China is everywhere in Southasia, both physically as an agent of globalisation, and conteptually as a growth model. While the focus has revolved around the possible conflict dynamic between India and China, Beijing's engagement with states and societies across the region presents a far more complex reality. Multi-layered, this linkage spans across border trade, joint ventures and macro-level investment to strategic alliances and political interaction.
It was not always this way. Beijing's engagement with Southasia can be understood only in the larger framework of the basic change in its approach to economic growth and international politics. In the last 50 years, China has transformed itself from an astute proponent of ideological outreach and a covert supporter of insurgency to a builder of modern crossborder infrastructures and a wild market-grabber. It has gotten rid of the Maoist jacket, though Beijing is still reluctant to acknowledge its acceptance of the capitalist robe.
As China projects itself as a country on the move, it is trying hard to prove that democracy and development have no correlation. Southasians devour this ambiguity, as the Subcontinent itself is a reservoir of scattered thinking, ambiguous planning and policy measures of marginal utility. As China showed meteoric rise in terms of growth, global market influence and as an advocate of exclusive 'Asian values', a potentially powerful Southasia realised the wider utility of its mammoth neighbour.
For its part, Beijing's interests in Southasia can be linked to three abiding and powerful objectives, which form its 'forward policy' in this region. These include expansion of its military base and strategic access; economic and commercial penetration into the huge Southasian market and, through it, to West Asia; and managing its own potential internal instabilities.