Exploring Options to Address Chinas Strategy in South Asia

Abstract

Abstract : South Asia in its current disunited state will continue to live under growing Chinese hegemony though few states can prolong their individual benefits from this status quo. If India can show that it is in the South Asian collective interest to demand its rightful higher return on the region's investment from China, the regional hegemon, then, South Asia can emulate Association of South East Asian Nations in prosperity and stability. China will cooperate in this win-win solution only if it is reasonably assured that it will continue to remain regionally important (though not dominant) and that the United States, the global hegemon, is kept away from its periphery, where it is already showing a perceptible interest by its rebalancing strategy of Asia-Pacific. Creating mutually beneficial alternatives by aligning its interests selectively, South Asia can convince China to transform into a responsible hegemon, thus ensuring its proportional contribution to the global security, in keeping with its global power status which is exactly what the United States desires; through South Asia, the United States can achieve it, and through the United States, by making China cooperate, South Asia can collectively achieve higher prosperity than the status quo.