Sino-Indian ties: Both nations on same page?

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Salman Khurshid and his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi—PTI

Following the unusual and disturbing kind of intrusion by the Chinese border forces from April 15, 2013 in eastern Ladakh, Jammu and Kashmir, which got solved after an impasse of three weeks, external affairs minister Salman Khurshid went to China soon after and returned with a rosy picture of his two-day visit. Noting that China has given a proposal for Border Defence Cooperation Agreement (BDCA), the minister said India has also given a counter-proposal and both countries were examining these proposals.

Declining to give details of the Indian proposal, he also clarified that the proposals were not meant to replace any existing ones. While the Chinese reportedly expressed no regret for their intrusion into south -eastern Ladakh, Mr Khurshid gushed to his hosts that he would “love to live in Beijing”. Shortly after Chinese troops were persuaded to withdraw from the intruded area, Mr Khurshid was quoted saying that he “did not do a post-mortem or apportion blame”, that he saw no reason to go into “details of hair splitting” and asserted that he “raised and flagged it and we said that we both need to do analysis of why it happened… On the problem on the Line of Actual Control (LAC), both countries are on the same page… We don’t have prickly issues of significant difference”. On the need to expand or set up a separate mechanism to deal with issues pertaining to trans-border rivers, Mr Khurshid claimed that for the first time, India has seen some “movement” with China assuring that it was committed to ensuring that India’s rights were “not harmed”.
Very shortly later, Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang arrived in New Delhi on his first foreign trip since assuming office in March and found himself traversing roads mostly empty, thanks to the super security cover provided for him, leaving millions of the capital’s commuters stuck in endless traffic jams miserable and cursing. Leading a large delegation of Chinese business leaders, including bankers and executives from two Chinese telecommunications giants, Huawei and ZTE, Mr Li was at his keep the three-day trip focused on economic ties between China and India, which have grown rapidly over the past decade. The Chinese ministry of commerce said last week that bilateral trade reached $66 billion in 2012, setting a goal of $100 billion by 2015.
While it may sound hunky-dory that China has become India’s biggest trading partner, with two-way trade jumping from $5billion in 2002 to nearly $75billion in 2011 (although that figure declined to $61.5billion in 2012 owing to the global economic downturn), the trade so far has been highly in China’s favour, which is another source of concern for India.
While Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, external affairs minister Khurshid and the diplomats involved in the negotiations may well have addressed all the contentious issues and the Chinese government-controlled media going to town cheering this meet as very successful-what with eight agreements signed-statements like Premier Li’s “India and China have differences, but our shared interests outweigh them”, have to be taken with a spoonful of salt. No doubt, Mr Li has been on a great charm offensive, but all that he has said on this trip can only be assessed once implementation begins and remains sustained. With his next stop being Pakistan, it remains to be seen how the strategic/border issues, particularly those of eastern Ladakh will be played out. And Premier Li’s repeated reference to India as a “strategic” partner is indeed quite ironic.
China’s possession of nuclear weapons targetable to any part of India, its nuclear cooperation with Pakistan resulting in swelling of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, boosting nuclear proliferation in South Asia; China supporting Pakistan in supplying conventional weapons and never checking Pakistan for its anti-India activities; China supporting/supplying arms to India’s Northeast and Left-wing extremists; China competing for resources in third countries; China’s efforts to strengthen its relations with other countries in the Indian Ocean region; the China-India “perception-based” border dispute, which keeps propelling its Army/border troops to cross the LAC and intrude into India. China has kept the 4,057-km LAC live with incursions, albeit without firing any bullets.