New Delhi
19 September 2006
New Delhi expects to make some progress of political significance
on the vexed Sino-Indian boundary question before Chinese President Hu Jintao visits
India in November this year. However, analysts at home and abroad do not seem to
share much of New Delhi's optimism.
"Our current effort is [focussed] on Line of Actual Control clarification. Some agreement
can be expected [on that count] ... this is only the second ever visit by a Chinese head of
state to India, so there is a need for some major decision," observes Dr Srikanth
Kondapalli of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU).
However, that is as far as Dr Kondapalli would go with New Delhi's assessment.
"Delimitation and demarcation," he asserts, "cannot happen [now]." He points out that
China and Vietnam agreed to resolve their border dispute in 1999 and they are still
demarcating. "We should give ourselves at least 10 years or more," he adds.
An American researcher paints a gloomier picture. "It is clear that despite recent bilateral
summits in which the Chinese and Indian governments have exchanged pleasantries on
cooperation to end border tensions, the dispute is unlikely to be resolved in the
foreseeable future," according to Christopher Griffin.
"This will remain the case so long as China is able to bolster its strategic proxy Pakistan
by strengthening its hold along the Indo-Tibetan border while developing a hedge
against India's growing naval power," he writes in "Asian Outlook". Griffin is a research
associate at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy.
Griffin's paper, "Containment with Chinese Characteristics: Beijing Hedges against the
Rise of India", says Beijing's position in Asia has benefited from reminding Delhi of
China's superiority along the border. "[If India] looks beneath China's "cloak of
engagement words," it may yet find a pattern of containment," he writes.
"That pattern appears to be emerging first along the Sino-Indian border, where China is
bolstering its military position by upgrading its infrastructure. [Just] as Beijing has long
leveraged its claims against Indian-controlled territory in Arunachal Pradesh to
legitimiae its occupation of Aksai Chin, it may now leverage its superiority along the
Sino-Indian border to remind Delhi of the costs of conflict on the Indian Ocean," he
observes.
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