China Is Starting to See India as a Major Threat

More and more, Chinese see India replacing Japan as the second biggest threat to Beijing, following the U.S.
By Hemant Adlakha

As the new year gets underway, and Chinese foreign policy analysts join their counterparts around the world in assessing the events of 2017, the emerging international relations (IR) discourse in Beijing is quite a revelation — at least to the Japanese and Indian strategic affairs community.
While most Chinese believe Japan to be the second biggest threat to China’s “peaceful rise,” according to a few Chinese experts, the rising global profile of India, especially under the “right-wing” nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has gone unacknowledged.
In February 2015, The Diplomat carried an article by a Chinese scholar titled “Why China Doesn’t See India as a Threat.” 

In April 2017, Sanjeev Nayyar, an independent columnist, wrote: “One thing China must understand is that the Indian government is not obsessed with being a threat to China but only wants a rightful place for India in the world.” 

And in the fall of 2017, China’s semi-official, hyper-nationalist Global Times dismissed with disdain any talk of India worrying China in an article titled “India-Japan intimacy poses no real threat to China.” 

The article was written in response to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s India visit in September.

The Global Times also – it now seems ignorantly – wrote off India’s successful test of its long-range ballistic missile Agni-IV a year ago, commenting: “China should realize that Beijing wouldn’t hold back India’s development of Agni-IV. However, Chinese people don’t think India’s development has posed any big threat to it.”
As the year 2017 was drawing to a close, however, Yin Guoming, a Chinese foreign affairs analyst, argued that India, and not Japan, is now the second biggest threat to China after the United States. Here’s an excerpt:
"China-India standoff has compelled us to regard India as a serious rival. 

"During the Doklam confrontation, it became very clear to everyone – from ordinary "Chinese to foreign policy experts – China must reckon India to be its second biggest rival. 

"And that China needs to re-assess, re-examine, and reformulate its India strategy."
However, more significantly, the article pointed out that most people in China were not yet ready to recognize the Indian threat.
China’s strategic affairs community has been arguing for some time now that, viewed geopolitically, Sino-Indian relations are the second most important bilateral ties for Beijing following the Sino-U.S. relationship. 

Most Chinese came in for a rude shock in the summer of 2017, when the Indian army openly crossed into Doklam border region and for weeks refused to withdraw. 

Writing in an influential, widely read online patriotic portal based in China’s Hainan province and popular among rich, educated urban Chinese, Li Yang, a current affairs commentator wrote in July – midway through the Doklam confrontation – “The biggest mistake we have made in the past two decades has been to underestimate India and ignore India. During these years of India’s rapid progress, we did not trouble India, did not make India stumble or make India shed tears.”
Earlier, in May 2017, India announced – just a day in advance – that it would not be present at the inauguration of China’s first mega-diplomatic event of the year, the Belt and Road Forum, citing sovereignty concerns. 

The Chinese, though angered by India’s last minute boycott, chose to officially remain silent. 

A section of China’s foreign affairs commentators did indeed hint it was a mild setback to their diplomacy.
By comparison, the Doklam faceoff, which cropped up within a few weeks of Belt and Road Forum, was a “game changer.” 

It went well beyond the Chinese imagination. 

Interestingly, as the days passed, India’s refusal to withdraw its troops as well as its dismissive attitude toward engaging with the Chinese on the issue, simply left the Chinese puzzled and clueless as to the Indian game plan. 

Not surprisingly, Shen Dingli, a Chinese international relations scholar at Fudan University, counted the Doklam crisis as among China’s top five diplomatic failures under the so-called “Xi-style Diplomacy.”
Current trends in Chinese discourse on the potential India threat, if acknowledged and accepted at the official level by the central authorities in Beijing, would mean further intensification of China and India viewing each other as a hostile “enemy” in the future. 

The following arguments have been offered by some Chinese scholars as to why India, and not Japan, will pose a bigger threat and challenge for China in the coming years.
In the context of geopolitics, China believes it enjoys a greater advantage over Japan. 

