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China erases 1,600 km of
Indian border
China adds new twist it knocks off 1,600 km
from its definition of China’s border with India
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As questions of territorial sovereignty return
to the centrestage in Sino-Indian relations, Beijing has added
a new twist to the long-running boundary dispute between the
two countries by knocking off nearly 1,600 km from its
definition of China's border with India.
A Xinhua report from Beijing earlier this week on the eve of
premier Wen Jiabao's visit to India described the Sino-Indian
border as nearly 2,000-km long. The Indian count of the
operational border is a lot longer at nearly 3,500 km (not
taking into account the line separating Pakistan Occupied
Kashmir and China). The discrepancy is too large to be treated
as an inadvertent error in Beijing. |
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So, where did the hundreds of kilometers disappear? China
apparently no longer treats the line of nearly 1,600 km separating
Jammu and Kashmir on the one hand and Xinjiang and Tibet on the
other as a border with India.
China's recasting of the length of the border with India
appears to be part of the Kashmir puzzle that Beijing has unveiled
in recent years. The other pieces include the recent policy of
issuing stapled visas to Indian citizens from J&K, the reluctance
to host a visit by the Northern Commander of the Indian Army Lt.
Gen. B.S. Jaswal, the dramatic expansion of the Chinese activity
in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir that includes the modernisation of
the Karakoram Highway and the plans to construct a new rail line
and oil pipeline between Kashgar in Xinjiang and the Gwadar port
on Pakistan's Makran coast.
Xinhua's reference to 2,000 km of Sino-Indian border was based
on an official briefing by the Assistant Foreign Minister of
China, Hu Zhengyue to the Beijing press corps on Monday.Minister
Hu's shortening of the border with India does not appear to be a
one-off comment. The figure 2,000 km appears to have become the
new normal in the official Chinese characterisation of the border
with India.
A day before Wen arrived in India, The Global Times -- an English
language newspaper published by the People's Daily, the official
organ of the Chinese Communist Party -- contradicted the Indian
figure of 3,500 km for the operational border between the two
nations.
In an interview with the Indian Ambassador to China, S. Jaishankar,
the Global Times asked about the reported tensions on the border.
In response, Jaishankar said, "The reality contradicts any
alarmist depiction of the situation on the border, whether in
India or in China. We have a long common border of 3,488 km."
In publishing the interview in its Tuesday's editions, the editors
of the Global Times chose to add in parenthesis the following:
"There is no settled length of the common border. The Chinese
government often refers to the border length as being 'about 2,000
km."
Given Beijing's new emphasis on a shorter border with India, Delhi
can't ignore the issue any longer. After all, the Chinese are
quite careful and very definitive in articulating their boundary
claims.
Beijing's official figure for the Indian border at about 2,000
km makes sense only if the boundary between J&K and China is
disregarded. From the Indian count, the western sector that covers
the frontier of Jammu & Kashmir is 1,597 km (nearly 1,000 miles).
For decades now, Delhi and Beijing have discussed, as a mater of
routine, the western sector of J&K as part of their boundary
talks. The first signs of trouble on the western sector came
nearly a decade ago during NDA tenure, when Delhi tried to
exchange maps of the border with Beijing as part of an effort to
clarify the Line of Actual Control on their vast frontiers.
The maps for the central sector were quickly exchanged; but
Beijing was reluctant to do the same in the western sector. Part
of the problem was said to be Chinese concern about Pakistan's
sensitivity to the delineation of the Sino-Indian border in J&K.
The new Chinese approach to the western sector reveals that
India's problem could be much larger than the question of stapled
visas. It might be about a fundamental ambivalence in Beijing
about India's sovereignty over J&K.
Just as the Chinese decision to call Arunachal Pradesh as 'South
Tibet' has begun to gain international traction, the repeated
references to the length of Sino-Indian border as 2,000 km is
bound to have an impact on the global discourse about J&K.
Beijing's new position underlines China's centrality in J&K.
While the Indian debate on Kashmir is usually focussed on
Pakistan, China's presence in the state might be emerging as a
decisive new factor.
India claims that China is in occupation of nearly 38,000 sq km of
Indian territory in the Ladakh region of J&K. China is also in
control of nearly 5,000 sq km of Shaksgam valley in PoK ceded by
Islamabad to Beijing in March 1963.
Until now India has sought to negotiate its territorial disputes
in Kashmir separately with Pakistan and China. India might now
have to come to terms with the changing geopolitics of J&K, where
India's two fronts with Pakistan and China come together.
source: Indian Express
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