China has developed an expanding network of minilateral and multilateral mechanisms across South Asia that institutionalize its regional influence while remaining separate from, but strategically linked to, its approach toward India. Since 2020, China has convened several minilateral and multilateral mechanisms with South Asian countries, spanning public health logistics, maritime governance, transport-corridor extension, dispute mediation, and academic diplomacy. While India, the largest of the South Asian states, is absent from these, Beijing’s two-track foreign policy with South Asia and India can be read as institutionally separate but strategically interdependent. The Maldives co-chairmanship remains the only instance across the mechanisms surveyed here in which a South Asian state shares formal convening authority with China. Official coverage described the CSACF as “an important institutional platform for intergovernmental dialogue and exchange between China and South Asian as well as Indian Ocean Rim countries.”