Japan is a maritime nation and maritime trade and transportation forms Japan’s economic as well as survival lifeline. 

Geographically too, Japan’s location makes its energy supply route from the Middle East longer than China’s. 

Both logistically and economically, the South China Sea route is the shortest path. 

Once China establishes its full hegemony in the South China Sea (and also regains control over Taiwan, which has long been Beijing’s dream), China would naturally be able to easily place a stranglehold on Japan by dominating maritime trade routes – crucial for Japan’s existence.
In contrast, China’s own crucial maritime energy supply route passes through the Indian Ocean, which falls within the Indian military threat zone. 

During the Doklam confrontation, the Chinese took due notice of Indian analysts making statements that in the event of a India-China military clash, India would cut off China’s maritime access to the Indian Ocean.
Of course, it is true many Chinese dismiss the Indian threat as nothing but a joke. 

But that is more because India has not yet fully realized its potential, not because India is not capable of becoming a future threat to China.
Some analysts in China have also expressed their frustration over India’s “unchecked” rapid economic progress during the past two decades. 

These experts and scholars are rather candid in admitting China had failed to anticipate the “revolutionary” transformation Narendra Modi has brought about in the Indian national psyche. 

True, it is not a revelation to the Chinese that India has always viewed China is its “imaginary enemy.” 

Moreover, it is not hidden from the Chinese either that the Indian defeat during the 1962 boundary war has since remained the single most crucial factor in determining India’s national defense strategy. Yet, it is only now and under Modi, as India’s stature in global politics has risen, that China has suddenly realized that — unlike Japan — India is a nuclear weapon state. 

Finally, thanks to the Modi government’s uncharitable stance, it has dawned upon China’s strategic affairs community that Beijing’s Belt and Road strategy is bound to produce more and more structural contradictions between the two neighbors, already rapidly becoming hostile.
No wonder, if the media reports from Beijing are true, that the People's Republic of China for the first time keenly awaited the outcome of this year’s assembly elections in India. 

Following the Gujarat elections, the mandarins watching India in the Chinese foreign affairs ministry, it is believed, have predicted in their dossier that Modi will enjoy a second term as the prime minister in 2019.
Going by the current Chinese discourse, Beijing is certainly not going to just sit and watch and let India become a threat. 

The question that looms large, then, is what China is going to do about it.

Holy Alliance

India, Japan Expected to Increase Maritime Activity Aimed at China
By Ralph Jennings
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, right and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi wave during the ground breaking ceremony for high speed rail project in Ahmadabad, India, Sept. 14, 2017.

TAIPEI, TAIWAN — India and Japan, anxious to keep Asia’s dominant power Beijing in check, may send patrols into the contested South China Sea or sell arms to rival states following a pair of high-level meetings this month, experts say.
Both Asian countries could sell or donate more weapons to China’s rival maritime claimants, such as Vietnam, so they can build a defense against Beijing.

Japan may also use coast guard or naval ships to patrol the sea to show it’s open despite China’s claim to some 90 percent of it.
India will probably continue joint exploration with Vietnam for oil and gas under the 3.5 million-square-kilometer sea, analysts say.
“Delhi and Tokyo have both been stepping up their capacity-building efforts in the region, with Japan focused mainly on providing patrol vessels and training for Southeast Asian states and India selling arms to and training the Vietnamese navy,” said Gregory Poling, director of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative of the American think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Two High-Level Talks in a Week
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe met counterpart Narendra Modi in India Sept. 13-14 to discuss “enhancing maritime security cooperation,” according to a foreign ministry statement from Tokyo.
On Monday their foreign ministers met at the United Nations with U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to talk about freedom of navigation and respect for international law, the Indian external affairs ministry spokesman said.
Analysts understood both discussions to be aimed at China, including its expansion in the contested sea since 2010.
Neither India nor Japan claims the South China Sea, but the two have warily eyed China’s ascent to being the largest economy and military power in Asia. 

