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Looked over Chapter One--and you just PEGGED the improbability meter right there. China and India in ANY sort of formal alliance? Either Pakistan got a little too uppity and India just destroyed them sometime between 2001 and 2004, or China made an extremely abrupt U-turn--and the Chinese gerontocracy has just about the worst case of groupthink I've ever read about, so that is exceedingly unlikely. (China is a consensus-driven culture; Mao and his personality cult are major exceptions to the overall flow of Chinese history, unlike Stalin and Russia.) Hopefully, you explain the circumstances of this strange bedfellows relationship in some detail.

Also, I would recommend reading Ralph Peters' essays on the Parameters website (Parameters is the Army War College professional journal): do not be overly afraid of a prosperous China doing something this stupid and crazy, but be VERY afraid of a China whose economy is tanking. Historically, states have taken big gambles like this when the alternative to a war breaking out is economic collapse. That may have implications for the plotline of subsequent books: the signs of economic collapse would need some foreshadowing.

The improbability meter for a Stalin-Hitler alliance would have also pegged out ... that didn't keep it from happening.

There are in fact several considerations that would make such an economic agreement viable ... the right conditions just have to come about.

Here are just a couple of examples of recent news articles in this regard:

Chinese Diplomat Woos India
The New York Times, January 14, 2001
NEW DELHI, Jan. 13 Li Peng, China's Parliament leader, urged India to join with China to form a new economic order to represent the developing world.
In a television interview, Mr. Li, who is on a nine-day visit, the highest-level Chinese tour of India since New Delhi's nuclear tests in 1998, also said that both New Delhi and Beijing opposed a "unipolar world. A multipolar world is safer and conducive for development,".
Mr. Li's visit is expected to pave the way for a visit by the Chinese prime minister, Zhu Rongji, later this year.
Iran wants more cooperation with India, Russia and China
Reuters, April 12, 2001
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's supreme leader called for more cooperation between Iran, India, Russia and China on Thursday during a meeting with Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the official IRNA news agency said.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said, ``colonialist countries'' were opposed to such cooperation, making it imperative for Eastern countries to strengthen their ties.

So, though the book is clearly a fiction novel, it is not rooted in so out of the question circumsatnces.