hard balancing,” adopting selective military cooperation, incremental capability enhancements, and subtle measures to limit Chinese sway—without fully committing to formal alliances. While the absence of an existential threat partly accounts for India’s restraint, two overlooked factors deepen understanding: “weaponized interdependence” and domestic identity politics. China’s centrality in global supply chains and technology spheres heightens the costs of overt balancing, as India risks punitive economic retaliation. Meanwhile, India’s domestic identity imperatives—shaped by historical legacies, nationalist sentiment, and the aspiration for strategic autonomy—discourage reliance on alliances that might imply dependency or diminished status. This article integrates these variables, illustrating how global economic entanglements and national self-perceptions together produce a more cautious balancing posture. It concludes by proposing policy interventions—such as economic diversification, flexible coalitions, and normative frameworks—that can mitigate vulnerabilities and help states navigate rivalries without escalating into destabilizing confrontations.