And despite the meeting with Tillerson in New York, the U.S. government is seen as preoccupied by the militarization of North Korea.

Arms for China’s Smaller South China Sea Claimants
Japan as well as India could sell more weapons to the four Southeast Asian states whose coastal waters overlap China’s claim to the sea, analysts say.
Japan indicated in January it would give Vietnam six patrol boats to help with maritime security. Vietnam has clashed three times since the 1970s with Chinese vessels. 

In August last year, Japan began giving the Philippines 10 coast guard boats through a soft loan agreement.
India has talked to Vietnam about supplying it BrahMos supersonic cruise missiles, which are co-developed with Russia, among other missiles, leading a state-backed Chinese media outlet earlier this year to accuse India of causing trouble. 

India in September 2016 offered Vietnam a $500 million line of credit to buy defense hardware, including patrol boats.

Sending Patrol Missions into the Disputed Sea
Japan may test China with low-key patrols of the sea, said Le Hong Hiep, research fellow with the ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore. 

In May it sent an Izumo helicopter-carrying warship into the sea for port visits in Southeast Asia en route to joint exercises with the United States.
“What they have done is they send a ship to Gulf of Aden and on the way back they do kind of patrol in the South China Sea and do port calls to Vietnam, et cetera,” Le said. 

“But they do not intentionally design any kind of (freedom of navigation) program in the South China Sea as it may provoke China.
“But in the future I’m not sure, because Japan obviously has some interest in containing China’s ambitions in the South China Sea as well,” he said.
Patrols would show the sea, also packed with fisheries, is open to other countries despite Beijing’s claim of sovereignty to the waterway off its south coast. 

China has strengthened control and angered rival claimants by using landfill to build artificial islands ready for combat aircraft and radar systems.
Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines claim all or part of the same sea.
India and Japan might patrol the sea together with coast guard ships, said Andrew Yang, secretary-general of the Chinese Council of Advanced Policy Studies think tank in Taiwan. 

They would occasionally send naval vessels, he added.
“Maybe they will increase the momentum of their joint activities in order to demonstrate that Japan and India are closely cooperating in terms of regulating the so-called rule-based behavior in the South China Sea and the region,” Yang said.

India’s Overtures in Southeast Asia
India, as part of a fast-growing trade and investment relationship with Vietnam, can further assert itself in the South China Sea by working with Vietnamese firms on exploration for oil and gas, Le said.
For the past three years, the overseas subsidiary of India’s government-run ONGC has worked with PetroVietnam Exploration Production Corporation to search for oil and gas in the South China Sea. That cooperation helps Vietnam improve its "bargaining power" with China, Le said.
Since losing a world arbitration court verdict over its claim to the South China Sea last year, China has sought favor with Southeast Asian countries through economic aid and investment. 

Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines are accepting China’s overtures -- along with the same from other major nations.
The Philippines, for example, welcomes Japanese aid because the public and the China-friendly government have long trusted Tokyo, said Maria Ela Atienza, political science professor at University of the Philippines Diliman. 

Filipinos know less about India, she said, but Japan could bridge the gap.
“At least people are not so aware of possible positive relations with India,” Atienza said. 

“But if it’s an alliance, maybe if Japan can vouch for India, perhaps that can build confidence in terms of the partnership.”

Race War

Racist video from China's official press agency mocks Indians and insulted Prime Minister Narendra Modi

By Nyshka Chandran 

A major state-run Chinese media outlet uploaded a video containing derogatory depictions of Indians in what could be the latest flashpoint amid escalating tensions between Beijing and New Delhi.

