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Indo-China War in the Offing?

Break the Silence

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Bangalore: The recent competition between India and China has now moved to Sea. If the latest tensions between the two countries are an indication, oceans might become the future battle ground for one of the biggest wars in history that could even lead to World War 3, as the battle for seas includes many nations. Chinese Communist Party-run Global Times had last month called on Beijing to declare war on Vietnam and Philippines, two countries that have been proactive in defending their claims over the mineral rich islets in South China Sea. Another possible trigger for the war cry was India's rejection of Chinese objections to its agreements to explore oil in Vietnamese waters, in partnership with Vietnam. India's 'oil provocations' against China was completed yesterday as India and Vietnam decided to go ahead with the pact for oil exploration in South China Sea. China on the other hand has been increasingly expanding its base in the Indian Ocean.
China has for long been building maritime and other linkages with eastern Africa, Seychelles, Mauritius, Maldives, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Cambodia, among others to assert its authority in the Indian Ocean. Apart from regular tensions between India and China, along Himalayan Mountain borders, the strain at sea regained momentum recently when China decided to leave its footprints in Maldives, a strategic location in Indian Ocean. India was among the first countries to recognize Maldives after its independence in 1965 and to establish diplomatic relations with this country. China has now sought to undertake various development projects in Maldives islands to challenge Indian Supremacy in the island nation. There are also reports of Chinese planning a secret naval submarine base in Marao (one of islands), as it is close to India. Moreover, China is building a fully fledged embassy in Male.
India has also been taking a step by step approach to counter Chinese measures. It has intensified its defense engagements with countries like Maldives, Mauritius and Seychelles. Indian warships now help Maldives in maritime patrol and surveillance. New Delhi is also helping Male set up ground radar networks in all its 26 atolls, linking them to Indian military surveillance systems. In 2006, India had also provided Maldives with Tillanchang, a 260-tonne fast-attack craft designed for fast and covert operations against smugglers and terrorists.

Apart from assisting many small nations in Indian Ocean, India has now begun to make its presence felt in Chinese frontiers. India seems to say, 'If you do it in Indian Ocean, we will do it in South China Sea'. This is where an agreement has been signed between India and Vietnam for oil exploration in China Sea.
India has also been sending naval warships to China Sea. An Indian naval warship sailing in South China Sea was last month stopped by China, which accused India of intruding into its Waters, and was asked to return. India was not intimidated. Foreign Minister S M Krishna asserted that India will continue to send more and more war ships to Vietnam ports in China Sea, angering China. In what may rattle China more, Defense Minister A K Anthony yesterday went on to acknowledge the benefits of holding joint exercises with regional and global powers like U.S., Japan and Vietnam in South China Sea and West Pacific.

As in 1962, these provocations targeted against each other might turn into a huge scale war between the two Asian giants.

The oil rich South China Sea has suddenly become the global focal point where interests of major global players like the United States and Japan meet, leave alone rising Asia

n giants like China and India. It has the second busiest sea lane in the world. There are also unsolved territorial disputes between China, Vietnam, Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei, with China claiming most of the South China Sea as well as the twin oil paradises, Paracel and Spratly islands. With China and Southeast Asian states disputing claims to the energy rich South China Sea, there is a potential for huge conflict in future involving countries like Japan, U.S, China and India, and the other smaller countries, leading to world war. Whether an Indo China war will begin such a conflict is another question. For now, the probability is bleak, but the possibility remains.

http://www.siliconindia.com/shownews/IndoChina_War_in_the_Offing-nid-94675-cid-1.html
 
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I'm sorry but if China tries anything against India on the seas in anytime after 2013, the PLAN is going to be taught a tough lesson by IN.
 
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I'm sorry but if China tries anything against India on the seas in anytime after 2013, the PLAN is going to be taught a tough lesson by IN.

I admire your confidence, but the battle lines won't be in the Indian Ocean.

Most likely NE India and Ladakh. And possibly in the South China sea.
 
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china claiming SCS as its territorial waters is like Australia claiming the entire southern ocean as its territorial waters...
 
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i'm mildly amused by the article, and those who are taking it seriously
 
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theres no way they're coming to ours waters to slap us should they even try such a thing they will need to send salvage ships to find the remains of there sunken ships
 
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Two can play a game

But why must everything end into a war or ' Vs' scenario ?

When two nations grow there will be rumblings.
 
