Breaking News, World News and Taiwan News.

Updated Sunday, November 8, 2009 1:41 pm TWN, By Ravi Nessman and Muneeza Naqvi, AP

Dalai Lama visit highlights India-China tensions

The sixth Dalai Lama was born in Tawang in the 17th century and China fears the current Dalai Lama might announce that his successor could come from this town or somewhere else outside Tibet — meaning outside of Chinese control. China expects to exercise a strong hand in choosing the next Dalai Lama and is increasingly sensitive about the region since deadly anti-government riots broke out in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa last year.

In an apparent effort to placate China, India has not given foreign journalists the permits required to travel to the restricted region.

Even before the trip, tensions between the two neighbors were on the rise.

Chinese troops violated the border 270 times last year and demolished some unmanned Indian forward posts, said Chellaney of the policy research center.

Former Indian Foreign Secretary Lalit Mansingh said both sides regularly cross the long, unmarked boundary in an orchestrated effort to show sovereignty over the other side. Chinese troops leave their empty cigarette packs and beer cans on the Indian side; Indian troops clean them up and dump their own trash on the Chinese side.

“It's a lot of shadowboxing,” he said.

India recently added thousands of troops to the region to counter the better roads and infrastructure on the other side of the border that would let Beijing rapidly send reinforcements, said Adm. Sureesh Mehta, recently retired chief of India's navy.

“They felt that was a capability gap that needed to be plugged,” he said.

China also tried to block parts of an Asian Development Bank loan to India because it included projects earmarked for Arunachal. China, meanwhile, has accused India of making it more difficult for Chinese laborers to get work visas to India.

Despite the confrontation, the two countries have strengthened ties in other areas. They recently announced an alliance on the upcoming round of climate change talks in Copenhagen and their annual trade has skyrocketed to US$52 billion last year. Their leadership plays down the tensions.

“Our relationship is on very good terms,” China's ambassador to India, Zhang Yang, said last month.

Mansingh, India's former foreign secretary, said New Delhi's growing strength would inevitably lead to even greater competition between the two countries over economic resources and primacy in the region but that their trade links and China's focus on economic growth make an eruption of violence extremely unlikely.

“A military confrontation doesn't make any sense in the 21st century,” he said.

1|2

Share

Print

Email


Sponsors
▪	Get the best deals for Guangzhou Hotels or choose from more than 10,000 hotels in 499 Chinese cities.
▪	Find great real time deals on China Flights. Book flights to China or China domestic flights 24/7.
▪	Buy china wholesale products from reliable chinese wholesalers on DHgate.com!
▪	Save 70% for hotel in Shanghai and 6000 hotels, in Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and all China.