A Xinhua video released on August 16, 2017 about the India-China border standoff in the Himalayas.
Late on Wednesday, Xinhua — widely seen as a mouthpiece for the ruling Communist Party — released an English-language video about ongoing border clashes between Indian and Chinese troops near a tri-junction area that borders Bhutan, India and Tibet, which is claimed and occupied by China.
The video, called "Seven Sins of India," showed a Chinese male speaking in an Indian accent, sporting a turban and fake facial hair in an apparent representation of a Sikh man.
In portraying seven examples of alleged mistakes made by New Delhi in the border standoff, the video mocked India's concern about Chinese road construction in the disputed zone, which it likened to a man "building a path in his garden."
The video called Prime Minister Narendra Modi "asleep," "thick-skinned" and compared New Delhi's actions in the border area to "a robber who had just broken into your house and refused to leave."
It also referred to India's defense of Bhutan as a "hijack" of its smaller neighbor.
Aside from land skirmishes, bilateral ties between the two Asian giants are also weighed down by maritime tensions in the Indian Ocean.

Chinese Aggressions

Vietnam And India To Spoil China's South China Sea Ambitions
By Panos Mourdoukoutas

Vietnam and India are teaming up to tame China’s ambitions to control the South China Sea and the riches that are hidden beneath.
Early this week, Vietnam granted Indian oil firm ONGC Videsh a two-year extension to explore oil block 128, according to a Reuters report.
China considers the South China Sea its own sea, and is building artificial islands, defying international tribunal rulings – including one favoring the Philippines. 

While Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte isn't prepared to stop Beijing, Vietnam – which also claims parts of the waterway – seems to be.
Vietnam’s and India’s challenge to China comes at a time when tensions between New Delhi and Beijing have flared on several fronts. 

Like the Doklam area of Sikkim, where India has been trying to block China’s efforts to build a road, and where in reply Beijing has warned New Delhi that it is risking to suffer "greater losses" than 1962.
Then there’s the Pakistani regions claimed by India and crossed by the China Pacific Economic Corridor (CPEC). 

And the Malacca Straits, where India sent warships recently -- most of China's energy supplies and trade passes through this waterway.
Meanwhile, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been traveling around the globe to enlist old and new friends and allies to New Delhi’s cause.
So far, financial markets in the region do not seem that concerned, at least for now, focusing on the economic fundamentals rather than the geopolitics of the region. 

But things may change as the US Navy and Air Force have stepped up their presence in the region, drawing angry protests from Beijing.

With 'F**k China Month,' Trump Transformed America’s Foreign Policy in Just Four Days

The new American president ended decades of Washington’s sucking up to China and in the process saved America’s 63-year-old alliance with South Korea and boxed in North Korea.

By GORDON G. CHANG

HONG KONG —“I am,” said Moon Jae-in on Thursday, “in complete sympathy with President Trump’s diplomacy of strong power.”
Strong power indeed. 

So strong that Moon, the newly elected South Korean president who disagrees with Trump on most everything, unexpectedly fell into line with the American leader.
The Thursday and Friday meetings between Trump and Moon cap one of the most consequential—and successful—weeks for U.S. foreign policy in recent memory. 

All it took was four days for Trump to discard two—and maybe four—decades of Washington’s settled China policy. 

By doing so, it looks like he saved his country’s six-decade-old alliance with South Korea, which was in danger of coming under China’s—and North Korea’s—sway.
And by preserving unity with Seoul, Trump, at least for the moment, narrowed the options of North Korean supremo Kim Jong Un, limiting the possibility of his nuclear adventurism.
The momentous week began with the visit of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the White House, marked by three bear hugs between the pair and the warmest of welcomes. 

Washington observers had been concerned that current trade and immigration irritants would derail the approach set by the Bush and Obama administrations to fortify links between the world’s most populous democracy and its most powerful one, but Trump kept ties on track. 

“The relationship between India and the United States has never been stronger, has never been better,” the American leader said, accurately characterizing matters.
The word “China” did not pass the lips of either the American president or the Indian prime minister in their post-meeting remarks Monday, but it was clear both saw in the other the means to contain an increasingly aggressive Chinese state.
Doubts about the significance of Monday’s meeting were dispelled the following three days. 

