From Power and Interest News Report:
Yet another “useful and positive” round of Sino-Indian boundary negotiations was held on September 24-26 against the backdrop of a general consensus in both capitals that no breakthrough to the territorial dispute could be achieved for a long period of time. Talks for a settlement have now gone on for more than a quarter of a century (since 1981, to be precise) — with a “big push” given to them by Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi‘s visit to China in 1988, the second one by Atal Bihari Vajpayee‘s sojourn in Beijing in 2003 and a third one by Manmohan Singh‘s talks with Premier Wen Jiabao in 2005 and President Hu Jintao in 2006 — yet all were in vain.
As a result, the 4,056-kilometer (2,520 miles) frontier between India and China, one of the longest inter-state borders in the world, remains the only one of China’s land borders not defined, let alone demarcated, on maps or delineated on the ground. While Indians doubt China’s sincerity in border negotiations, Chinese question India’s leaders’ will and capacity to settle the dispute in a “give-and-take” spirit. [Full Text]
Mohan Malik is Professor of Security Studies at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu.
