China, India forging strategic partnership

TheGeneral+ · Apr 11, 2005

chinadaily.com.cn

China and India began forging a strategic co-operative partnership, yesterday, and stepped closer to making a final settlement of their border disputes.

The results, together with a consensuses on expanding "friendly and mutually-beneficial co-operations," came after nearly 3 hours of talks between Premier Wen Jiabao and his Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh yesterday afternoon, Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan said last night.

Hailing Wen's historic tour a "landmark" event, Singh said relations with China constitute a key component of India's foreign policy.

In turn, Wen said a good relationship between the two countries was vital for the future Chinese and Indian generations.

Development of trade and diplomatic links between the two, he said, is in the interests of both nations, and contributes to regional and world peace and stability.

To push forward their relationship, Wen said both sides should deepen and strengthen their "long-term constructive partnership."

Singh said India has always considered the relationship with China in both a regional and world context, and to continuously bolster relations with China has become a consensus for all walks of life. It is also an objective requirement for ensuring India's national development and people's welfare, he said.

Border a 'link'

The most eye-catching bilateral issue to be touched on during Wen's four-day trek to India was that on the vexed boundary questions between the two neighbours.

The results are clear: The two governments inked an agreement on political guiding principles on solving the border issue, Kong said.

This is the first political document signed by the two countries since 1981 when the two counries started the negotiations to settle border disputes. But details of the document are not immediately available.

China's Vice-Foreign Minister Wu Dawei, who is accompanying Chinese Premier Wen on the visit, said the agreement has laid foundations for solving the border issue between the two countries.

Wen said China will push forward demarcation talks with India, and both sides should maintain peace along the border.

In the spirit of mutual understanding and mutual accommodation, and respecting both historical and actual conditions, the two sides should seek a fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable solution to the boundary question through consultations on an equal footing, Wen said.

Such efforts boil down to making the border a link for peace, friendship and co-operation between the two countries, he said.

The Sino-Indian border has remained tranquil with no confrontation or military action since 1993.

South Asia situation

Premiers also discussed regional issues.

Wen said China welcomes the easing of Pak-Indian relations, noting the improvement caters to the countries' own needs for development and has bearings on regional peace, stability and growth.

"China would like to see India-Pakistan relations further relaxed, and support all efforts leading to eradicating tension and safeguarding peace," he said.

China does not seek self-interest in South Asia, and when it develops relations with a South Asian country, it does not target a third nation, Wen said.

"China is willing to continue to play a constructive role in promoting peace and development throughout South Asia," he said.

Apart from the pact on the border issue, the two countries yesterday also inked a batch of other documents on civil aviation, plant quarantine, finance and customs.

Other meetings

Meeting with Indian Parliament Speaker and Vice-President Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, Wen said parliamentary exchange is an important channel through which to improve the people-to-people relationship, and China encourages more such exchanges with India.

The premier thanked the speaker for his substantial work in promoting Sino-Indian relations.

Shekhawat said the Indian parliament is willing to further relations with China and its people, adding he believed the premier's visit will lend new dynamics to the bilateral relationship. Wen last night attended an art performance to mark the 55th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations.

TheGeneral+ · Apr 11, 2005

Who else will join the partnership? On CNN today a statement from these parties said this will go a long way toward establishing world order.

:smoker2:

eek. · Apr 12, 2005

I doubt if they would ever trust one another too much, like the US and China.
China wants Tibet fully recognised as Chinese.

There has been absolutely no mention whatsoever about Tibet, even the BBC has said zip about this place, it's like the country has ceased to exist.

Tibet is a lot like Poland, stuck between two powers who periodically invade and subdue the population.(China/India.Russia/Germany)
98% of Monasteries were destroyed during the cultural revolution.

China PM lauds India agreements
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4435691.stm

Tibet
http://www.tibetinfo.net/tibet-file/chronol.htm

China's Panchen Lama hails Communist Party
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/3691458.stm

The worlds youngest political prisoner
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/2450463.stm

Polaris · Apr 13, 2005

from the April 11, 2005 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0411/p07s01-wosc.html

[font=Georgia, Times,]'Free Tibet' push fades as India-China ties warm[/font]

[font=Arial, Verdana, Geneva, Helvetica, san-serif;][size=-1]By Nachammai Raman | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor [/size][/font]

[font=Arial, Verdana, Geneva, Helvetica, san-serif;][size=-1]NEW DELHI - For a brief moment Saturday, demonstrators waved the flag of Tibet outside the Chinese Embassy in India's capital. There were only 40 protesters, and it was all over within 20 minutes - a sign of just how feeble the Free Tibet movement has become.

As Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao tours India on a four-day state visit, the once estranged Asian giants are talking up stronger economic ties and resolutions to old border disputes, including Tibet.

Although New Delhi has all along refused to extend political support to the Tibetan freedom movement, India has indirectly helped keep the cause alive by hosting the Dalai Lama, his exiled government, and some 100,000 Tibetan refugees.

