[WEBCAST] Crossing the Precipice: The India-China Border Clash
VIEW EVENT DETAILSTuesday, 7th July, 6.30 p.m. – 7.30 p.m.
LIVE WEBCAST
Watch Live on Youtube
After having made considerable efforts over a long period to build stronger bilateral ties with high profile and prolific diplomatic endeavours, the standoff between India and China at the Galwan valley marks a new low in the relationship between the two countries.
Experts believe that India’s infrastructure projects along the LAC, the revocation of Article 370 which makes Ladakh a union territory directly under the control of the Central government, and India’s perceived strategic alignment with the US in a period of deteriorating US-China relations contributed to one of the most dangerous clashes between the two countries since 1962. While military leaders continue to participate in diplomatic and de-escalatory efforts, the deployment of more troops, missiles, and tanks along the border districts indicate no signs of immediate disengagement.
How did India and China cross this precipice in the midst of a global pandemic? What are the pathways to de-escalation and conflict management in the days and weeks ahead? What role does India’s relationship with the US play in China’s aggression? And how will this border incident impact the long-term relationship between Asia’s two major powers and the strategic dynamics in the Indo-Pacific?
This Asia Society India Centre and Asia Society Policy Institute webinar will shed light on these questions and discuss the impact on India and China, the region, and the United States moving forward. Suhasini Haidar, the Diplomatic Editor of The Hindu, will moderate a conversation between Ambassador Nirupama Rao, former Foreign Secretary of India, Tanvi Madan, Senior Fellow and the Director of the India Project at the Brookings Institution, and M. Taylor Fravel, Professor of Political Science and Director of the MIT Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
This event will be live-streamed on Facebook and Youtube. Viewers can submit questions through comments during the live stream.
Ambassador Nirupama Rao is a retired Indian diplomat who held several important assignments during a four-decade-long diplomatic career. She was India’s first woman Spokesperson in the Ministry of External Affairs, the first woman Indian High Commissioner from her country to Sri Lanka, and the first Indian woman Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China. She served as India’s Foreign Secretary from 2009-2011. At the end of that term, she was appointed India’s Ambassador to the United States. Amb. Rao has taught courses at Brown University and Columbia University and has held fellowships and visiting scholar positions at the India China Institute at The New School, The Wilson Center, and Bellagio Center.
Tanvi Madan is a Senior Fellow and Director of The India Project at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC. Madan’s work explores India’s foreign policy, focusing in particular on India's relations with China and the United States. She is the author of the book Fateful Triangle: How China Shaped US-India Relations during the Cold War. Previously, Madan was a Harrington doctoral fellow and teaching assistant at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas. She has a PhD in public policy from the University of Texas at Austin, a master's degree in international relations from Yale University, and a bachelor's degree with honours in history from Lady Shri Ram College in Delhi.
M. Taylor Fravel is the Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Political Science and Director of the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Taylor studies international relations, with a focus on international security, China, and East Asia. His books include Strong Borders, Secure Nation: Cooperation and Conflict in China's Territorial Disputes (Princeton University Press, 2008) and Active Defense: China's Military Strategy Since 1949 (Princeton University Press, 2019). Taylor is a graduate of Middlebury College and Stanford University, where he received his PhD. He also has graduate degrees from the London School of Economics and Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. In 2016, he was named an Andrew Carnegie Fellow by the Carnegie Corporation. Taylor serves on the board of directors of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations and as the Principal Investigator for the Maritime Awareness Project.
Suhasini Haidar is the Diplomatic Editor of The Hindu. Prior to this, she was Foreign Affairs Editor and prime time anchor for CNN-IBN, and Correspondent for CNN International’s New Delhi bureau before that. In 2015, she was the recipient of the prestigious Indian print journalism ‘Prem Bhatia’ award. Haidar worked with CNN International from 1995-2005, regularly reporting from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. She was part of the CNN team that won the Columbia-Dupont Broadcast Journalism Award in 2005 for coverage of the tsunami in India. Haidar earned a Bachelor's degree at Lady Shriram College in Delhi and her Masters in Broadcast Journalism at Boston University.