Debate : Future Trajectory of Sino- Indian Relations 13 India-China Relation: Enhancing Engagement Promises Better Future Avinash Godbole * India-China relations have always been complex, and predicting their future is fraught with dangers. Breakthroughs could drive it in a positive direction, and breakdowns - like what happened just before Premier Li Keqiang’s visit in 2013 - as well as President Xi Jinping’s visit in 2014, due to border incursions - would no doubt halt any positive momentum. However, both scenarios still face a lingering challenge in India-China relations: that is, the problem of narrative. For example, there is either the romanticism affiliated with Buddhism, Hsuan Tsang or Tagore; or then, the negative perception created by the 1962 debacle. More importantly, even the perception of betrayal filters onto the present day understanding of Chinese foreign policy vis-à-vis India, and onto China’s relations with Pakistan. Thus, the first requirement is to rescue the India-China narrative from both the romantic and hostile, and to bring in a more contemporary narrative that is a practical guide to the way forward. At the same time, China’s rise as well as its engagement and outreach strategies being explained purely and only in strategic terms, make the hostile narrative stronger: one hears the ‘told you so’ formulation repeatedly. Therefore, it seems clear that the rescuing of the narrative will be neither easy nor a sufficient condition to advance India-China relations further. However, this will be a necessary starting point. There are three elements in India-China relations. The first is purely bilateral; the second is of India-China cooperation in interest-based multilateral fora, as exemplified by their participation in BRICS activities and India’s decision to join the Chinese-sponsored Asian Infrastructure and Investment Bank (AIIB); and the third is India’s hedging strategy as a response to China’s rise as well as the changing security scenarios in the Asia-Pacific region. This overall narrative can be best explained by using Ian Hall’s recent description of contemporary Indian foreign policy as one of ‘multi-alignment’. Within the bilateral framework, four issues can be ranked in terms of their importance and influence in shaping the India-China discourse. The first is the issue of an unsettled border and territorial disputes. The second pertains to trade imbalance and slow progress on matters like market access to Indian *The Author is a Research Fellow at the Indian Council of World Affairs. The views expressed here are personal.