But India's willingness to advocate for Tibet is waning as China booms and becomes a crucial trade partner. Other nations, including the United States, have made similar calculations. At the same time, the once-outspoken Dalai Lama has grown quiet in recent years, reducing the Free Tibet campaign to little more than the fading stickers still found in youth hostels and on VW vans the world over.

"The last few years haven't been the strongest for the movement," says Dibyesh Anand, a Tibet expert at Bath University in England. "Western politicians, who in the 1990s were supporting the Tibetan cause in the name of combating China, are focused increasingly on economic opportunities in China as well as security issues [in the wake of 9/11]."

On a visit yesterday to India's technology capital of Bangalore, Premier Wen urged Indian software companies to come to China and take advantage of his nation's manufacturing capabilities. "Cooperation is just like two pagodas, one hardware and one software," Wen said. "Combined, we [India and China] can take the leadership position in the world."

But economic carrots are not the only reason India has not pushed the Tibet issue. Delhi has its own separatist movements to consider in Kashmir, Sikkim, and Arunachal Pradesh. Supporting the Free Tibet movement against the wishes of China, says Mr. Anand, "would open up a Pandora's box within India itself."

In recent years, the Tibetan government in exile has moved away from demands for Tibetan independence, and instead has pushed for Tibetan autonomy and the Dalai Lama's return. Officials with the exiled government say they are in "direct contact" with the Chinese government and have sent three envoys to Beijing.

"For three years, we've had a direct channel to saying to them whatever we want to. We've not been publicly visible. Otherwise, we keep ourselves very much engaged," says Tashi Wangdi, representative of the Delhi bureau of the Dalai Lama.

The Dalai Lama has taken a quieter approach in the hopes that the Chinese will conclude that it is in their interest to negotiate with him, says Anand. The Dalai Lama has kept the Tibetan freedom movement peaceful and nonviolent, which may not hold under future Tibetan leadership.

Dhundup Dorjee of the Tibetan Youth Congress, who helped organize this weekend's protest, warns that the Tibetan quest for freedom is a ticking bomb. "If there's an opportunity, the Tibetans will rise up," he says. "If there's no Dalai Lama, what would the situation be?"

Mr. Dorjee finds India's refusal to get involved confounding. He accuses China of having committed several anti-India acts, including support for Pakistan and the diversion of Himalayan rivers.

India could yet help resolve the Tibetan issue, says Anand, but Delhi must convince Beijing that it has no political ambitions in Tibet. Then India needs to bring China around to see that a resolution to the Tibetan problem would open up that border for freer Sino-Indian trade and tourism, he adds.

In the meantime, Dorjee and his compatriots haven't given up on their dream of returning to a homeland free of Chinese occupation, even if this seems less and less likely. He quotes a Tibetan adage to sum up his people's view: "The Tibetans are always hopeful and the Chinese are always suspicious."

FREE TIBET: Indian police restrained a protester Sunday as China's premier visited Bangalore.
JAGADEESH NV/REUTERS

[/size][/font]

Polaris · Apr 13, 2005

the reddish area near top of map is where the 1962 border war took place

a bigger map of that particular area

Polaris · Apr 13, 2005

Road strategies: China, India and America

By Edward Lanfranco
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL

Beijing, China, Apr. 12, 2005 (UPI) -- The Stilwell Road, a strategic supply route between India and China via Burma built during World War II by the United States, may become a key power trade link of the future.

The geopolitical economy of the modern world is on the precipice of sea change if China and India, the two rising forces on the Asian continent, can resolve outstanding disputes while improving upon a crucial transportation conduit put together by Americans in a vastly different world 60 years ago.

The agreement Monday in New Delhi might well usher Asia's giants into a promised land of economic and political power flourishing during the 21st century, provided both sides clearly and publicly demarcate their shared borders; previous statements of supposed breakthroughs on this issue have come to naught.

One key area to watch is in the vicinity of a strategic road conceived and built by Americans in a forgotten corner of World War II.

The Stilwell Road, also known as the Ledo Road and informally as "Pick's Pike" stretches almost 1,100 miles from Ledo, the easternmost rail depot in India's northeastern Assam state, to Kunming, capital of China's southwestern Yunnan province.

The highway link was ordered in December 1942 by U.S. Army General Joseph Stilwell (1883-1946), dubbed "Vinegar Joe" by reporters because of his foul temper in dealing with China's Kuomintang leader Chiang Kai-shek over strategy and use of resources in the China-Burma-India Theater of operations against Japan.

The high-water mark of Japanese aggression took forces westward to the fringes of British India before being beaten back. A new strategic supply land route became necessary once troops of Japan's Imperial Army swept through the adjacent British colony of Burma (today's Myanmar) shutting off the more famous Burma Road in April 1942.