Tuesday, the State Department dropped China to the worst ranking—Tier 3—in its annual Trafficking in Persons report after not giving the country another waiver. 

Among other things, State cited China’s use of forced labor from North Korea.
And then came two blasts Thursday. 

First, the Treasury Department designated Bank of Dandong, a Chinese bank, a “primary money laundering concern” pursuant to the Patriot Act. 

The U.S. charged that the bank has been handling, in violation of American law, money for North Korea’s ballistic missile and weapons of mass destruction programs.
This was not the first time Treasury severed a Chinese financial institution from the global financial system—it cut off Bank of Kunlun in July 2012 for evading Iran-related rules—but it was, as sanctions expert Joshua Stanton told The Daily Beast, “an important first step, one that will send a clear message to the Chinese banks that have long laundered North Korea’s money and aided its proliferation.”
Moreover, Treasury on Thursday sanctioned a Chinese company, Dalian Global Unity Shipping Co., and two Chinese individuals, freezing their assets and prohibiting U.S. persons from dealing with them.
Second, the Trump administration on Thursday notified Congress of a proposed $1.42 billion sale of arms to Taiwan, the self-governing island Beijing’s claims as its 34th province. 

The White House, not wanting to upset Chinese officials, had sat on the package, which the Obama administration had prepared in its final months.
Beijing was “outraged” over the arms sale and angered over the Patriot Act designation, but the administration, according to various reports, did not care. 

As one observer told the Washington insider Nelson Report at the end of last week, “word on the street” is that the White House “has called this ‘F--- China Month.’ ”
The new attitude toward China is bound to last more than a month as the president has, in the course of four days, clearly thrown out two decades of American policy that had placed a higher priority on integrating China into the international system than disarming North Korea. 

Moreover, it looks like he has also started a dynamic that will lead to the reversal of four decades of attempts to place the promotion of friendly relations with Beijing over the stout defense of immediate American interests.
Yet whether Trump abandoned four or just two decades of China policy last week, he most certainly rescued the 63-year-old mutual defense treaty with the Republic of Korea. 

There was great concern that President Moon, a leftist, was going to walk away from the U.S. during his meetings with Trump.
The South Korean had spent the first days of his presidency trying to reorient Seoul away from Washington and toward the other Korea. 

Moreover, Moon and his aides have been saying things inconsistent with the maintenance of the alliance, and many in the Seoul and Washington policy circles were concerned he was heading to the American capital to have it out with Trump.
After all, his policy toward the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea was inconsistent with that of the American administration. 

While Trump is seeking to deny the Kim regime of the resources to build nukes and missiles, Moon wants to win Pyongyang’s trust by providing essentially unconditional aid and assistance and resuming investment.
Moon did not have a road-to-Damascus conversion while in Washington last week—his “progressive” views on North Korea have been baked-in for decades—but he appears to have been impressed by Trump’s determination, hence his surprising comment on the American “diplomacy of strong power” and his unexpected criticism of prior U.S. presidents for not acting resolutely.
No recent U.S. president has appeared willing to oppose the Chinese, so leaders in Asia have generally decided to “bandwagon” with Beijing. 

Trump showed last week he was not particularly fearful of crossing China.
So it looks like Trump’s moves against China last week, immediately preceding Moon’s two days of meetings with the American leader, convinced the South Korean that it was not in his interest to stand in opposition to the current occupant of the White House. 

In short, Trump, by acting decisively against Beijing, boxed in Moon.
The preservation of U.S.-South Korean unity should have two good effects. 

First, it should take some of the heat off Seoul, which has been the subject of unrelenting pressure from Beijing. 

