Abstract

The Galwan Valley clash in June 2020 between India and China in Eastern Ladakh, was an inflection point in their bilateral relationship. Growing suspicious of Chinese intentions, India has since pivoted to the West and rallied with the US and Quad in the Indo-Pacific. Parallelly, India has also balanced internally, building up its military strength along the India-China border. India also sought to reduce dependence on Chinese imports by focusing on incentivizing domestic production. Five years on, India appears to be recalibrating its approach once again. This was highlighted by Prime Minister Modi’s recent trip to China for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit in August 2025. It comes off the back of several developments that sought to bring the relationship back on track.

In this evolving context, this public lecture seeks to examine India’s approach to China and the nature of the debate within India on China. What is the nature of the threat posed by China to India? What are the contours of the debate within India on addressing the China challenge? What are the strategies and policy options that are being discussed in India? Finally, what is the likely future trajectory of the bilateral relationship?

About the Speaker

Manoj Kewalramani is Fellow-China Studies and the Chairperson of the Indo-Pacific Studies Programme at the Takshashila Institution. He is a Senior Associate (Non-resident), Freeman Chair in China Studies, with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (U.S.) and a Senior Associate Fellow at MERICS. He has been a Visiting Senior Fellow (Nov 2023 – Feb 2024) at ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute (Singapore) and is also an alumnus of the U.S. Department of State’s International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) as part of the Enhancing Regional Maritime Governance and Cooperation in the Quad chapter of the year 2022.

Mr Kewalramani’s research interests range from Chinese politics, foreign policy and approaches to new technologies to addressing questions of how India can work with like-minded partners to deal with the challenges presented by China’s rise. ​He is the author of Smokeless War: China’s Quest for Geopolitical Dominance, which discusses China’s political, diplomatic, economic and narrative responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mr Kewalramani’s work has been featured in several media publications, including Reuters, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera, Nikkei Asia, The Times of India, Hindustan Times, and The Diplomat. In August 2022, he testified as an expert witness before the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission on China’s zero-COVID policy. He was invited again to testify before the USCC on China’s Stockpiling and Mobilization Measures in June 2024. He publishes a daily newsletter translating and analyzing discourse from the People’s Daily, the Chinese Communist Party’s flagship newspaper. Prior to joining Takshashila, he spent over a decade working as a journalist in India and China, where he helped set up digital newsrooms and train young journalists.