Key Findings

1. Support for India’s foreign policy is steadily increasing. Eighty-eight percent of respondents have a positive perception of India’s foreign policy. Overall support for India’s foreign policy has steadily increased in every iteration of the Foreign Policy Survey.
2. China is viewed as India’s biggest challenge. Border conflict with China (89 percent of respondents) is deemed the biggest challenge to India’s foreign policy, followed by cross-border terrorism (86 percent) and border conflict with Pakistan (85 percent).
3. India should have a bigger say in multilateral institutions. Ninety-three percent of the respondents support India’s bid to secure permanent membership to the United Nations Security Council, and 91 percent want India to become a permanent invitee to the G7.
4. Quad countries and Russia are the most preferred partners for India. Supporting India’s quest for strategic autonomy, respondents expressed satisfaction with India’s bilateral relationship with the Quad countries (United States—86 percent, Australia—78 percent, and Japan—74 percent), as well as Russia (73 percent). They also view these countries as India’s potential leading partners in the next decade.
5. Sixty-six percent of the respondents are not satisfied with India’s current state of relations with China. The proportion of respondents who said they were not satisfied with India’s current relations with China increased by 17 percentage points from last year’s survey. Nearly nine out of every 10 respondents are concerned about China’s rise and see it as an immediate military threat to India.
6. China’s occupation of Tibet (81 percent) is considered a critical impediment to India-China relations. This is followed by the 1962 India-China war (66 percent), the CPEC traversing Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (61 percent), and the 2017 Doklam crisis and the 2020 Galwan clashes (55 percent each).
7. China is a threat in the maritime domain. A majority of India’s urban youth remain concerned about China’s threat to India in the maritime domain (71-83 percent). India’s youth concur that China is weaponising supply chains and minerals (83 percent).
8. India has enhanced its security following the 2020 Galwan clashes. A majority (72-84 percent) of India’s urban youth agree that India has adopted effective strategies to enhance its security following the 2020 Galwan clashes.
9. India should take the side of the United States in its rivalry with China. A majority of Indian urban youth are of the view that India should side with the US (54 percent), while 38 percent think India should adopt a neutral position. The respondents also support India-US cooperation across various domains (70-77 percent).
10. Concerns persist over China-Russia ties. Despite being satisfied with India-Russia relations, 80 percent of respondents are concerned about the growing China-Russia bonhomie.
11. Indian urban youth are divided on key questions concerning China. This is especially true about China’s potential integration of Taiwan, the succession of the Dalai Lama, and human rights violations of Uyghurs in Xinjiang province.
12. National security should be prioritised over the economy. On India-China trade relations, the respondents are of the view that national security should be prioritised over economic considerations (84 percent). There is support for imposing non-tariff barriers on Chinese imports (85 percent) and reducing imports of cheap Chinese mobile phones and hardware (80 percent).
13. India’s decision to stay out of the BRI is beneficial to the country. A majority of the respondents see India’s decision to stay out of China’s flagship Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) project as beneficial (79 percent). Respondents agree that the initiative is leading to unsustainable debt in countries (73 percent) and is a tool for pursuing China’s economic and geopolitical interests (68 percent).
14. The Indian Ocean is the most strategically vital region for India. The respondents consider the Indian Ocean as the most strategically vital region for the country (33 percent) as the maritime domain becomes more important. This is followed by South Asia (23 percent) and the Indo-Pacific (13 percent).
15. Indian urban youth trust most of the country’s neighbours. The trust does not apply, however, to Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh. Nepal received the highest vote of trust (73 percent), followed by Bhutan (66 percent) and Sri Lanka (64 percent). Trust for Bangladesh has continued to decrease since 2022.
16. The ‘Neighbourhood First’ policy has been adequate. Development aid to neighbours (through grants and concessional loans) and improved connectivity (86 percent) are deemed to be the most successful aspects of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Neighbourhood First policy. Countering Chinese presence in the neighbourhood and India’s engagement with non-friendly governments, except Pakistan and China (75 percent), also received support. The urban youth also consider India’s connectivity initiatives as adequate across various sectors (71-90 percent).
17. Distrust for China in the neighborhood persists. On the presence of global powers in India’s neighbourhood, India’s urban youth continue to distrust China (73 percent) and remain highly concerned about China’s actions and policies in India’s neighbourhood (66-81 percent). Chinese ownership of the Hambantota port in Sri Lanka (81 percent) and Bhutan-China border talks (75 percent) are key issues of concern.

