China and India relationship

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timepass

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China annexes 60 square km of India in Ladakh as simmering tensions erupt between China & India....


China has occupied more than sixty square kilometres of Indian territory in eastern Ladakh, according to a senior Indian Army source, in a dramatic escalation of the simmering tension between the two Asian superpowers.

The Daily Telegraph can reveal that up to 12,000 Chinese troops pushed over the border into India last month amid border clashes as Beijing looks to slap down Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi over his ever-closer relationship with the United States...


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timepass

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Nepal parliament unanimously passes bill to redraw political map amid land row with India

The lower house of Nepal’s Parliament on Saturday passed a Bill to amend the country’s constitution to endorse the new map its government issued last month showing within its territory nearly 400 sq. km of areas claimed by India.

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twineedle

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Well it looks like both sides have reached an agreement, and China has started withdrawing from the LAC. India will reciprocate when it feels confident that China's intentions are genuine. China has already fulfilled the 2 km withdrawal from Galwan, Hot Springs, and Gogra, now it looks like withdrawal from Pangong Tso is in progress. Looks like both Modi and XI got face saving without escalating to dangerous levels, and India has shown China it is willing to defend against Chinese incursions. Hopefully both sides will return to pre-April 2020 positions, and relations will be salvaged. If there is one lesso to be learned from all this, it is that the LAC needs to be delineated.
 

Figaro

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Well it looks like both sides have reached an agreement, and China has started withdrawing from the LAC. India will reciprocate when it feels confident that China's intentions are genuine.
I'm sorry but your statement makes no sense at all. India will reciprocate when it feels confident China's intentions are genuine? So you mean that China has to first prove itself to India for India to withdraw? I doubt China cares at all what India thinks of its intentions. AFAIK, China only withdrew from some positions but they are still on the Indian side of the LAC, meaning the pre-May 2020 status quo has not been reached yet. Chinese troops are still on India's side of the LAC, as noted by the article below.
By Ajai Shukla
Business Standard, 11th July 20


After days of negotiations between Indian and Chinese officers on the terms of disengagement in the Hot Spring area of Ladakh, the two sides have agreed on Saturday to pull back troops by one kilometre (km) each, say government sources.

The disengagement, which is expected to be completed by Sunday, will create a demilitarized buffer zone of two km, roughly along the Chang Chenmo River, into which neither side will send patrols for the present.

These terms of disengagement are to China’s advantage. People’s Liberation Army (PLA) soldiers, who have intruded 3-4 km across the Line of Actual Control (LAC) into Indian territory near Patrolling Point 15 (PP-15), and about 2 km near PP-17A, will only be required to pull back 1 km, say the sources.

That means that, even after the disengagement, the PLA will remain 2-3 km on the Indian side of the LAC near PP-15 and at least one km inside Indian territory near PP-17A. Effectively the demilitarized buffer zone will lie entirely in Indian territory and the LAC would effectively shift by 1-3 km into India.

The plus side to the disengagement is that Indian and Chinese troops will pull back from their dangerous eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation in this sector. About 1,000 soldiers from each side have been confronting each other near PP-15 and about 1,500 from each side in the vicinity of PP-17A.

However, there is no withdrawal or thinning out of the large number troops that the PLA has concentrated on the Chinese side of the LAC, east of India’s PP-18, 19, 20, 21, 22 and 23. Chinese artillery guns also remain deployed across the LAC from PP-19.

Pangong Tso disengagement

Also disadvantageous to India is the mutual withdrawal being implemented in the Pangong Tso lake sector, where Chinese troops are required to pull back from the confrontation point at Finger 4, to Finger 5 further east. Meanwhile, Indian troops are required to withdraw from Finger 4 to the area of Finger 3, say government sources.

In violating the LAC that lay along Finger 8, and taking control of the north bank of the Pangong Tso till Finger 4, the Chinese intruded 8 km into Indian-claimed territory. With the terms of disengagement requiring them to withdraw by 2 km to Finger 5, PLA troops will remain about 6 km inside Indian-claimed territory.

On the other hand, the withdrawal of Indian troops by 2 km from Finger 4 to Finger 3, will increase the depth of territory lost to 10 km.

Even more worrying, Chinese soldiers are reportedly withdrawing only from the banks of Pangong Tso. The bunkers and defensive works the PLA has built on the dominating heights above the lake remain occupied by the Chinese, giving them a clear view of Indian activity as far as the west end of the Pangong Tso lake.

As Business Standard reported earlier (July 9, Withdrawal from Galwan Valley puts Indian troops further from LAC) India was also disadvantaged in the earlier disengagement agreement negotiated for the Galwan River valley. The buffer zone agreement for that sector effectively involved the concession by India of one km of territory on the Galwan River.
 

Austin Powers

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Man fighting for land. Been there. Done that. Every day since dawn of humanity 200,000 years ago Man is fighting for land. Germans call it lebensraum. Living space.
 

twineedle

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I'm sorry but your statement makes no sense at all. India will reciprocate when it feels confident China's intentions are genuine? So you mean that China has to first prove itself to India for India to withdraw? I doubt China cares at all what India thinks of its intentions. AFAIK, China only withdrew from some positions but they are still on the Indian side of the LAC, meaning the pre-May 2020 status quo has not been reached yet. Chinese troops are still on India's side of the LAC, as noted by the article below.
In Galwan, and Hot springs, China has gone back by the two km as per the agreement. In Galwan, India has withdrawn most troops as well but still maintains a few camps as close as 500m from the LAC.

