Strategic Mutual Trust In China-india Bilateral Relationship

Strategic mutual trust, which can be classified as high, middle and low levels, is apsychological state of two countries after calculating their overall national interests.Due to their similar strategic goal of becoming big powers, China and India are in astate of low-level strategic mutual trust, and India holds its trust in China less thanChina in India. India fears that a competition with China would be created in theprocess of the realization of its strategic attainment, and another fear also haunts thecountry that India cannot be countervailing with China in this race simply because oftheir large strength disparity. While China does not fear competition with India due toits confidence on power gap, however, a misgiving really disturbs China that Indiamight set obstacles on its rising path if India loses its confidence. In fact, India hasalready aroused China’s dissatisfaction on some issues. Low-level strategic mutualtrust makes a hindrance to China-India bilateral cooperation in many areas.Nonetheless, the probability of enhancing their strategic mutual trust is rare in theshort term, given the unlikelihood of being alliance or overcoming divergence onstrategic level between them. However, it is possible to promote their strategic mutualtrust by constructing a group identity of “emerging powers” in a long term.