India’s growing rivalry with China is reshaping the politics of the Global South, but this contest is unlikely to produce a single hegemonic leader. Instead, it is fostering a decentralised order marked by shifting alliances, transactional partnerships, and region-specific coalitions. In this evolving landscape, countries of the Global South are not passive spectators; they are strategic actors who leverage the competition between India and China to advance their own priorities. Understanding how this pluralistic system operates, and how India and China adapt to it, is key to anticipating the future balance of influence in the post-Western world.
Historical Trajectories of Engagement in the Global South: India and China Compared
India and China’s engagements in the Global South are rooted in distinct historical legacies and ideologies. Since its independence, India has cultivated a diplomatic identity anchored in non-alignment and South–South solidarity. As a founding leader of the non-aligned movement (NAM), India positioned itself as a voice for decolonised states seeking autonomy from Cold War bipolarity. NAM offered a framework through which India advocated political independence, economic cooperation and equitable governance for the Global South.
In the post–Cold War era, this legacy evolved into a doctrine of strategic autonomy, enabling India to maintain diversified partnerships across competing poles of power. Often framed as a “multi-alignment” or “multi-vector” strategy, India’s approach allows it to engage with actors as divergent as the United States and Russia, or Iran and Israel. As articulated by Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar at the January 2024 NAM Summit in Uganda, India is “not anti-Western, but not uncritically aligned with it either,” and should be admired for retaining “multiple options” in its foreign policy.