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Taking Sino-Indian relations as a case-study, this paper examines a form of international relations that arises when emerging states share an inhabited borderland: "state-shadowing". Authority over people is crucial to effective sovereignty, yet international borderlands are often porous and heterogeneous. Borderlanders have the possibility to look across, observe and compare different state-making and nation-building projects. When neighboring states simultaneously seek to consolidate in such situations, physical closeness can become a contest to prove their superiority over the state next door—which constitutes an always discernible, readily available, and equally viable alternative political project—to local people. This fear of comparison is particularly high in post-colonial polities like China and India, struggling to transform into nations. The triangular relationship between states and non-state actors in borderland situations turns state-making and nation-building into emulative, mirroring, and competitive attempts at self-definition against the other polity. As China and India's Himalayan encounter in the 20th century attests, this fear of being compared can escalate into a destructive security dilemma. The concept of state-shadowing thus offers a framework to understand how proximity, mobility and governmentality structure the low politics between neighboring post-colonial states, and potentially contribute to conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]