China-India relations to face more friction

2011-12-18 (China Military News cited from Los Angeles Times and by Mark Magnier) -- The India-China relationship, relatively well managed for years by the two governments, is under growing pressure in the face of insensitivity and nationalism on both sides, India's hyperactive broadcast media and the growing autonomy of Chinese ministries, analysts say.
Irritants that have spurred distrust recently between the two Asian giants include a series of reported incursions along their disputed 2,500-mile border.
In one case, an Indian warship off Vietnam received an apparent Chinese naval radio transmission in July telling it to "leave Chinese waters." In another situation that upset India, an official Chinese brochure used at a November news conference in New Delhi announcing a $400-million investment by a Chinese state-owned heavy equipment manufacturer featured a map that included as part of China the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh and sections of Kashmir claimed by India.
The two neighbors are among the world's fastest-growing economies, but Chinese planning, infrastructure and foreign-investment flows have seen it outpace India on the global business stage.
"A closer look at the incidents suggests the Indian press made more of them than were there," Pramit Pal Chaudhuri, strategic affairs editor with the Hindustan Times newspaper, said at the Common Agenda Round Table conference in Shanghai in early December. "But they've strongly contributed to greater suspicion by the Indian public."

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Many people in India were annoyed by Beijing's policy a few years ago to issue Chinese visas separate from passports for Indians living in Kashmir. Divided Kashmir is claimed by both India and Pakistan, and each side maintains its area of control. The visa policy, since reversed, offended many Indians, suggesting that Indian-controlled Kashmir was not an integral part of their country.
India, in something of a tit for tat, allowed the Dalai Lama in 2009 to travel to a monastery near the Chinese border. Beijing deeply distrusts the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader who escaped from China in 1959 and now lives in northern India blaming him for the recent self-immolations by protesting monks and other unrest in Tibet and other regions. India's not-so-subtle message: If you start questioning our Kashmir claims, we'll do the same with your Tibet claims.
Late last month, China pulled out of joint border talks because the Dalai Lama was speaking at a conference in New Delhi that week.
"Differences have to be managed very carefully," said Sujit Dutta, professor at Delhi's Jamia Millia Islamia University. "We need to find a basic understanding."