Nirupama Rao and Lin Minwang on the great India-China face-off

Welcome to Open Dialogue, a series from the South China Morning Post where we bring together leading voices to discuss the stories and subjects occupying international headlines.In this edition, we invited a leading Chinese scholar of South Asian affairs and a former Indian foreign secretary and ambassador to China to reflect on the deep fault lines in India-China relations. They debate whether the biggest barrier is history or politics, clash over the border, Pakistan and India’s ties with the United States, and examine whether Beijing and New Delhi can move beyond suspicion in an increasingly multipolar world.Lin Minwang is a professor and vice-dean at the Institute of International Studies at Fudan University, and deputy director of the university’s Centre for South Asian Studies. His research focuses on international relations in South Asia, with particular emphasis on China-India relations and China’s foreign policy. He is the author of Choosing War and The Belt and Road Initiative and Geopolitics in South Asia.