Results of the Probit Model

1. Education is a key driver for certain issues. The probit model demonstrates that respondents with higher education levels, particularly those with university or postgraduate degrees, are more concerned about the BRI, trade imbalances with China, and China’s dominance in renewable energy. Respondents with higher education levels are also likely to support policies like limiting educational cooperation with China.
2. Educated individuals give strong backing to US-India cooperation.      Respondents with higher education levels (undergraduate, at least) support US-India cooperation to counter China’s influence, highlighting the role of education in shaping the understanding of strategic support for India.
3. Income shapes perceptions regarding economic engagement with China. The probit model indicates that those in the income group INR 30,001-90,000/month are more likely to support policies addressing trade imbalances, such as reducing imports from China, suggesting a link between economic stability and the perceptions of respondents on issues of security.
4. There are diverging views on trade issues. Businesspeople and unskilled workers are less likely to agree with reducing the imports of cheap Chinese goods or addressing Chinese overproduction, while mid-income and respondents with higher education levels strongly support such measures.
5. Respondents differ in their perceptions of the economic risks posed by China’s dominance. Respondents with higher education levels and belonging to the middle-income cohort view China’s dominance in renewable energy and semiconductors as notable economic threats, reflecting heightened awareness of long-term risks in these sectors.

Introduction

The world order is in flux. Just as the global system began recovering from COVID-19-induced economic shocks, supply-chain disruptions caused by the conflict in Europe emerged. West Asia is experiencing a resurgence of conflicts and inter-regional wars, and the return of President Donald Trump in the United States (US) has reinforced the isolationist tendencies of the world’s largest economy, as seen in the escalation of trade and tariff barriers and the US-China trade war. Amidst the ongoing churn, one challenge has grown bigger in size and proportion: an assertive China that continues to test the rules-based world order. China is expanding its influence across the world, shaping multilateral organisations and incrementally encroaching on the territories of its maritime and territorial neighbours.

For India, which enters its 76^th year of independence and is emerging as a leader in the multipolar world order, the China challenge appears to be as critical as in any other time in the past. The world order that facilitated India’s rise and economic growth following the end of the Cold War is being challenged by China. China’s tactics, strategic interests, and posturing      are challenging India’s climb to the global centre stage.

To be sure, India and China have a complex relationship marked by both cooperation and competition. While the two countries continue to work together on issues like climate change, trade, reform of financial institutions, and the development of the Global South, unsettled border disputes and contestation for global status have exacerbated deep tensions and trust deficits over the years. To address these concerns, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has interacted with Chinese Premier Xi Jinping on multiple occasions since 2014. However, the clashes at Galwan in June 2020 exposed the underlying tensions between the two powers, with their relations shifting from engagement to escalation. Five years since, the relationship is yet to normalise, though there have been recent efforts to create an enabling environment for a more congenial relationship in the future.

China has emerged as India’s most serious strategic challenge. Beijing’s unprovoked aggression highlighted that India is confronting the world’s second-largest economy, a technological and manufacturing powerhouse with military muscle. Addressing this contest will require a whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach. Consequently, New Delhi has gradually improved its relations with like-minded partners, promoting defence modernisation, pushing for multilateral reforms, upgrading border infrastructure, redefining its influence in the neighbourhood, and working to reduce economic dependence on China.

In 2024, China figured prominently in discussions on defence and security matters in India as the military standoff at the Line of Actual Control (LAC) entered its fourth year. Besides the continuation of the logjam in the Himalayas, China opened new fronts and launched cartographic assaults by renaming the towns and geographic features in Arunachal Pradesh that it claims. In 2023, it published a map showing large parts of Indian territory as part of China.^[1] China has extensively deployed grey-zone warfare, in which a nation uses strategies to pursue its aims without necessarily invoking a strong military response from the other side. For example, China constructed xiaokang (well-off) villages near the Indian border to further its territorial claims, and there are reports that settlers are moving in.^[2] China also established two counties in Xinjiang’s Hotan prefecture, and parts of these administrative units lie in the Union Territory of Ladakh.^[3] Further, China has announced plans to build the world’s largest hydroelectric project on the Yarlung-Tsangpo river in Tibet, which becomes the Brahmaputra after it enters Arunachal Pradesh.^[4] While New Delhi has raised its ecological concerns with Beijing and underscored issues related to transparency and the need for consultation with lower riparian states, Xi Jinping’s strategy of weaponising water resources and his proclivity to use non-conventional measures to needle India have been logged in public consciousness.

