Needless to say, Burma has an appalling human rights record, but the U.S. and European policy of isolation and imposing sanctions has thrown it into China's arms. Beijing has had strategic influence in Burma for many years but, previously, the Burmese had the option of telling the Chinese to go home. They no longer have that option. Burma is reported to keep up a brisk military-to-military relationship with North Korea, conducted through the two countries' embassies in Beijing.

Until 2001, India had a moral policy of condemning Burma. Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi studied in India and was popular there. But India shares a long land border with Burma. Burma can cause India problems. And New Delhi has been aghast to see the extent of Chinese influence. China has established signals-intelligence-listening stations along Burma's border with India. There are reports, often denied, of the Chinese navy having an interest in long-term access to Burmese ports, which would give it a power-projection capability in the Indian Ocean.

So in 2001 New Delhi changed tack and decided to engage Burma comprehensively. Over time, this may give Burma an alternative to China. It may even produce some useful political change in Burma. The Chinese are perfectly happy with Burma's dictatorial ways. The Indians, while not imposing any conditions on their engagement with Burma and clearly motivated by realpolitik, may nonetheless eventually rub a little of their democratic magic onto Burma.

Nepal is another case of strategic competition between India and China. When the Nepalese king briefly assumed total power, suspending political parties and the democratic constitution, most democratic nations condemned the move and cut off military links. China enhanced military links, offered to supply arms and engaged in intense diplomacy with numerous delegations and visits. Beijing's only conceivable purpose for such maneuvering is to gain a perch from which to discomfit India. Nepal's rebel group, which has now been brought into the government, is composed of Maoists, and though not financed by the Chinese still owe allegiance to China's late revolutionary leader.

Most important of all, though, is Pakistan. China has contributed, though not recently, to Pakistan's nuclear weapons program and its missile program. Historically, China has used proliferation to hurt its enemies. Thus it proliferated to the Middle East to hurt the United States and to Pakistan to hurt India. China maintains a close strategic relationship with Pakistan-less close than in the past and complicated by the American presence, but substantial nonetheless. Particularly telling is the Chinese involvement in the development of the Gwadar port in the Pakistani province of Baluchistan, which is positioned to affect access to the Persian Gulf.

Singh told me he believes Pakistan still allows its territory to be used by terrorist groups that target India. The appalling terrorist bombings in Mumbai on July 11, 2006, which killed nearly 200 commuters and injured hundreds more, are widely believed to have involved the Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorist group, which originated in Pakistan. New Delhi finds Washington's closeness to Islamabad perplexing, given its belief that Pakistan walks on both sides of the street on terrorism.

Another important area of competition is Bangladesh. China has made a huge effort to cultivate ties with the country, which the Indians believe is involved in many of the separatist movements in India's northeast. India, in turn, was accustomed to causing trouble for China in Tibet by hosting the Dalai Lama-who India continues to host, although New Delhi has now accepted in principle Chinese sovereignty over Tibet.

What all this suggests is that India and China retain the capability to cause a lot of trouble for each other. And these spheres of competition put some limits on Indian-Chinese counter-terror cooperation. Although the Chinese are especially paranoid about Islamic separatism in their vast Xinjiang province, they may well find cause to cooperate with Islamist opponents of India's secular democracy.

Most obviously, India and China will rub up against each other in Central Asia and in the Middle East (as Geoffrey Kemp outlined in the Summer 2006 issue of The National Interest). India has become a substantial aid donor to Afghanistan, where it has long been active in opposing Pakistani interests. India will have an interest in democracy and stability in both Central Asia and the Middle East.

China will care less about internal politics in either region, but will certainly care a great deal about energy security. This too will be India's primary interest. Already China and India are competing for secure energy supplies from around the world. And perhaps the strategic competition between the two Asian giants will be most intense in an area scarcely alluded to publicly: the nuclear race. When India tested nuclear weapons in 1998, its then prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, wrote to President Clinton citing both China and Pakistan as reasons India had to have a nuclear deterrent. Indian defense and foreign ministers in the past have often made the same point about China.

India's more sophisticated leaders no longer speak that way in public. Their deterrent, they say, is not directed at any particular nation. Nonetheless, you don't have to travel far in Indian strategic circles to find that the deterrent is mostly oriented towards China. Indeed, nuclear weapons disadvantage India vis-à-vis Pakistan because India enjoys such an overwhelming conventional force superiority. But for India vis-à-vis China, the situation is somewhat different. No one should underestimate India's conventional forces, but China is a wealthier nation and spends more money on its military.

India is not pursuing numerical equality of nuclear warheads with China, but it is determined to have a credible nuclear deterrent. In July 2006, India tested the Agni-3 missile, which for the first time would bring China's huge cities of Beijing and Shanghai under its nuclear range. The Agni-3 failed in its second stage, but India expects to have it up and running soon. Delhi's naval-expansion plans also involve nuclear submarines in the Pacific Ocean, which would put China's coastal and northern cities under another layer of nuclear deterrent.

China has long had the capability to hit any Indian city with its nuclear weapons but has not faced such an Indian capability. It is overwhelmingly in U.S. interests for India to attain broad strategic parity with China, and Washington should therefore help India to manage this deterrence and help keep its arsenal effective and safe-hence the U.S.-India nuclear agreement.

As far ahead as one can imagine, India and China will provide the two great diasporas of the world. The Chinese diaspora is culturally loyal to Chinese civilization but often has very little regard for the dictatorship that runs the homeland. By contrast, democracy is at the very core of India's national being. India's emergence as a strategic equal of China is a good thing for the world, so long as New Delhi and Beijing manage their inevitable competition effectively.

The dynamic of this competition is destined to be a central feature of geostrategic equations throughout the 21^st century. The international system would benefit from the influence of Indian genius and mellifluous style. In a naughty world, the Indian emergence is a rare piece of unadulterated good news.

Greg Sheridan is foreign editor of The Australian and is a contributing editor to The National Interest.