Chinese leaders for months have been upset that Moon’s predecessor, Park Geun-hye, agreed to the deployment of Lockheed Martin’s Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system on South Korean soil.
Chinese leaders, as a result, imposed unofficial sanctions on the South’s economy to get rid of THAAD, as the missile-defense system is called, and Beijing in recent weeks evidently thought that a rift between Moon and Trump presented a new opportunity to bully the South Korean political establishment.
Second, Kim Jong Un this week surely sees less of an opening to exploit differences between the two historic allies. 

And this means, as a practical matter, that he will be far more cautious with moves to destabilize his neighbor to the south and the broader region. 

The Kim family has always tried to drive wedges between Seoul and Washington, and Pyongyang has been restrained when it has viewed the alliance as strong.
For now, the alliance does look strong, and that is no small achievement for President Donald John Trump.
The impulsive Trump is fully capable of undoing his great week in Korean diplomacy, but if he stays the course he will reorient American foreign policy in ways history will remember—and perhaps he will create lasting peace on the long-troubled peninsula.

South China Sea: Modi, Not Duterte, Is China's Problem

By Panos Mourdoukoutas

Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte’s foreign policy flip-flops aren’t a big threat to China’s ambitions to write the navigation rules for the South China Sea. 

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s high profile diplomacy is, something investors should keep a close eye on, as it complicates the geopolitical risks in the region.
India doesn't border the South China Sea. 

But it has very much been involved in the ongoing disputes between China on the one side, and the US and its allies. 

“We are already working together to address the existing and emerging strategic and security challenges that affect both our nations—in Afghanistan, West Asia, the large maritime space of the Indo-Pacific, the new and unanticipated threats in cyberspace,” stated Modi in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece published on the day he made his official visit in the White House.
“We also share an interest in ensuring that sea lanes—critical lifelines of trade and energy—remain secure and open to all.”
Apparently, India is siding openly with Washington on freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, something China is disputing. 

Beijing considers that body of water its own sea.
This isn’t the first time Modi meddles with South China Sea disputes. 

Last October he didn’t miss the chance to bring up an international arbitration ruling, which found that China has no historic title over the waters.
That was during his visits to Singapore and Vietnam, trying to revive an allied front against China’s ambitions, according to a China Topix report.
India’s high diplomacy on South China Sea disputes has very little to do with the dispute per se and plenty to do with China’s unofficial agenda to encircle India through Pakistan and Sri Lanka, by pursuing massive infrastructure projects – like The China Pakistan Economic Corridor(CPEC) in Pakistan, and the building and modernizing of ports in both Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
Then there are a couple of Chinese foreign policies that have irritated India. 

Like Beijing’s open support for Pakistan in the India-Pakistan Kashmir standoff, as evidenced by statements by China’s senior officials last year.
"We support Pakistan, and we will speak for Pakistan in every forum. We attach great importance to Pakistan's position on Kashmir," Li Keqiang told his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif during a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the ongoing 71st session of United Nations General Assembly in New York, as quoted in Pakistan Today.
Then there’s China’s refusal to support India’s bid to join the Nuclear Supplier Group (NSG). Officially, Beijing claims that India doesn’t satisfy the conditions for joining the elite group. 

But the real reason is to be found elsewhere. 

China wants to punish New Delhi for growing closer to US in recent years, serving Washington’s policy to contain China. 

“US backing adds the biggest impetus to India’s ambition,” stated a Global Times editorial, back in June. 

“By cozying up to India, Washington’s India policy actually serves the purpose of containing China.
The US is not the whole world. Its endorsement does not mean India has won the backing of the world. This basic fact, however, has been ignored by India.”
So, India must pay a price for ignoring China. 

But China cannot ignore India either, as it can amass enough support to spoil Beijing’s’ South China Sea and Indian Ocean ambitions.
That’s why China should keep a close eye on Modi rather than Duterte.

Hurting the Feelings of the Chinese Dictators

India to host Dalai Lama in disputed territory
By Sanjeev Miglani and Tommy Wilkes | NEW DELHI

Tibet's exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama wipes his face during an international conference of Tibet support groups in Brussels, Belgium, September 8, 2016. 