The year 2024 also highlighted how New Delhi’s dependence on Beijing for critical components or heavy equipment for industrial supply chains could be exploited by China for geopolitical leverage. This over-reliance on Beijing, coupled with China’s strategy of swamping international markets with heavily subsidised manufactured goods and advanced products like electric automobiles, reinforced the need for integrating an economic security component in the China policy. There were also increasing concerns about China’s increasing capability to disseminate its narratives and the use of disinformation campaigns against India. Over the past few years, China has also increased efforts to consolidate its hold over Tibet.

China is also posing a challenge to India through its neighbours. China’s relations with Pakistan have deepened, and it is keen on furthering its leverages with Taliban-governed Afghanistan. Concerns over debt traps loom large as Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) countries like the Maldives, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh face persistent economic issues with scant foreign reserves, piling debts, and trade deficits. Beijing has also continued to militarise the Indian Ocean Region by leveraging its economic ties and docking its spy vessels in the region. China’s activities in India’s neighbourhood seem to be challenging India’s dominance in the region and altering India’s natural geographical advantages.

In October 2024, New Delhi and Beijing agreed on patrolling arrangements along the LAC after Prime Minister Modi and President Xi, on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in Russia, signaled their intention to defuse tensions. A judicious use of nimble diplomacy, talks by military commanders on both sides, and New Delhi’s demonstration of hard power on the LAC and its signaling that it could hurt Beijing on issues like Tibet, Taiwan, and the South China Sea contributed to the denouement. International headwinds in the form of the Trump 2.0 administration and the tariff war may also have been a factor in China’s outreach to India. With the patrolling agreement and subsequent disengagement at the LAC, China has implicitly acknowledged that it had tried to change the status quo along the LAC. Even as both nations try to mend fences, India remains cognisant of the challenge China poses economically, militarily, and diplomatically.

No nation can efficiently manage its strategic challenges without the support of its citizens. As New Delhi gears for a cautious normalisation of relations with Beijing, the ORF Foreign Policy Survey 2024: Young India and the China Challenge assesses how India’s youth view the country’s security and diplomatic calculus with respect to China’s rise and assertiveness. This edition of Observer Research Foundation’s (ORF) annual Foreign Policy Survey builds on the previous iterations (2021, 2022, and 2023) and focuses on how the country’s urban youth view the government’s policy choices and its engagement with China, the world, and its neighbours.

1.1. Context and Rationale for the Poll

Over the years, multiple surveys have been conducted by news outlets, think tanks, and scholars to understand the perceptions of the Indian public on the country’s foreign policy. The Indian Institute of Public Opinion conducted annual and bi-annual surveys between 1959 and 1988, covering 1,000 to 1,500 respondents with basic literacy in Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, and Mumbai. Some of their data sets are not publicly available. Scholars like Devesh Kapur, in his research between 2005-2006, covered 2,12,563 interviewees to analyse how respondents view India’s foreign policy and position in the world and those of other countries.^[5] A 2018 survey by the Brookings Institution focused on the strategic community, i.e., the policymaking circle, and captured the views of 290 respondents.^[6] In 2013, the Lowy Institute and the Australia India Institute conducted a survey on India’s security threats and relations with other countries, polling 1,233 adults.^[7] In 2014, India’s CNN-IBN Today conducted a survey on the prime ministership of Narendra Modi. The biannual YouGov-Mint-CPR survey, while focusing on domestic governance, also posed questions about India’s foreign policy, including India’s G20 presidency and border conflict with China. Its latest survey was held online in December 2023 and had 12,544 respondents from over 200 cities and towns. NewsX’s Bharat Pulse Survey-2024 polled people across five categories, one of which was foreign policy.^[8]

Recent surveys on Indian foreign policy and national security have focused on a variety of subjects. A 2019 research paper built on the findings of a survey on the implications of counter-insurgency measures on public opinion in Kashmir. In March 2021, an article collated evidence from various surveys to assess public opinions of China since the 1960s.^[9] In 2022, scholars Allison Carnegie and Nikhar Gaikwad used surveys from the US and India to understand how geopolitics impacts people’s views on international trade. In August 2022, the Stimson Center released findings from a telephonic survey of 7,000 Indians that assessed public attitudes to India’s international conflict scenarios. In 2023, Pew Research Center conducted a survey among 2,611 Indian adults^[10] to assess how respondents across the world, including Indians, view Prime Minister Modi and India’s influence on and relations with other countries. In December 2024, the Takshashila Institution released their Pulse of the People: State of India-China Relations Survey Report 2024.^[11] The survey had 11 questions about India-China relations and received 655 responses through social media channels from people between the ages of 16-96 years.