More than 60 percent of the 15,000 U.S. Army combat engineers and support personnel under the command of Maj. Gen. Lewis A. Pick -- the road and dam builder Stilwell put in charge the task -- were African-Americans.

Segregated military units composed of black soldiers led by white officers, a commonplace practice in the U.S. military from the Civil War, was abolished by President Harry S. Truman in 1947.

The muddy, largely single-track truck transport roadway and parallel running fuel pipeline through remote mountainous of malarial jungle terrain replete with leeches and enemy resistance are considered two of the greatest feats of combat engineering accomplished anywhere during World War II.

At a press briefing in February 2005, the U.S. Embassy in Beijing's military attaché, Col. Frank L. Miller, said 13,500,000 cubic yards of earth were moved, enough to build a wall 10 feet tall and three feet thick stretching from San Francisco to New York.

Engineers also created the world's longest pontoon bridge (1,180 feet) across the Irrawaddy River. The American briefing was on the 60th anniversary of the road's completion.

Historians agree these tasks would have proved impossible had it not been for local laborers in conjunction with bulldozers and other technologies sent halfway across the globe by the Americans in what was otherwise a neglected sideshow of the overall war effort.

Some segments of the route -- including incomplete spurs -- all but vanished, returning to jungle footpaths due to a lack of maintenance since 1945 and the Sino-Indian War in 1962.

The Indian leg of the Stilwell Road starting at the Ledo rail spur is 38 miles of challenging vertical ascent into the Patkai Range south of the upper Brahmaputra River valley close to the Arunachal Pradesh, a keenly disputed border region with China.

In the lexicon of political geographers, there is an imaginary "Line of Actual Control" between China and India dividing the sparsely inhabited eastern Himalayas. There are overlapping territorial claims as to what belongs to Tibet and Arunachal Pradesh.

Analysts privately say the line fluctuates frequently in the hostile high altitude environment, and encounters involving military patrols occur more often than public statements made on the matter by either side.

Chinese state controlled media on Monday did not provide any official interpretation or acceptance of border delimitation in this contentious area. Xinhua reported the two governments signed an agreement on "political guiding principles for solving the border issue."

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang told United Press International on Tuesday the guidelines were "based on the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, proceeding from the overall state of bilateral relations, plus seeking a fair and reasonable solution to the boundary issue acceptable to both sides through equal consultation."

Qin added: "Before the final solution the two sides should strictly respect and abide by the line of actual control and make joint efforts to maintain peace and tranquility along the border."

The next 646 miles of the Stilwell Road runs through Myanmar's Kachin holdings, long regarded as a no man's land with a violent history in rough remote terrain.

Northern Burma hosted units of Chinese Kuomintang resistance to the Chinese Communist mainland victory in 1949 until the 1970s. Besides spillover from China's modern Civil War, there were also Cold War intelligence operations based in the region.

Firefights between government forces and drug lords in the 1970s-1980s evolved into ones pitting the numerically dominant southern Burmese against smaller fragmented northern hill tribe cultures during the 1980s-1990s.

Myanmar has been run by a corrupt authoritarian military junta suppressing a predominantly docile devout Buddhist population for almost 30 years.

Long excoriated by the U.S. State Department as a human rights nightmare, Myanmar is a weak underdeveloped country sandwiched between competing colossi it can ill-afford to offend.

India and China compete in providing their neighbor with political and economic support. China has long been poised and willing to up the infrastructure ante through Myanmar to consolidate economic ties with India.

The Foreign Ministry spokesman responded to a question about Chinese road building efforts in Myanmar by saying, "The Chinese government attaches importance to various forms of regional cooperation.

"Convenient transport can help countries to establish closer relationships. We welcome related proposals and support parties concerned to continue their study and discussion of this matter," Qin added.

The final leg of the Stilwell Road, from Myanmar's border with China at Wanding Yunnan province, was 395 miles long, but the mainland is keen to connect in several directions. This was first expressed in August 1999 with the "Kunming Initiative."

Kunming, Yunnan's capital city, has long been anxious to expand China's trade power into India as well as tap into Southeast Asian trade routes via the Bay of Bengal.

Xinhua quoted sources from the Yunnan provincial government as saying preliminary surveys and a detailed renovation plan for the road is expected to be finalized by the end of April.

The China Daily said Monday the distance from Kunming to Ledo, via a checkpoint at Baoshan to Myanmar's Myitkyina outpost was 1,220 kilometers, about 758 miles, eliminating one-quarter of the original route distance.

At present, southwestern China's trade with India follows a convoluted shipping route from Kunming to the port of Zhanjiang in Guangdong province, where goods are loaded onto ships bound for the Malacca Straits, a distance of more than 3,700 miles.

Sino-Indian trade has skyrocketed from a few hundred million dollars in the late 1990s to $13.6 billion last year. China has become India's second largest trading partner.

Once the American inspired Stilwell Road is operational again, strategic ties between Asia's two great powers may transform the way the world does business.

Copyright 2005 United Press International