Just as the Indian subcontinental plate has a tendency to constantly rub and push against the Eurasian tectonic plate, causing friction and volatility in the entire Himalayan mountain range, India’s bilateral relationship with China is also a subtle, unseen, but ongoing and deeply felt collision, the affects of which have left a convoluted lineage. Tensions between the two powers have come to influence everything from their military and security decisionmaking to their economic and diplomatic maneuvering, with implications for wary neighbors and faraway allies alike. The relationship is complicated by layers of rivalry, mistrust, and occasional cooperation, not to mention actual geographical disputes.
Distant neighbors buffered by Tibet and the Himalayas for millennia, China and India became next-door neighbors with contested frontiers and disputed histories in 1950, following the occupation of Tibet by Mao’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA). While the rest of the world started taking note of China’s rise during the last decade of the twentieth century, India has been warily watching China’s rise ever since a territorial dispute erupted in a brief but full-scale war in 1962, followed by skirmishes in 1967 and 1987.
Read Full Article »