Some polls have attempted to capture the Indian public’s views on specific issues related to foreign policy and security, while others have focused on themes such as the use of nuclear weapons and India-US relations.^[12] While these efforts have been notable, the surveys are often limited to a single event or topic or use a population sample that is small or limited to rarefied policymaking circles. ORF’s Foreign Policy Survey attempts a more sustained and all-encompassing view of India’s foreign policy among urban youth.

ORF’s annual Foreign Policy Survey is the first of its kind and attempts to capture Indian urban youth’s perception of India’s foreign policy. This demographic constitutes over 26 percent of the country’s overall population. The first edition of the survey, released in August 2021, focused on the world order amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. The poll surveyed a subset of Indian urban youth, with 2,037 respondents from 14 cities in the age group of 18-35 years.^[13] The second poll, released in November 2022, focused on 75 years of India’s independence,^[14] and the third, published in February 2024, engaged with issues related to multilateralism.^[15] The second and third surveys each covered 5,000 respondents between the age group 18-35 years from 18 cities and were administered in 11 languages.

This edition of the ORF Foreign Policy Survey attempts to gauge the Indian urban youth’s opinions about the country’s overall foreign policy and how they perceive China and the evolving world order. The observations offered in this year’s edition will offer critical insights into how the urban youth view India’s engagement with the world, and specifically how they perceive China’s growing assertiveness on the global stage and its actions vis-à-vis India. The focus on China’s actions in the economic, political, and diplomatic areas will provide an understanding of how young India views the evolving world order.

The survey also has an eye to the future, capturing temporal trends, interrogating India’s leadership role and its countering of strategic challenges, and engaging with global powers, neighbours, and like-minded countries. Future studies and surveys can benefit from mapping and understanding how India’s youth interpret India’s foreign policy, its engagement with the world, and countering China’s rise.

The survey responses were analysed according to various parameters like age, employment, gender, occupation, geography, income, and familiarity with news. The data was analysed to identify patterns and offer insights into the urban youth’s current perceptions of India’s foreign policy.

1.2 Sample Design and Description

The 2024 edition of the Foreign Policy Survey is driven by the central question of how India’s urban youth perceive the role of China in the evolving world order. The survey explores how China’s actions are shaping the evolving world order and their implications for India. It highlights young Indians’ perspectives on the nation’s global engagement and China’s growing footprint in the socio-political-economic milieu of the global theatre.

The survey, conducted by Impetus Research, collected data at the national level from a representative sample of 5,050 respondents ages 18-35, spread across 19 cities in India. The survey was conducted between 22 July 2024 and 26 September 2024, well before the election of Donald Trump as US president and the peace overtures between India and China. A structured questionnaire was administered in 11 languages (Assamese, Bangla, Gujarati, Kannada, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, Hindi, and English). The sample was drawn by using a stratified multi-stage cluster sample approach. Census data does not provide the population size for the age cohort of 18-35 years. Therefore, the delineation of the sample frame and the estimation of the state-wise sample size for the specific age group under consideration was conducted using the linear interpolation method with data from the Report of the Technical Group on Population Projections (November 2019) by the National Commission on Population, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, based on the estimated 2018 population derived from the 2011 Census.

Impetus Research conducted face-to-face interviews by using internet-enabled tablets. The survey was programmed to work offline in low connectivity environments and synchronise the results in real time when cellular or Wi-Fi networks become available. Additionally, every interviewer was provided a unique user ID to access the programmed survey. Table 1 presents the sample composition by region.

Table 1: Sample Composition, by Region

Region	Number of Respondents	Percentage
North	1,552	30.73
South	1,058	20.95
East	1,336	26.46
West	1,104	21.86
Total	5,050	100

The gender composition of the sample was as follows: 57.31 percent (2,894) were males and 42.69 percent (2,156) were females. To ensure heterogeneity in responses, data was collected by considering various socio-economic characteristics, including income brackets, education qualifications, employment status, and regional representation.  The survey included respondents from diverse educational, occupational, and income backgrounds. See Table 2, Table 3, and Table 4 for a detailed breakdown.