Tibet's exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama puts a towel on his head during a news conference in Paris, France, September 13, 2016.

Tibet's exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama is seen at the Arcimboldi theater before receiving honorary citizenship of the city of Milan, in Milan, Italy October 20, 2016. 

Indian federal government representatives will meet the Dalai Lama when he visits Arunachal Pradesh, officials said, despite a warning from Beijing that it would damage ties.
India says the Tibetan spiritual leader will make a religious trip to Arunachal Pradesh next month, and as a secular democracy it would not stop him from traveling to any part of the country.
China claims the state in the eastern Himalayas as "South Tibet", and has denounced foreign and even Indian leaders' visits to the region as attempts to bolster New Delhi's territorial claims.
A trip by the Dalai Lama, whom the Chinese regard as a dangerous "separatist", would ratchet up tensions at a time when New Delhi is at odds with China on strategic and security issues and unnerved by Beijing's growing ties with arch-rival Pakistan.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's administration is raising its public engagement with the Tibetan leader, a change from earlier governments' reluctance to anger Beijing by sharing a public platform with him.
"It's a behavioral change you are seeing. India is more assertive," junior home minister Kiren Rijiju told Reuters in an interview.
Rijiju, who is from Arunachal and is Modi's point man on Tibetan issues, said he would meet the Dalai Lama, who is visiting the Buddhist Tawang monastery after an eight-year interval.
"He is going there as a religious leader, there is no reason to stop him. His devotees are demanding he should come, what harm can he do? He is a lama."
The Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Friday the Dalai Lama's trip would cause serious damage to India-China ties.

CHINA INVESTING NEARBY
Visits of the Dalai Lama are initiated months, if not years in advance, and approval for the April 4-13 trip predates recent disagreements between the neighbors.
But the decision to go ahead at a time of strained relations signals Modi's readiness to use diplomatic tools at a time when China's economic and political clout across South Asia is growing.
China is helping to fund a new trade corridor across India's neighbor and arch-foe Pakistan, and has also invested in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, raising fears of strategic encirclement.
Last month a Taiwanese parliamentary delegation visited Delhi, angering Beijing, which regards Taiwan as an integral part of China.
In December, President Pranab Mukherjee hosted the Dalai Lama at his official residence with other Nobel prize winners, the first public meeting with an Indian head of state in 60 years.
Some officials said India's approach to the Tibetan issue remained cautious, reflecting a gradual evolution in policy rather than a sudden shift, and Modi appears reluctant to go too far for fear of upsetting its large northern neighbor.
India's foreign secretary, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, was in Beijing last week on a visit that analysts said was aimed at stabilizing relations between the world's most populous countries.

TANGIBLE SHIFT
That said, Modi's desire to pursue a more assertive foreign policy since his election in 2014 was quickly felt in contacts with China.
At one bilateral meeting early in his tenure, Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj asked her Chinese counterpart whether Beijing had a "one India" policy, according to a source familiar with India-China talks, a pointed reference to Beijing's demand that countries recognize its "one China" policy.
"One India" would imply that China recognize India's claims to Kashmir, contested by Pakistan, as well as border regions like Arunachal Pradesh.
India's hosting of the Dalai Lama since he fled to India in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule has long irritated Beijing. 

But government ministers often shied away from regular public meetings with the Buddhist monk.
"These meetings were happening before. Now it is public," Lobsang Sangay, head of the Tibetan government-in-exile based in the Indian town of Dharamsala, said in an interview.
"I notice a tangible shift. With all the Chinese investments in all the neighboring countries, that has generated debate within India," he said.
The chief minister of Arunachal Pradesh, a member of Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party, met the Dalai Lama in New Delhi in October and officially invited him to visit the state.
On the Dalai Lama's last visit in 2009, the state's chief minister met him. 

