Memories, Morals, and Motives: An Inquiry into China-India Interactions at the World Trade Organization

As China and India have begun to rapidly integrate into the world economy, they have generated scholarly interest in the processes of their economic transformations and consequences of their international economic engagements across a range of domains such as trade, finance, development, global economic governance, etc. However, research in these areas is primarily comparative, exploring the apparent variations with little focus on how they relate to each other in their response to “circulatory global forces”. This article discusses the challenges of understanding China-India interactions in the field of global economic governance in general and in the context of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in particular, and examines how they have responded, adapted, or innovated, both individually and as part of a collective or coalition, at similar points in time. In contrast to the other international economic institutions, the WTO has emerged as a site of struggle between ideas, actors, and norms, replete with instances of solidarity, failed solidarity, etc.