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India's anticipated rise to prominence in what has been termed the ‘Asian 21st century'will have a significant impact upon geopolitics in the coming decades. As India's stature continues to increase across Asia and the world, appreciating which interests and principles structure the country's international interaction has never been more important. Central to these dynamics is how India's identity – and the longstanding values, principles and practices underpinning it – acts as the paramount factor that deeply structures the conduct of its international affairs. Acknowledging this centrality, this edited volume uses this factor as its foremost theme of analysis through which to understand and analyse India's most important regional, great power and diplomatic interactions. Not only providing a mechanism better to appreciate the historical foundations of these relationships, the focus on identity is also necessary to appreciate how the Hindu nationalism of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) under the leadership of Narendra Modi is now permeating Indian diplomacy. For the BJP, the pursuit – and attainment – of global influence and heightened status is the driving imperative of the BJP with regard to India's contemporary international affairs.Chapter 6 of this book is available for free in PDF format as Open Access from the individual product page at www.taylorfrancis.com. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

This Handbook provides an in-depth overview of how China is governed, how its domestic political system functions and the critical issues that it currently faces. Governed by the world's largest political party in the world's longest-ruling Communist regime, China is undergoing a transitional period of rapid economic and social development. How this period is managed will have significant implications for the Chinese state and its population concerning China's governance structures and economy, as well as the country's justice, public health, education and internal/external security concerns. This transition to a modern state is not without its challenges – particularly in terms of how the Chinese state deals with diverse issues such as social inequality, corruption, separatism, increasing individualism and political reform. China's governance and domestic politics also have possible major global consequences, especially in the context of China's continued rise within the international system. This Handbook will improve understandings of the core national dynamics of this rise and, as levels of international interdependence with China increase, can offer vital insights concerning China's domestic attributes. Gaining a better knowledge of China's internal workings can also help better appreciate the multiple and varied problems that China's leaders will face in the coming decades. Critically, many of the core internal issues facing China also have potential external repercussions, principally in terms of rising social unrest, nationalism, environmental degradation, resource shortages and attitudes towards globalization. This book aims to cover these issues and will help readers to fully comprehend China's ongoing contemporary global significance.