Writings on India–China relations in recent years are increasingly seen to beimputing Machiavellian realism to the political and, increasingly, economic sphere of interaction. The purpose of this article is to provide an alternate paradig-matic optic to view India–China relations. The article introduces the idea of the needfor generating ‘social capital’ at the dyadic level, and the need to re-imagine the neol-ogism of Chindia. It identifies new and existing sources of ‘trust’ and ‘trustworthiness’that need to be fully explored through this paradigmatic optic in order to widen theexisting radius of formal institutional relationship.