India is the most potential rival of China. India has full of factors of size, population... which can compare with China.
Until around 2030, population of India will overtake China. India also has young population than China.
India's present and future are more favorable than China.
It seems that India is a trusted partner (more than China) of the US, Russia and EU.
India has internal issues less than China's: Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia...
China is also at risk to suffer crisis by waves of immigrants from N.Korea, if N.Korea regime collapse.
China at risk of conflict or confrontation with the US in the western Pacific, who is now still a dominant superpower in the world (despite in crisis)
China has more (than India) the complex disputes with neighbors (Including the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia,Brunei, Japan, Korea...) that are caused by greed of her endless...
Fortunately for Asia, we still have India.
Battle of Bach Dang River, I respect your statement. I also believe India has potential to be a powerful nation in the future and even compete with China, but time will tell who will win in the competition or if there will be a winner.
But I want to tell you our experience with India, although Indians of course would call Bangladeshi or Pakistani view as biased. India was born out of traumatic partition in 1947, ever since it has not been at peace with its neighbors. It has interfered in Pakistan, supported and funded traitors in our nation and eventually successfully broke Pakistan in 1971. In this civil war a lot of our people were killed. After 1971, in effect we Bangladesh have become a vassal state of India, whenever the current ruling party Awamy League comes to power. And it is choking off our common rivers flowing in from India. Indian media is spreading false propaganda blaming that illegal immigrants from Bangladesh is flooding into India, whereas Indian govt. never make this allegation and protest to our govt. and our govt. always staunchly deny this kind of false claim. Indian border guards regularly kill our civilians at the border in our side of the land. India also has a rising religious extremist nationalism called Hindutva which has fascist tendencies. In fact Nazi ideology in a way was partly borrowed from Hindutva ideology and even borrowed the Swastika from Hindu religion.
India also has problems with Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka, none supports Indian govt. policy in this region.
So both large nations are going through growing pains, both are aggressive towards their neighbors and both are selfish about exploiting smaller countries in other part of the globe to grab resources and polluting the world with chemicals and green house gas trashing the planet. The US and West of course did all this for centuries and now the students are beating the masters, because of their size.
I think at this point both China and India are more curse than blessings for Asia and humanity. They have potential to become more civil and improve the handling of their affair with others, but it will take many decades. My estimate is that China will improve faster than India, but again that is my opinion, knowing both people to some extent.
Having said all that, I believe that we in Asia should separate trade, commerce and free flow of goods from our mutual defense and strategic problems. This way, even though we may have separate strategic alliances because of balance of power and defense needs, we should continue to open up borders, link up with roads and railway so we can improve the lives of people and thus improve the economy of the region.
When people are prosperous, have high HDI level like Nordic countries and have developed economy, people automatically will become less irrational, more logical and more far-sighted, instead of getting territorial or chauvinistic, trying to get what is not theirs and trying to dominate others, which is unfair to smaller countries.
So, my personal focus and dream for humanity is on clean air, water and food, chemical free and radio-active free and then of course education and training, so human brain can achieve full potential to utilize their creativity and productivity. This way we can have better countries, better regions and a better sustainable world in the future.