Recently, the border crisis between China and India has eased, with both countries having released a series of friendly signals. However, India's domestic frame of mind toward China remains worried, and that country's attempt to contain China through the Quad (the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue [also known as the Quad] is an informal strategic dialogue between the US, Japan, Australia and India that is maintained by talks between member countries) is obvious, which has brought about big uncertainties to the prospects for the development of the Sino-Indian relationship. The relations between the two countries still have a long way to go in such fields as politics, diplomacy, trade and economics, education and culture before they can be substantially improved. Against this backdrop, calmly analyzing the image-building of each other in public discourse, rationally researching the gap in cognition that has existed for a long time between them, and exploring in depth the solutions to the divergences between them have become the key issues in China's current South Asian studies.

The Institute of Area Studies and the South Asian Studies Center of Peking University co-hosted a Broadyard Workshop on the theme of "Chinese perceptions of India and Indian perceptions of China" on April 10, 2021. More than 10 experts and scholars from institutions such as Peking University, Tsinghua University, Renmin University of China, Hebei Normal University and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, discussed the past, present, and future of the development of Sino-Indian relations from the perspectives of politics, economics, society, culture, art and history.