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East of India, South of China is an incisive analysis of the ebbs and flows of the geopolitical fortunes of India and China—the two Asian giants—in Southeast Asia. Amitav Acharya charts the key events and turning points in the triangular relationship between India, China, and Southeast Asia since the times of Jawaharlal Nehru, and unravels its importance in the construction of the Asian and global strategic order. The book shows how India’s pre-eminent role in designing the regional architecture in Asia was diluted after the Bandung era, especially post the Sino-India War in 1962, and how, by the 1980s, it had become a political and diplomatic non-entity—if not a pariah—in Southeast Asia even as China emerged as a dominant regional power over the next three decades. The last two decades, however, have seen India making substantial inroads into the ASEAN scene with its ‘Look East’ policies, altering power equations in the region to no small degree. Revisiting the question of contemporary Asian order and posing critical questions about the future of regional leadership in Asia, Acharya challenges the conventional wisdom that imagined the Asian order solely premised upon US–Japan–China relations and gave little attention to India–China–Southeast Asia relations.

Asymmetrical Neighbors explains the variations in state building across the borderland area between China, Myanmar, and Thailand. It presents a comparative historical account of the state and nation-building processes in the ethnically diverse and geographically rugged borderland area where China meets Southeast Asia. It argues the failure of the Myanmar state to consolidate its control over its borderland area is partly due to the political and military meddling by its two more powerful neighbors during the Cold War. Furthermore, both China and Thailand, being more economically advanced than Myanmar, have exerted heavy economic influence on the borderland area at the cost of Myanmar’s economic sovereignty. The book provides a historical account of the borderland that traces the pattern of relations between valley states and upland people before the mid-twentieth century. Then it discusses the implications of the Chinese nationalist KMT troops in Burma and Thailand and Burmese and Thai communist insurgencies since the mid-1960s on attempts by the three states to consolidate their respective borderland areas. The book also portrays the dynamics of the borderland economy and the dominance of both China and Thailand on Myanmar’s borderland territory in the post-Cold War period. It further discusses the comparative nation-building processes among the three states and the implications for the ethnic minority groups in the borderland area and their national identity contestations. Finally, the book provides an updated account of the current ethnic conflicts along Myanmar’s restive borderland and its ongoing peace negotiation process.