By Atif A. Choudhury
Washington increasingly views South Asia through the lens of competition with China. The logic is simple: If China gains influence, the United States loses it. Countries moving closer to Beijing are therefore moving further from Washington.
However, that is not how much of South Asia sees its role in the world.
From India and Bangladesh to Nepal, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives, governments are trying to avoid choosing sides. They want Chinese investment; American security, cooperation, and education; Japanese development assistance; Gulf capital; European trade; and strong relationships with regional powers. Their goal is not alignment, but to have as many options as possible across all domains.
The competition for influence across the Indo-Pacific will not necessarily produce clearly defined camps. South Asian countries are more likely to work with different powers on different issues—and resist governments that ask them to choose.
Strategic Autonomy Is Not Neutrality
This approach has deep roots. India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal all participated in the Non-Aligned Movement. Today’s world looks very different from the Cold War, but the underlying desire to preserve independence remains.
Even India, Washington’s most important strategic partner in South Asia and a member of the Quad, which maintains a “benign hegemony” over the region, resists a simplistic U.S.-China binary. New Delhi confronts Beijing over their disputed border and across the Indo-Pacific while maintaining substantial economic ties with China. Despite years of political tensions, India’s trade deficit with China reached a record $99.2 billion in 2024-25.
Smaller South Asian countries have even stronger reasons to diversify. Bangladesh needs infrastructure, markets, energy, defense equipment, and development financing. Nepal must manage its relationships with two giant neighbors. Sri Lanka and the Maldives sit along strategically important Indian Ocean sea lanes.
For these countries, working with several outside powers is not indecision but risk management.
This pattern is not unique to South Asia. Similar dynamics have also been observed in parts of Africa, where regional stakeholders rejected binary alignment in favor of pragmatic engagement. Likewise, countries across Latin America and Europe are rebalancing their relations with Beijing after concerns about economic overreliance on China. Strategic hedging remains a key instrument of statecraft for countries navigating an increasingly multipolar world.
China Does Not Need Allies to Gain Influence
None of this means China is failing to gain ground.
Comparative research I contributed to at the University of South Carolina Rule of Law Collaborative examined Chinese engagement in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives. We found that China’s influence rarely rests on a single port, loan, or infrastructure project.
Instead, Beijing builds relationships over time through trade, infrastructure, technical cooperation, political engagement, cultural diplomacy, and sustained contact with governments and other institutions. Debates over “debt-trap diplomacy” often focus on whether Beijing intentionally seeks to create financial dependence. While scholars continue to debate that question, concentrating exclusively on debt risks missing a broader reality. China’s influence is built gradually through overlapping relationships that become increasingly difficult to disentangle. The USC-ROLC study describes this process as asymmetric interdependence. Countries retain sovereignty and continue pursuing independent foreign policies, yet the costs of fundamentally altering their relationships with China increase over time as economic, political, and institutional ties deepen.
China therefore does not need these countries to become allies. It benefits if they remain economically connected to China, welcome continued Chinese engagement, and become increasingly reluctant to damage relationships with Beijing.
Bangladesh illustrates the point. During Chief Adviser Muhammad Yunus’s 2025 visit to China, Beijing and Dhaka expanded economic and technical cooperation and discussed Chinese investment and lower interest rates on Chinese loans. It can simultaneously seek closer relationships with the U.S., Japan, the European Union, and Gulf countries.
China’s advantage is therefore not necessarily that South Asian countries are choosing Beijing. It is that Beijing keeps giving them reasons to keep China among their top choices as partners.
Washington Should Compete by Showing Up
This presents a different challenge for the U.S. Washington should not measure success by whether South Asian governments reject China. It should ask whether they continue to see the U.S. as a reliable and valuable partner.
Recent cuts to American foreign assistance have raised questions about U.S. power around the world. China has an opportunity to exploit that uncertainty by presenting itself as a predictable partner.
The U.S. does not need to copy China or match it dollar-for-dollar. It has its own advantages: world-class universities, scientific research, technology, agricultural expertise, public health institutions, private investment, and longstanding relationships with civil society.
Washington should build on those strengths while supporting local universities and think tanks that help governments independently evaluate foreign investments and partnerships. Above all, the U.S. should accept that South Asian governments will continue working with China. China, in turn, should recognize that economic engagement will not give it exclusive influence over its neighbors.
The Indo-Pacific is not dividing neatly into two camps. Countries across the broader region are building relationships with multiple powers precisely because they do not want to become dependent on any one of them. America’s objective should not be to force strategic alignment. It should be to remain an indispensable partner in a region whose governments increasingly define success by preserving their own strategic autonomy.
Atif A. Choudhury is the Indo-Pacific Business Development & Partnership Lead at the South China Sea NewsWire and a foreign affairs and international development professional specializing in South Asia, governance, and strategic competition. He is Founder and CEO of the American Bangladesh Foundation, Academic Relations Strategist at the Qatar Cultural Attaché Office, a Non-Resident Fellow at the Vanderbilt Center for Global Democracy, and a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Previously, he worked with the University of South Carolina’s Rule of Law Collaborative and The Carter Center’s China Program, supporting initiatives on governance, think tank capacity building, and PRC activities in Africa and South Asia. His analysis has appeared in The Diplomat, Small Wars Journal, LSE International Development Blog, Oxford Political Review, The US–China Perception Monitor, Dhaka Tribune, HuffPost, and other outlets.
