Stop dreaming about China not being a threat to India. China is doing an India containment in South Asia by proxy and more than the US, it is China that is the strategic rival of India in South Asia. This will not lessen and will only grow as China gains more power. Unless of course India is willing to settle its territorial differences with China (that is give it all away to China) and reverse all previous positions on Tibet and the Himalayas.....
Oh no my friend, you aren't getting to where I intend to take you to so as to get a grip of the Indian perspective.
China is doing all that it is, but is that in any way stopping India from creating counters, and effective ones, to it? India has in the past many years diversified it's diplomatic time and energy in the immediate neighbourhood from Pakistan to other countries in the region. There is a significant economic integration being done, their economic dependencies are being created by letting them in with a bigger share of the economy, loans-grants-aid money are being extended, natural resources are being shared, with a good number of them there are significant military-military relations being built up, their bureaucracy is being closely worked with, and much more. China's over smartness in the region has only woken up the Indian polity, and the work to be done remains in some very safe hands with the officers from the IFS.
China is being balanced in the immediate neighbourhood using various means, first, as explained above, which is the direct approach. The second remains the indirect approach, where the growing relations with the US and the west, at large, figure in, and it has been well documented, each time India works out something significant with the west, and the US in particular, that makes China soften up further towards India. Of course, that is just one facet to Indo-West relations, since there is so much more to gain from the west than just use those relations to counter China from time to time. The third, there is a tit-for-tat response. What the Chinese are doing in and around us, the same to a certain extent is being extended to their neighbourhood. The message is clear for the Chinese, beyond a certain point you can't go further, you go, India will respond but then the biggest drawback is a complete lack of a defence industrial base, but then that can be countered by creating JVs with various countries in East-Asia. If you look at it a lot more closely, the very hype around the "string of pearls" works in our favour.
India will never put the US or anyone else in a position from where they exploit the position in their favour at our cost, so, India will never ever take any lead in any strategic outreach that puts us in a direct confrontation with China, definitely not till the time China puts itself in a direct confrontation with us using a third party. Other than that, India will rather handle any other challenge directly and on it's own, and that is why a certain group of strategic thinkers believe it is time India gets prepared for a two-front war if ever such a situation erupts so that India needn't look at others for help. In other words and metaphorically speaking, India will never be a Pakistan or a UK or a Japan to the west.
Take a look at what I mean when I say the aggressive attitude of China works in our favour. More than India, who are keen that India joins the SCO even though there remains opposition from China? It's the central Asians, and the Russians because they fear SCO might get hijacked by China in times to come. As I said in the previous post, look at India in East-Asia, where was it in the last decade, and today? Would the smooth run in and largely unnoticed entry be possible if the PRC wasn't all arrogant, and thinking to take on the whole world together? You have to read what amazing stuff India has done in Africa from economics to militarily, absolute change in strategy from the soft power that it once used to present itself as. Latin America is no different, significant gains made, though being a distant continent we took our time. Here is how it is, everywhere wherever China has stepped in, the GoI has got curious, and because the Chinese have a brash way, the opportunity gets created for India to step in as the other viable option. Guess what, had there not been an aggressive China, the west would have covered all such Indian moves internationally, looked at all such moves with suspicion and the media there would have been used to present us as the next emerging challenge.
It is how India will position itself, not as a direct threat or a challenge to China, but use every such opportunity so that we build in significant gains for ourselves. I will take you to the times of the right-wing, nationalist party, the BJP, when it ruled through the coalition, the NDA, from '99-'04. Check how were India's relations with the US, and China and that too right after the nuke tests back then. You will get a hint of what Indian top brass thinks and remains capable of. Extending the point of capability further, the world believes Indo-Israel relations are all about military, I would say, the military and strategic relations make no more than 10-15% of what this relationship has been built on, which means the relationship is far more deep rooted than most perceive it to be and still we are have worked out a good relationship with others in the region who could be extremely hostile to Israel.
As I said, not many have really analyzed India's foreign policy/relations. It's quite a case study from what it was back in 90's to what it is today.