After several months of steadily improving ties, India-China relations appear to be cooling once again following the recent clashes in Kashmir. China’s military support for Pakistan during the conflict earlier this month has triggered fresh concerns in New Delhi, with many now fearing that the fragile détente built over the past year is starting to unravel.
Tensions further escalated in recent days after Beijing announced new names for dozens of locations along the disputed border with India, drawing strong backlash from the Indian media. Meanwhile, the Indian government has banned several Chinese state-run media accounts on the social platform X.
Joining Eric from New Delhi is Sushant Singh, a lecturer in South Asian Studies at Yale University, who breaks down the current state of Sino-Indian relations in the aftermath of the Kashmir conflict. Sushant also explains why observers should ignore India’s noisy mainstream media and instead pay close attention to what Prime Minister Narendra Modi does—or doesn’t—say about China.
Show Notes:
- The Guardian: India blocks X accounts of Chinese state media over coverage of Kashmir crisis by Helen Davidson
- Reuters: India rejects China’s latest renaming of places in Arunachal border state
- Bloomberg: China Gave Pakistan Satellite Help, India Defense Group Says by Sudhi Ranjan Sen and Dan Strumpf
About Sushant Singh:
Sushant Singh is an Indian journalist and consulting editor for The Caravan magazine in New Delhi. He co-founded The India Cable, a daily newsletter from India, and is a columnist for The Telegraph (Kolkata) and The Morning Context. His work has recently appeared in many global publications, including Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The Walrus, Kyiv Independent, and Tagesspiegel. He was earlier the Deputy Editor of The Indian Express newspaper in India, covering strategic affairs and national security. In 2018 and 2019, he was awarded the prestigious Ramnath Goenka Award for Excellence in Journalism. Sushant was a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research in India from 2020 to 2024. He was a visiting lecturer at Yale in the Fall of 2019 and the Henry Hart Rice Fellow in the Fall of 2021, returning as a lecturer in 2023. A former Indian military officer with two decades of uniformed service, he has worked as an Observer with the United Nations in Cote d’Ivoire. He is the author of “Mission Overseas: Daring Operations by the Indian Military” and the co-author of “Note by Note: The India Story 1947-2017”. He is currently working with Steven Wilkinson on a new book on India’s changing defense structure.
