New India / China "Confrontation" in Himalayas Not Good Sign

Aug. 12, 2010 - PRLog -- By David Caploe PhD, Chief Political Economist, EconomyWatch.com

We have often said one of the most important conditions for a positive future in both Asia and the world in general

is a good relationship between India and China.

Unfortunately, we've already documented the competition between the two countries that has been going on

in India's previously acknowledged "sphere of influence" with other countries in South Asia.

Now come some disturbing reports this encounter is heating up in the region where the two countries confront each other directly:

the Himalayas, in the famous Rohtang Pass.

The name of this white-knuckle pass, one of the highest in the world, means “pile of corpses” in the Tibetan language.

Every year a few dozen people die trying to cross these spiky Himalayan peaks.

For six months the road is snowbound, putting at the mercy of the elements tens of thousands of Indian troops posted beyond it in this remote but strategically important region along India’s long and disputed border with China.

In the past decade, as China has furiously built up its military and civilian infrastructure on its side of the border,

the Rohtang Pass on the Indian side has stood as mute testimony to India’s inability and unwillingness to master its far-flung and rugged outermost reaches.

But now, India is racing to match its rival for regional and global power, building and bolstering airstrips and army outposts, shoring up neglected roads and —

finally, decades after it was first proposed — building a tunnel to bypass the deadly Rohtang Pass.

In June, work started on the ambitious project, which will take five years and require boring five miles through the Pir Panjal range.

Several other tunnels, which would allow all-weather access to Ladakh, which abuts the Tibetan Plateau, are also in the works.

“What India is belatedly seeking to do is to improve its defenses by upgrading its logistics,”

said Brahma Chellaney, an analyst who tracks the India-China relationship at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi, in an e-mail.

“By building new railroads, airports and highways in Tibet,

China is now in a position to rapidly move additional forces to the border to potentially strike at India at a time of its choosing.”

As a result, he said, “The Sino-Indian border remains more unstable than the Pakistani-Indian frontier,”

which we think is a bit of an overstatement, to say the least, but it DOES indicate the anxiety in elite Indian circles over the situation with China.

India and China are hardly enemies, but much of the 2,521-mile border they share is disputed or ill marked.

The two countries fought a brief but bloody border war in 1962, and while these days they have, on the surface, a mostly cordial relationship,

it is marked by tension over border disputes and the future of Tibet and its leader, the Dalai Lama, who lives in exile in India.

China’s push to develop its infrastructure on its side of the border — including an all-weather railway to Tibet that includes the world’s highest tunnel, at 16,000 feet — is viewed with considerable suspicion in India.

For much of its history, India has regarded the Himalayas as a form of protection, not a barrier to be overcome,

said Rajeswari Rajagopalan, an expert in India-China relations at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi.

“The Indian side has been very slow to develop the border areas,” Ms. Rajagopalan said.

“They believed if you improved the infrastructure it would only allow the Chinese to walk into your territory. This was very foolish and naïve.”

Three hundred miles of winding road lead from the town of Manali, through the verdant Kullu Valley, to Ladakh, an alpine desert that abuts the Tibetan plateau.

Tens of thousands of Indian Army troops are stationed among Ladakh’s barren peaks,

and the region borders several potential trouble spots, including Aksai Chin, a region that India claims as part of its territory but that China administers.

North of Ladakh is the Siachen Glacier, a river of barren ice that India and Pakistan have fought over intermittently since the 1980s.

Both countries maintain outposts on the glacier, which sits at an altitude of 20,000 feet ...

To read more at http://www.economywatch.com’, go to: http://www.economywatch.com/economy-business-and-finance-...

# # #

EconomyWatch.com is the world's largest global, independent, economics community. Every month we serve over 750k users, who read and discuss economics, investing and finance topics.