Accelerating of Chinese influence across South Asia is fundamentally reshaping the region’s geopolitical landscape. This is a big foreign policy challenge for India. Analyse.

The instruments. Infrastructure finance under the Belt and Road Initiative, sovereign lending, port and connectivity projects, arms transfers, party-to-party and military-to-military ties, and increasingly vaccine and disaster diplomacy. China is now the largest trading partner or largest creditor for several of India's neighbours.

The map.

• Pakistan — the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, running through territory India claims, converts an adversary into a structurally supported one.
• Sri Lanka — the Hambantota port lease of 2017 after debt distress, and the recurring controversy over Chinese research vessels docking, became the standard illustration of strategic exposure through debt.
• Nepal — transit and connectivity agreements after 2015, and Chinese engagement with Nepali party politics, have reduced India's former monopoly on access.
• Bangladesh — major Chinese defence supplier and infrastructure financier, even while economic ties with India deepen.
• Maldives — the free trade agreement and the India Out campaign showed how domestic politics can be leveraged.
• Myanmar and Afghanistan — pipelines, Kyaukphyu port and mineral interests.

Why this is a challenge rather than merely competition. It ends India's historical primacy in its own neighbourhood; it gives smaller states an alternative patron and therefore leverage over India; it creates a two-front strategic problem when combined with the disputed Himalayan border; and it places Chinese naval access points around the Indian Ocean rim.

India's response. Neighbourhood First and lines of credit; delivery-focused connectivity such as cross-border power trade, rail links and the Motor Vehicles arrangement; first-responder credibility in disasters and in the Sri Lankan financial crisis, where India extended about four billion dollars in assistance; SAGAR and the maritime security architecture; and coalition-building through the Quad and IORA.

Assessment. India cannot outspend China and should not try. Its comparative advantages are proximity, people-to-people ties, timely delivery and the absence of debt entrapment. The failures have been of implementation speed and of political sensitivity, not of resources.