ASSESSMENTS

To Counter China, India Pushes East

Nov 10, 2017 | 10:00 GMT

With its Act East policy, India is focused on strengthening its trade and infrastructural ties with Southeast Asia.

With its Act East policy, India is focused on strengthening its trade and infrastructural ties with Southeast Asia.

(BEYHANYAZAR/iStock)

Highlights

  • China’s regional expansion in the Asia-Pacific will continue driving India into a security partnership with the United States and Japan as part of its Act East policy.
  • Barriers to market access will continue limiting the expansion of Indian trade with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
  • Fiscal and project management impediments will limit progress on India’s two key infrastructure projects in the northeast, thereby limiting its land-based ASEAN trade.

India has long looked east across the Bay of Bengal to Southeast Asia. Throughout its history, Indian traders and missionaries plying its waters for Malaysia and Indonesia brought Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism to the region with them. Those ties have lingered into the present, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has touched upon their shared cultural and religious connections through soft power diplomacy as part of his government's Act East policy....

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