In Pangong the process is still ongoing, although China has started withdrawing troops and removing tents, vehicles, and boats. It will definitely take a while for both sides to isengage from Pangong Tso.
 

Figaro

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An excellent article on the implications of the new China-Iran deal for India by Ambassador Bhadrakumar

China-Iran tango should worry India

The China-Iran tie-up underscores all that is wrong with India’s diplomacy. India looks increasingly like a beached whale, while an exciting, transformative geopolitical landscape is appearing in the Indian Ocean. China sees seamless possibilities in strategic partnership with Iran.

Iran makes a difficult partner for a dominating big power but is a natural ally in an equal relationship. What Iran cherished most about India was its strategic autonomy and independent foreign policy. When India changed, the relationship changed. Ironically, the best years of that relationship straddled the commencement of India’s ties with Israel and the turnaround in US-Indian ‘post-Soviet’ relationship. But Tehran never bore a grudge. The mutual trust remained intact so long as we took care not to trample upon Iran’s core interests or let predators come down into town to prey — which Tehran reciprocated. Those were halcyon days.

Therefore, India should try to understand the impending 25-year cooperation agreement dubbed Sino-Iranian Comprehensive Strategic Partnership. But there’s much more to it than meets the eye. Indian analysts are not even aware that Beijing is also negotiating comprehensive partnership agreements with Saudi Arabia and the UAE, Iran’s archetypal rivals.

Han Zheng, politburo standing committee member of the Chinese Communist Party and senior vice-premier is reportedly handling the partnership negotiations with Saudi Arabia while Yang Jiechi, politburo member who also holds the key position of director of the office of foreign affairs of the party’s central committee, is steering negotiations with the UAE. To be sure, Beijing attaches the highest importance to its partnerships with Riyadh and Abu Dhabi.

China has no ‘favourites’ in the region. Congruence of interests, rationally determined from long-term perspective, provides the bedrock of China’s regional policies. China pursues a balanced approach to the Persian Gulf region. Saudi Arabia was its chosen partner to build China’s strategic oil reserve. But the UAE is the frontline of China’s expanding influence in the region. The UAE fascinates Beijing not only as a transport and trade hub that links east and west, but also as aspirant to a brave new world.

The UAE state-run telecommunications companies have awarded 5G cellular network contracts to Huawei. The biggest Covid-19 testing facility outside China is located in Abu Dhabi, a joint venture between Chinese genomics company BGI and the UAE’s artificial intelligence group G42, which is linked to the Emirati royal family.

Turn to Iran, which is in economic distress today due to the US sanctions and the pandemic, and stands to gain if it integrates into the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The proposed $400-billion agreement with China envisages hundreds of development projects. It addresses Iran’s growing financial and infrastructure needs, and serves the Chinese companies and tech giants’ commercial interests. The capital injection that BRI provides will help fill Iran’s technological development gap as well as provide a new avenue of growth for its transportation system, oil, gas and petrochemical sectors, and ports and industrial zones.

China sees seamless possibilities in the strategic partnership with Iran. It locks in a cheap oil supply and vast natural resources, and an untapped market. In this geo-strategic balancing, both benefit. Succinctly put, China’s Iran policy is influenced by its growing footprint in the Persian Gulf, where Beijing is carefully building a presence based on diversified relationships with regional actors, and with an eye on its global confrontation with the US.

Even if only a fraction of what is envisaged under the proposed Sino-Iranian agreement comes to fruition, it poses a lethal challenge to the Trump administration's ‘maximum pressure’ campaign towards Tehran. Make no mistake, Beijing is remarkably successful in leveraging economic influence in statecraft. And the UN embargo on transfer of military technology to Iran is expiring in October.

Iran’s induction into BRI connects it with CPEC. This will strengthen CPEC’s resilience and change the trajectory of Iran-Pakistan ties. Last week, China initiated a regional forum with the Central Asian region called ‘China+Central Asia’ (C+C5). The C+C5 ministers — Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan — agreed at their videoconference on July 16 to ‘promote the alignment of BRI to build interconnected partnerships, deepen pragmatic cooperation in various fields, carry out effective investment cooperation, and jointly promote the recovery and development of economy.’

A BRI economic corridor connecting China with Iran across the steppes could significantly ease China’s ‘Malacca dilemma’. However, the most creative part of China-Iran strategic partnership will be the use of yuan in their planned commodity transaction payments. It brings the partnership out of the purview of Western banks and US sanctions.

When an energy superpower takes to yuan currency transactions with the world’s number one energy guzzler, it is most certainly big-time news. ‘Petrodollar’, pillar of Western banking system, may get shaky, which has implications for the US economy. Unsurprisingly, Washington is desperate to get Tehran to the negotiating table. A spate of bomb explosions in Iran recently hints at US covert operations to pile pressure.

The Sino-Iranian saga underscores what is wrong with India’s diplomacy. In 2016, PM Modi and President Xi Jinping visited Tehran to reset their countries’ ties in the wake of the 2015 Iran N-deal that lifted UN sanctions. Chinese diplomacy since raced ahead and India is a dot on its rearview mirror. This happened while India was transitioning as a quasi-ally of the US, and buying up the dream stuff — the Ratnagiri project, et al — that America’s regional allies were merchandising. India looks increasingly like a beached whale, while an exciting, transformative geopolitical landscape is appearing right in the Arabian Sea in the Indian Ocean. India should be extremely wary of taking yet another audacious leap into the dark — in the South China Sea.

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