For a decade now, with the rapid opening up of China and the determination of India to pursue its "Look East Policy," the two powers have increasingly begun to consider themselves as global rather than regional powers. The Indian Ocean and the South China Sea are no longer areas reserved for one or the other of them, but have become areas where the politics of these two countries meet. After an initial period around the year 2000, we are witnessing a rapprochement of these two major powers in the face of external developments in the region (the United States? intervention in the Middle East) as well as internal changes (acceleration of the rapprochement between the ASEAN countries and the three major powers of Japan, South Korea, and especially China).