Comment on What dispute? India and China ignore land squabble

What dispute? India and China ignore land squabble

[...] as Beijing confronts countries across the South China and East China seas, displaying its diplomatic and strategic strength in a series of increasingly dangerous territorial disputes, the India-China standoff results in almost nothing beyond regular diplomatic talks and professions of international friendship. Because the last thing the world's two most populous countries want right now is war with each other. Today, China has the world's second-largest economy, an immense, well-equipped military, an increasingly educated population and a vision for itself as one of the leading nations on earth. When it comes to turf wars, Beijing today is largely focused on expanding its maritime influence in East Asia and Southeast Asia, with its vast untapped mineral reserves and importance to global trade. While experts believe diplomatic infrastructure has helped keep things calm — there are now regularly scheduled border talks, military hotlines and designated meeting areas deep in the Himalayas to ensure that unexpected incidents do not flare into warfare — both countries have more to gain by increasing trade and cooperation. The 1950s and 1960s were a time when tensions regularly erupted in the region: the Dalai Lama fled across the Himalayas into India after a failed uprising in Tibet in 1959; American-supported Tibetan rebels made small-scale raids into China from secret bases in Nepal; China secretly built a strategically important road linking two of its most restive regions — Tibet and Xinjiang — through a deeply isolated part of India. Over the past few years, however, Beijing has pressed ahead with its territorial claims elsewhere, expanding coral outcroppings, constructing schools on rocky shoals and dispatching the occasional fighter jet. China's military presence along the border with India has been growing for years, and India has recently rushed to catch up: refurbishing air strips, deploying more armored units and frantically constructing new roads high in the Himalayas.

 

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