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'War,Possibility of a War, imminentness of a War', if not for these topics appearing quite so often, defense forums would have long slipped into mediocrity and blandness.
 
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Where China Meets India: Burma and the new crossroads of Asia

Author: Thant Myint-U


Blending history and travelogue with personal reminiscences, author Thant Myint-U, grandson of former UN Secretary-General U Thant, recounts the strategic location of Burma, linking the most far-flung regions of China and India. In the 16th century, the two countries together formed half the world’s economy. Within a generation this could be the case again, the author says. No wonder, the land where the two countries meet — Burma — gains a pre-eminent position in today’s world.

Currently, China’s presence in Burma is all-pervasive. There was, however, a time in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when, with Burma being firmly part of the Indian empire, India was expanding towards China, not the other way around. Burma guarded India’s eastern flank as a buffer against China as well as against the French, who were then moving up the Mekong river from Saigon. British India saw Tibet as part of its “sphere of influence” and western Yunnan as part of its expanding backyard, which is now an integral part of China.

For most of the past 2,000 years, it was India — not China — which enjoyed a close relationship with South-East Asia. The region was known to Indians as Suvarnabhumi, the ‘Land of Gold’. The overwhelming majority of people in Burma, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia profess Buddhism, and more than 90 per cent of people on the island of Bali in Indonesia are Hindu. Indian classics such as the Ramayana are still popular in South-East Asia.

In the early 20th century, as the author says, Burma enjoyed a higher standard of living than India. As its economy grew, there was a need for labour as well as entrepreneurial and professional skills — all of which came from India. By the 1920s, the influx from India turned Rangoon (now Yangoon) into an Indian city, with the Burmese reduced to a minority. But this world came crashing down; the aerial bombing of Rangoon had hundreds of thousands of Indians flee. The Indian population is now only a fraction of what it once was.

Today, the Chinese model is in the ascendancy in South-East Asia. Burma, too, is being drawn into the Chinese economic orbit. Over the past 20 years, China has emerged as the Burmese Government’s most reliable supporter. Beijing has provided hundreds of millions of dollars worth of military hardware, including planes and tanks, as well as crucial diplomatic protection at the United Nations and elsewhere. The Burmese economy is today tied more closely to China’s than at any other time in modern history.

China was once much worse off than Burma. In the 1930s, Burma’s per capita GDP was at least twice that of China’s. By the 1960s, China had caught up. Today, China’s per capita GDP is at least six-times greater.

There has been an unprecedented migration of ethnic Chinese into Burma. Of about a million strong population in Mandalay, at least a third are now the Chinese. Unrestrained China, “a plundering behemoth” as the author says, is ubiquitous in infrastructure projects, building roads and dams, cutting down teak forests, mining for jade, and selling its own consumer goods. By early 2010, construction had begun on the oil and gas pipelines that would connect China’s southwest across Burma to the Bay of Bengal. They would run from Mandalay past Ruili, first to Yunnan and then to the Guangxi autonomous region and the mega city of Chongqing. Like the huge hydroelectric projects on the Irrawaddy and Salween, these pipelines have a strategic dimension as well — a part of resolving what President Hu Jintao called ‘The Malacca Dilemma’ in 2003.

When the Sino-Burmese borders were first opened up in the late 1980s, the first sign of the new China was the flood of cheap Chinese goods into Burmese markets. By the late 1980s, hundreds of factories sprang up across the frontier, producing goods developed specifically for Burmese consumers. Then came the logging on a gargantuan scale. The forests of Burma’s north and east were mercilessly chopped down. In areas close to Burma more than 95 per cent of forest cover has been cut down over the past 30 years and much of the cleared land turned into rubber plantations. The jade mines of the Kachin Hills were another big attraction. Many endangered species — from snow leopards to rhinos — are hunted and shipped. Women, too, have become a commodity.

Initially, it was the US that became the Burmese military Government’s best friend abroad, providing military training and welcoming its then dictator, General Ne Win, to Washington. China would then call Burma’s generals “fascists” and actively plot the regime’s overthrow. Western sanctions pushed Burma’s ruling junta closer to Beijing and created an unusually privileged conditions for Chinese business.

The book gives a fascinating account of how the Sino-Indian rivalry would shape international politics, particularly in Asia, and how Burma is all set to play a key role in all this.

-The reviewer is Senior Fellow, Asian Institute of Transport Development
 
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