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Urbanizing villages are erstwhile rural villages that are spatially enveloped and are characterized by their dual relation to the state, which expresses itself as an issue of citizenship; of land ownership; of governance; and building regulations. This paper transcends the current focus on villages in Southern China, by comparing village urbanization between China and India through four narratives of village extensions. Four parallel readings are offered, namely that urban villages are characterized by; shared tenure rooted in their rural past; inherited administrative boundaries that are re-imbued with new legal designations; emulation of traditional practices; and sustained modes of self-governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) was resuscitated in November 2017, it was framed as a minilateral grouping of liberal democratic countries to build a free and open Indo-Pacific in the shadow of China's growing assertiveness. However, this Quad 2.0 had not taken collective action until 2021. The four states neither held leaders' summit meetings nor issued joint statements after lower-level meetings. They took no joint quadrilateral actions to deter China either. From a constructivist perspective, this paper addresses this puzzle by critically revisiting the alleged common identity of the four states. It argues that India's national identity has not been built on the ontological difference between liberal democracy and autocracy but on a complex amalgamation of non-alignment, post-imperial ideology, Hindu nationalism and Indian exceptionalism. India, having held a vision of establishing an India–China partnership in Asia, did not regard China as its significant Other until the deadly border clashes between them in June 2020. China's expansionism has challenged India's identity as the pre-eminent power in South Asia and its vision of an equal China–India partnership. Despite India's increased cooperation with its Quad partners since then, the Quad is built more on geopolitical pragmatism than on shared liberal norms and values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following decades of relative isolation, China and India have become the world's largest new traders. In this paper, we focus on their Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs). While the two economies initially followed similar paths, with a growing number of PTAs signed in the first decade of the 21st Century, since 2011 India has taken a U-turn and stopped completing them. China, on the other hand, has widened and deepened its trade agreements. We present a novel theoretical framework to analyze international economic negotiations by emerging economies and use it to study the puzzling divergence of the trade policies of China and India. By adapting the two-level game framework to emerging economies, we argue that there are key differences in the political economies of countries like China and India (compared to Western industrialized ones), which requires a more specific focus on the domestic side of the two-level game. We show that accounting for non-legislative domestic ratification processes and for iterative games and experiential learning by domestic actors are crucial in understanding the trade strategies of emerging economies. While much of the literature explains large emerging economies by looking at external systemic factors, we instead suggest that their domestic politics trumps international politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper constructs long-run estimates of total missing women (including missing girls at birth and excess female deaths) in China and India over seven decades from 1950 to 2020. We find that the number of missing women in India has been higher than in China throughout the seven decades. Over time, missing girls at birth grew faster in China than in India, but China has made more rapid progress in reducing excess female deaths after birth. While the share of missing girls at birth in total missing women has risen since the 1980s, there has also been a shift in excess female mortality from younger to older age groups. Our estimated trends are consistent with key economic, social, demographic and technological events and developments in the two countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the consequences of the hugely successful expansion of South-South Cooperation since the new millennium. For all the achievements, variations and change over the 1950s-late 1990s, 'SSC 1.0' was characterised by relative neglect within the 'international' development community, and by many orthodox and critical scholars. In the chronological schema of the paper, 'SSC 2.0' refers to the period of remarkable expansion from the early 2000s to the present. The emergence of 'SSC 3.0', I suggest, is currently revealed by a discernible set of shifts driven in large part by the expansionary successes of SSC 2.0, as well as other turns in the global political economy. Three contemporary trends are identified: cooperation narratives that are increasingly 'muscular', nationalistic and pragmatic; difficulties sustaining claims to 'non-interference' in partner countries; and the further erosion of ideational and operational distinctiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the evolving geopolitical developments in the Indo-Pacific region, especially through the lens of an India–US–China trilateral/tripolar framework. At a time when ‘strategic unease’ has become a defining characteristic of the region and ‘security alignments and strategic hedging’ a prevalent diplomatic tendency, this paper captures an evolving trend of convergence in the strategic visions of the three key Indo-Pacific players – India, China and the US, and rising bilateral strategic/defence cooperation between them. Using a constructivist approach, this paper explores the feasibility of a trilateral cooperative framework among the three countries in near future. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper looks at the insertion of China and India in the contested and highly legalised regime of intellectual property rights (IP). In doing so it pays particular attention at two dimensions, the internal adoption of this regime and external endorsement/contestation of international IP norms. Much has been written about whether emerging countries will challenge or support the maintenance of an open rules-based multilateral trade system. In this context, the differentiated integration of these two countries in the IP regime is notable. Domestically, China despite much criticism for widespread IP infringement has followed a maximalist interpretation of TRIPS. India, on the contrary has followed other emerging countries in pursuing a more critical, minimalist understanding. These positions have also been visible at the multilateral arena. This empirical finding runs contrary to the assumption that defiance results from market power. The divergence is the more surprising given a recent explosion of patent filings in both countries. From a political economy perspective, this should translate into support for stricter rules under TRIPS. In explanaining the two countries’ divertent insertion this paper looks beyond economic (market) power and domestic interests and underlines the role of ideational legacies, domestic interests and regulatory capacity. The paper thus stresses the need to look deep into domestic politics and ideational cleavages, as well as at their evolution over time, in order to better understand the international behaviour of emerging countries. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper assesses the role of the BASIC countries — Brazil, South Africa, India, and China — in UN climate change negotiations. The paper explores the formation and evolution of the group, and focuses on how the four major developing countries of China, India, Brazil, and South Africa have coordinated their positions and acted jointly to achieve an agreed outcome with other players in the recent UN Climate Change Conferences in Copenhagen and Cancun, based on an analysis of their country profiles and negotiation positions on a wide range of climate issues. The paper argues that the emergence of the BASIC Group is a reflection of the ongoing power shift from EU–US agreement to BASIC–US compromise in UN climate negotiations since the early 1990s. The rise of BASIC also has its roots in recent global market dynamics and further reflects the power transformation in the economic dimension of the international system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents population forecasts for China and India till 2100. The rise in sex ratios at birth in these countries has been observed to be the longest-running and most pronounced in Asia. The paper is based on different hypotheses on the future evolution of birth masculinity in each of these countries. These hypotheses are derived from an examination of present trends across Asia. The population forecasts allow us to explore the influence of various trajectories of sex ratio at birth on the demographic structures of both countries till 2100. In particular, the specific impact of skewed sex ratios on the adult population in which gender imbalances may translate into a major marriage squeeze in the future will be examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the domestic sources of the internationalization of national oil companies (NOCs) in China and India. It argues that – counter to notions of state-led internationalization – the going abroad of NOCs reflects a pattern of ‘coopetition,’ i.e., the co-existence of cooperation and conflict between increasingly entrepreneurial NOCs and partially supportive and interventionist home governments. In China, the state has predominantly assumed the role ofresource supplier, rarely stepping in as aveto player. In India, the NOC–government relationship has been more adversarial, with the state intervening more often as aveto playerthan its Chinese counterpart and only slowly emerging as aresource supplier. These patterns of internationalization can be explained by how two major trends have been playing out in the two countries: (1) the marketization of NOCs, and (2) the reform of the governance of overseas investments. The findings matter to theory and policy. First, they unpack the relational dynamics of business–government relations in hybrid models of capitalism beyond notions of top-down and bottom-up dynamics. Second, our analysis shows that the state intervenes in the international energy strategies of emerging economies as the occasional veto player rather than actively leveraging NOC internationalization for geopolitical goals. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Maritime violence perpetrated by non-state actors is a feature of the Indian Ocean. This includes the piracy, which has occurred most prominently off Somalia but also in the waters of Bangladesh, India and Indonesia, and terrorism perpetrated by al-Qaeda, the Tamil separatist movement in Sri Lanka, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), and the Pakistani Islamist group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) against the Indian city of Mumbai. This paper aims to chart why opportunities for non-state actors to use violence to advance their interests may continue across the region. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The recent debates within and beyond Marxism around empire and imperialism focus on deterritorialization, but fail to see non-Western states as anything other than collaborators or victims. Highlighting the importance of center-periphery relations within the territorially bounded political space of the nation-state, this paper puts forward a new concept of the Postcolonial Informal Empire (PIE) to characterize the emerging powers of China and India. The greatest paradox of PIEs is that a postcolonial impulse—to critically appropriate Western ideas and technologies such as sovereignty, nationalism, and the free market to build the multinational state and combine it with an affirmation of stories of historical greatness and long existing, pre-Westernized, civilizational-national cultures—enables the political entities to consolidate and discipline their borderlands and reduce diverse inhabiting peoples to culturally different but politically subservient subjects. It is predominantly a nationalist politics, and not economic calculability or financial interests, that shapes PIEs’ center-borderlands relations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The purpose of this paper is to assess the nature of competition in the information technology (IT) services sector between India and China. Using primary and secondary data sources, we compare and contrast the strengths and weaknesses of the IT services sector in the two countries along the main dimensions of Porter's competitive advantage model. The principal findings indicate that the IT services sectors in the two countries are distinctively different, have developed along different paths and are highly complementary to each other. China has a well-established hardware sector and its IT services sector focuses mostly on servicing its domestic market. India's IT services sector is predominantly export orientated with focus on the US and Western European markets. Contrary to popular beliefs, given the complementary characteristics of the IT services sectors in India and China, it is unlikely for the two countries to compete against each other in the near future and greater strategic co-operation between IT service providers in the two countries is a more likely outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Strategic historians and practitioners associated with the 32-day Sino-Indian border conflict of autumn 1962 have for long argued that India's appeal for US military assistance during the war led to the abandonment of India's foreign policy of non-alignment. By asking for military assistance, India entered into an alliance with the US. Triangulation of