As befits a leading member of the Indian prime minister’s National Security Advisory Board, Pramit Pal Chaudhuri in his rejoinder adeptly lays out the nuances of India’s China policy—and highlights how New Delhi has leveraged strategic partnerships with Washington and Tokyo against Beijing, not as part of any containment alliance but to give India space to pursue its independent interests. He is correct that a Chinese strategic establishment inclined to look down on India takes India much more seriously when it combines its weight with first-tier powers like the United States and Japan, and he accurately describes Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ambitions to catalyze Indian development through greater economic engagement with both China and Japan like other Asian nations and the United States itself. India is indeed hedging—pursuing trade and investment opportunities with what will soon emerge as the world’s largest economy even as China’s modernization generates security frictions that offset the reassurance otherwise provided by deep economic interdependence.

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