Table 2: Sample Composition, by Education

Education Degree	Percent	Sample
University graduates	32.06	1,619
Education up to class 12	27.64	1,396
Education up to class 10	18.14	916
Undergraduate diplomas or technical qualifications	12.38	625
Postgraduate or professional degrees	7.56	382
No formal education	2.08	105
Doctorate-level qualifications	0.14	7
Undisclosed	0.02	1
Total	100	5,050

Table 3: Sample Composition, by Occupation

Occupation	Percent	Sample
Students	25.23	1,274
Homemakers	23.03	1,163
Private sector	19.03	961
Businesspeople	10.73	542
Skilled workers	6.57	332
Self-employed professionals	6.57	332
Currently seeking employment	4.06	205
Unskilled	2.30	116
Government employees	2.20	111
Retired	0.20	10
Undisclosed	0.08	4
Total	100	5,050

Table 4: Sample Composition, by Income

Income per month (INR)	Percent	Sample
Below 30,000	46.85	2,366
30,001-60,000	34.08	1,721
60,001-90,000	10.38	524
90,001-120,000	2.24	113
120,001-150,000	1.19	60
Above 150,000	0.89	45
Undisclosed	2.06	104
Refused	2.32	117
Total	100	5,050

1.3 Methodology

The methodology was two-pronged. In the first stage, the report addressed some of the questions relevant to the report’s central concern, presenting the frequency distribution of the surveyed respondents’ perceptions of critical questions related to China and India’s foreign policy. In the second stage, we conducted econometric analyses (mostly entailing probit models) to identify causal relations between the responses and the socio-economic and demographic status of the respondents. This provided deeper insight into the spatial (across regions) and vertical (education and income) classification of the various responses and explained whether perceptions are determined by socio-economic and regional characteristics.

Endnotes

^[1]Ananth Krishnan, “China Releases New Official Map, Showing Territorial Claims,” The Hindu, August 30, 2023, https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/china-releases-new-official-map-showing-territorial-claims/article67245869.ece

^[2] Amrita Dutta Nayak, “China Moves Its Nationals Into Its Vacant ‘Defence Villages’ Along LAC,” Indian Express, February 15, 2024, https://indianexpress.com/article/india/china-moves-its-nationals-into-its-vacant-defence-villages-along-lac-9162217/

^[3] Kalpit A Mankikar, “Behind the India-China Talks: Unravelling Beijing’s Deceptive Long-Term Strategy,” Observer Research Foundation, January 14, 2025, https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/behind-the-india-china-talks-unravelling-beijing-s-deceptive-long-term-strategy

^[4] Mankikar, “Behind the India-China talks: Unravelling Beijing’s Deceptive Long-Term Strategy”

^[5] Devesh Kapur, “Public Opinion and Indian Foreign Policy,” India Review 8, no. 3 (August 13, 2009): 286–305, https://doi. org/10.1080/14736480903116818.

^[6] Dhruva Jaishankar, Survey of India’s Strategic Community, March 2019, Brookings Institution, https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Survey-of-India%E2%80%99s-Strategic-Community.pdf

^[7] Rory Medcalf, “India Poll 2013” (Sydney, 2013), https://www.lowyinstitute.org/ publications/india-poll-2013

^[8] News X, “The 2024 Bharat Pulse Survey 4, YouTube video, December 30, 2024, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGHE4gOedQE

^[9] Aidan Milliff and Paul Staniland, “Public Opinion Toward Foreign Policy in a Developing World Democracy: Evidence from Indian Views of China,” SocArXiv, March 2021.

^[10] Pew Research Center, “Views of India Lean Positive Across 23 Countries,” Pew Research Center, August 29, 2023, https://www.pewresearch.org/ global/2023/08/29/views-of-india-lean-positive-across-23-countries/

^[11] Anushka Saxena, Manoj Kewalramani, and Amit Kumar, “Pulse of the People: State of India-China Relations,” December 2024, The Takshashila Institution.

^[12] Benjamin A. Valentino and Scott D. Sagan, “Atomic Attraction,” The Indian Express, June 3, 2016, https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/barack-obama-hiroshima-speech-india-nuclear-weapon-terrorism-atomicattraction-2831348/; Kumar, “India’s Public Opinion and Foreign Policy: A View from New Delhi”

^[13] Harsh V Pant et al., The ORF Foreign Policy Survey 2021: Young India and the World, August 2021, Observer Research Foundation, https://www.orfonline.org/research/the-orf-foreign-policy-survey-2021-young-india-and-the-world

^[14] Harsh V Pant et al., The ORF Foreign Policy Survey 2022: India @75 and the World, November 2022, Observer Research Foundation, https://www.orfonline.org/research/the-orf-foreign-policy-survey-2022

^[15] Harsh V Pant et al., The ORF Foreign Policy Survey 2023: Young India and the Multilateral World Order, Observer Research Foundation, February 2024, https://www.orfonline.org/research/the-orf-foreign-policy-survey-2023-young-india-and-the-multilateral-world-order

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