ISAS Insights

The strategic significance of economic diplomacy pulsates in the Sino-Indian Joint Statement issued on 19 September 2014 following extensive talks between India‟s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Ahmedabad and New Delhi in India. This marks a clear re-configuration of the difficult but dynamic engagement between these two mega-state Asian neighbours, known for their tense eyeball-to-eyeball military , face-off‟, albeit without bloodshed, across the Himalayas in recent years. The reconfigured Sino-Indian engagement is designed to build “a closer developmental partnership” as a core feature of the existing “Strategic and Cooperative Partnership for Peace and Prosperity” in the bilateral sphere.