India and China had a glorious history of cultural and material exchanges, which developed into friendship and subsequently into camaraderie during first half of the twentieth century when both India and China fought western imperialism. Owing to serious misconceptions and misjudgements the relations remained under the shadow of animosities and mutual distrust for over three decades until Rajiv Gandhi's China visit in 1988. After 62 years of diplomatic relations between the two, there is a certain maturity in the relations, as both are sharing new responsibilities in the stupendously changing global architecture.
India-China Relations: Future Perspectives is a collection of eighteen essays by eminent Indian and Chinese scholars, diplomats and political personalities, who look at the complex and multi-layered relationship from different perspectives covering various domains such as civilizational dialogue through history, the 1950s brotherhood, the border, and various other issues pertaining to education, agriculture, security, defense and economic complementarities etc.
The complex and multi-layered character of the relationship makes it difficult to define as an adversarial or competitive, for there has been cooperation at various levels between the two, such as climate change and many other multilateral forums like G20 and BRICS. Notwithstanding the cooperation, there have been incremental yet cautious approaches towards cooperation in various fields from both the sides. As the global economic and political scenario is undergoing a tremendous change, and its shift to Asia is visible, the contributors feel that India and China need to handle the hypersensitive issues with care and tap the existing complementarities appropriately, or else the Asian century would not only be a distant dream, but could also endanger the peace and stability of the region and the world.
