China's voice growing louder in sino-india border

2011-12-04 (China Military News cited from indiatimes.com) -- As geopolitical rivals, India and China face each other over a highly disputed border. The inviolability of virtually the entire 4,057 km border - one of the longest in the world - has been called into question by China's increasing cross-frontier military incursions and its calculated refusal to mutually draw a fully agreed line of control along the Himalayas.

The amount of Indian land China occupies or openly covets tops 135,000 sq km, or approximately the size of Costa Rica. China currently has unresolved land and sea border disputes with 11 other neighbours. But in comparison with China's territorial disputes with other neighbours now or even in the past, its land disputes with India stand out for their sheer size and importance.

Beijing's last-minute postponement of a scheduled round of border talks constitutes no real loss for New Delhi because China has used these 30-year-long negotiations to keep India engaged while blocking any real progress. Even as Beijing has since 2006 provocatively revived its claim to Arunachal Pradesh and concurrently stepped up cross-border forays in all sectors, New Delhi has stayed locked in these fruitless talks.

Let's be clear: These talks, constituting the longest and the mostbarren process between any two nations post-World War II, have only aided the Chinese strategy to mount more military pressure while working to hem in India behind the cover of engagement.

For example, by deploying several thousand troops in Pakistanoccupied Kashmir and playing the Kashmir card against India in various ways, China has clearly signalled its intent to squeeze India on Jammu and Kashmir. The military pressure China has built up on Arunachal may just be tactical. The plain fact is that India's vulnerability in J&K has been heightened by the new Chinese military encirclement.

To help undermine the Dalai Lama's role, Beijing is now exerting pressure on India to deny the Tibetan! leader any kind of public platform. The recent diplomatic spat, as the Chinese foreign ministry has acknowledged, was not just about the Dalai Lama's address to a religious conference that overlapped with the now-scrapped talks. Rather, Beijing brashly insists that India not provide him a public platform of "any form."

Beijing draws encouragement from its success in bringing India's Tibet stance in full alignment with the Chinese line. In 2003, the aging and ailing Atal Bihari Vajpayee surrendered India's last remaining leverage on Tibet when he formally recognized the cartographically dismembered Tibet that Beijing calls the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) as "part of the territory of the People's Republic of China." In recent years, even as Beijing has mocked India's territorial integrity, New Delhi has not sought to subtly add some flexibility to its Tibet stance.