different accounts of the war, declassified US State Department Papers and correspondence between Indian leaders during the time of the war counter these claims. This article demonstrates how India's political elite, informed by cultural beliefs had in fact resisted allying with the US. Cultural beliefs, and not rational claims prescribing alliances, guided the strategic decision-making process in this period of national security crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) emerged under the Kyoto Protocol to facilitate collaboration between developed and developing countries in order to mitigate greenhouse gases. The CDM allows developed countries to receive credits towards meeting their obligatory targets by investing in emission reduction projects in developing countries. The countries are required to set up a Designated National Authority (DNA) to approve the CDM projects. This paper examines the role of the DNA in ensuring sustainable development, using the empirical case of China and India. Three aspects of the DNA's role are examined: the institutional structure, the policy context and the CDM project market. All three aspects highlight the important role of the DNA in meeting the countries' sustainable development priorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China and India, with four out of ten of the world's inhabitants, must loom large in any discussion of global international migration, especially so-called South-North migration. They have become major sources of migrants to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) nations. This paper focuses on the migration relationship between China and India and one of the OECD nations, Australia. Australian international migration data allow a comprehensive picture of all movement in and out of the country to be made, and for this article, flows with China and India are analysed. It is argued that the migration relationship is best depicted as a complex migration system involving flows in both directions and circularity, reciprocity, and remigration. A conceptual scheme is developed to identify the main components of the migration system and it is shown that many migrants transit between the different elements in the system. The analysis demonstrates that the traditional conceptualisation of the migration relationship between India and China on the one hand and high income countries on the other hand as being 'South-North' in nature is inappropriate. Some of the implications of reconceptualising mobility in this way for understanding the migration process and for the development of migration policy in China, India and Australia are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stem cell science is a volatile political arena. Propelled by the scientific and economic promise of important new health technologies, stem cell science has produced politicisation across the international, regional and national policy domains. Concerned lest they should lose an important opportunity, the emerging economies of China and India are introducing policies designed to improve their global competitive position in this field. Given that their science, tax regimes, regulation, supporting industries and financial markets are at a different stage of evolution to that of the developed economies, China and India bring their own unique characteristics to the fluid politics of stem cell globalisation. This paper analyses their approaches to innovation in stem cell science and their distinctive contribution to the dynamics of the global political competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stem cell science is a volatile political arena. Propelled by the scientific and economic promise of important new health technologies, stem cell science has produced politicisation across the international, regional and national policy domains. Concerned lest they should lose an important opportunity, the emerging economies of China and India are introducing policies designed to improve their global competitive position in this field. Given that their science, tax regimes, regulation, supporting industries and financial markets are at a different stage of evolution to that of the developed economies, China and India bring their own unique characteristics to the fluid politics of stem cell globalisation. This paper analyses their approaches to innovation in stem cell science and their distinctive contribution to the dynamics of the global political competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the topic of 'brain drain' was introduced to the United Nations' debates in the late 1960s, policy thinking on skilled migration has shifted its focus from discouraging emigration in the 1970s to encouraging returns in the 1980s, and to facilitating 'brain circulation' since the 1990s. This paper, based on a comparison between China and India in the Information Technology (IT) industry, suggests that how the highly skilled leave the home country in the first place is equally important as how they return or contribute back through transnational connections. IT professionals' migration from India with minimum government intervention may have more sustainable developmental effects than aggressive government programmes in China aimed at promoting return and transnational relations. This is because the migratory process of the Indian IT professionals is built into the dynamics of the global high-tech industry. By comparison, many programmes in China are dissociated from industry despite the heavy investment from the government. But the Chinese programmes may be more conducive for the development of basic research. In short, a proper mix of government policy and market mechanism seems a key to achieving sustainable brain circulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper studies regional (spatial) inequality in the five most populous countries in the world: China, India, the United States of America, Indonesia and Brazil in the period 1980-2000. They are all federations or quasi-federations composed of entities with substantial economic autonomy. Two types of regional inequalities are considered: Concept 1 inequality, which is inequality between mean incomes (GDPs per capita) of states/provinces, and Concept 2 inequality, which is inequality between population-weighted regional mean incomes. The first inequality speaks to the issue of regional convergence, the second, to the issue of overall inequality as perceived by citizens within a nation. All three Asian countries, show rising inequality in terms of both concepts in the decade of the 1990s. Divergence in income outcomes is particularly noticeable for the most populous states/provinces in India and China. The United States, where regional inequality is the least, shows further convergence. Brazil, with the highest level of regional inequality, displays no trend. A regression analysis fails to establish robust association between the usual macro variables and the two types of regional inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]