New Delhi, Oct. 26 -- China remains one of the most consequential and most difficult foreign policy challenges facing India today. Even as tensions along the border persist, New Delhi is cautiously rethinking economic ties with Beijing. This review is taking place against a shifting strategic backdrop, with Washington reassessing its own relationship with China. Few people in India have thought more about the changing India-China relationship than Ambassador Vijay Gokhale. Gokhale retired from the Indian Foreign Service in January 2020 after a thirty-nine-year diplomatic career. From January 2018 to January 2020, he served as India's foreign secretary. He previously served as India's high commissioner to Malaysia, ambassador to Germany, and ambassador to the People's Republic of China. He is currently a non-resident senior fellow at Carnegie India. On last week's episode of Grand Tamasha, a weekly podcast on Indian politics and policy co-produced by HT and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Gokhale explained why he calls China an "opportunistic power," why the India-China relationship is best characterised as one of "armed coexistence," and whether the thaw in bilateral ties reflects a genuine change in Chinese policy or a tactical pause. He also discussed shifting US-China relations and the recent summit between Xi Jinping and Donald Trump. Gokhale, who has written five highly acclaimed books on China, told host Milan Vaishnav that Beijing sees no upside in resolving the boundary question with India because it feels time is on its side. More importantly, he said, "the gap between Indian capabilities and Chinese capabilities appears to have grown to a point where China feels that over a long term, it will ultimately prevail and achieve whatever objectives it has." The central question, he argued, is whether India will "continue to exercise restraint continuously in a gray zone warfare-like situation." Recent scholarship, he noted, questions the premise that China's adversaries will continue to bear the consequences of coercive measures indefinitely. On economic ties, Gokhale downplayed the significance of recent Indian policy measures, saying that "a very small adjustment has been made in policy whereby the earlier decision not to allow any Chinese investments into India has been relaxed." He added that China's record of investment in India is limited. "They have generally participated in projects in India and showed them as investment, but the projects in India are financed with either multilateral money or Indian capital, not Chinese money," he said. On the shifting role of the United States, Gokhale argued that there is a rethink within America's strategic community "in terms of where the priorities of the US lie, not only vis-a-vis China, but vis-a-vis the rest of the world." He noted that references to the Indian Ocean were virtually absent from both the US National Security Strategy and recent policy statements by senior Trump administration officials. "Anecdotally, even changing the name of a major command from Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM) to Pacific Command (PACOM) conveys a certain message. Although the US feels one shouldn't read too much into it, I think Indians are reading something into it," Gokhale said....