本文是以「傳統安全討論範圍正在擴大與深化，能源安全已被視為國家安全研究的關鍵成分」為背景。這些議論已使國家安全遠遠超過西發利亞（Westphalian）國家使用武力此一工具的範疇（政治結構與實體安全），擴大到含括「資源、環境與人口的問題」。換言之，即在處理對「一國住民生活品質」的威脅而非對國家的結構的威脅。因而在確保安全方面，人類已躍升為最重要的核心目標與最關鍵的構成成分，也使得國家的主權從「權力」轉變到「責任」。儘管批判者憂心如此擴大與改變傳統國家安全概念將會「破壞知識的凝聚力，而使其更加難以謀劃出得以解決任何這些重要問題的方案」，但是此一發展中安全議論卻正好為本文所要聚焦的中國與印度如何攜手改變能源安全範例的理論辯論提供了更寬廣的背景。

This paper is located in the backdrop of widening and deepening of traditional security discourses which have made energy security a critical component of national security studies. These discourses have since broadened national security much beyond the domain of physical security for political structures using military as instrument of the Westphalian State and expanded it to include “resources, environment and demographic issues” and in terms of dealing with threat to “the quality of life for the inhabitants of a state” rather than state structures. Security is now defined as “existential threat to a referent object, by a securitizing actor, who thereby generates endorsement of emergency measures beyond rules that would otherwise bind.” Humans have emerged as the most important central referent object and development most critical component in ensuring security thereby turning State sovereignty from ‘power’ to ‘responsibility’. Critics, of course, fear that such expansion and transformation of conventional concepts are going to “destroy its intellectual coherence and make it more difficult to devise solutions to any of these important problems.” It is this evolving discourse on security that provides the broader backdrop for this paper’s theoretical debate on how China and India are together transforming the energy security paradigm.