This time he will be joined by federal minister Rijiju, a move the Chinese may see as giving the trip an official imprimatur.
New Delhi has been hurt by China's refusal to let it join the Nuclear Suppliers Group, the global cartel that controls nuclear commerce.
India has also criticized Beijing for stonewalling its request to add the head of a banned Pakistani militant group to a U.N. Security Council blacklist.
Rory Medcalf, Head of the National Security College at the Australian National University, said New Delhi appeared to have been surprised by China's inflexibility since Modi came to power, fuelling distrust in the Indian security establishment.
"India does feel that the cards are stacked against it and that it should retain and play the cards that it does have," he said. 

"The Dalai Lama and Tibetan exile community is clearly one of those cards."

Chinese Peril

Trump may have found his big ally to counterbalance China... and it's not Russia
By Seema Mody 

For all the talk about the mutual admiration between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, it may not be Russia that the U.S. president sees as America's critical new ally.
In his first few days in office, Trump scheduled a phone call with Narendra Modi, making the prime minister of India one of the first leaders he spoke to following his inauguration.
In its official statement Tuesday evening, the White House said that Trump and Modi "discussed opportunities to strengthen the partnership between the United States and India in broad areas such as the economy and defense."
Sources close to the prime minster said the conversation was focused on defense. 

The White House did not respond to a CNBC request for further comment.
A tightening of relations with India is something that was already accelerating under Barack Obama, whose administration saw the world's biggest democracy as a counterbalance to China's rising power. 

Trump may take the relationship further.

Hindu Sena party president, Vishnu Gupta places a garland of flowers on a poster of US President-elect Donald Trump during an event in New Delhi on January 19, 2017.
"Through successive administrations and strong congressional support, the United States has made tremendous investments to expand its relationship with India over the past several years," said Manpreet Anand, former U.S. deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs.
"The Trump administration has an opportunity to double down on those efforts as the strategic interests of our two countries continue to align," Anand told CNBC.
Foreign policy experts say Washington needs India to counter China's growing dominance in Asia and to ensure the United States cements some type of influence in that part of the world.
That task is all the more important now that Trump has withdrawn from the Trans-Pacific Partnership. 

That free trade bloc, which had the United States at its center and which excluded China, would have further buttressed U.S. leadership in Asia. 

With the TPP off the table, however, China immediately has begun to step in to fill the void.
"U.S. strategic thinkers see the rise of India as a natural balancer to China as beneficial to the U.S.," said Sasha Riser-Kositsky, Asia analyst at consulting firm Eurasia Group. 

"Over roughly the last 10 years, U.S. policy has broadly followed this logic, helping strengthen ties with India and offering unprecedented cooperation in terms of civilian nuclear power and co-development and co-production of defense technologies while asking relatively little in exchange."

'Security in the region of South and Central Asia'
Trump's hostile rhetoric toward Muslims plays well with members of India's Hindu majority.

India has a large Muslim minority, and the country has suffered many terror attacks within its borders that New Delhi claims are supported by Muslim-majority Pakistan. 

Modi's political party, called the Bharatiya Janata Party, has its roots in Hindu nationalism.
The White House also said on Tuesday that the two leaders of the largest democracies in the world discussed "security in the region of South and Central Asia."
India rarely gets involved in conflicts that do not directly involve the country, especially given India's perpetual border disputes with Pakistan. 

At the same time, however, during Modi's visit to Washington, which is expected sometime the year, the Indian leader will likely want Trump to take a more aggressive position toward Pakistan and support New Delhi's counterterrorism efforts.
Trump's rhetoric toward India — and Modi himself — has been consistently positive. 

Analysts say the U.S. president could be setting the table for a stronger relationship between Washington and New Delhi in the coming years and could ultimately elevate India's global profile, which has been a key objective for Modi. 

For years India has been living in the shadow of China as the second-best emerging market for investors.
Trump's and Modi's phone conversation on Tuesday came one week ahead of the release of India's annual budget, in which New Delhi is expected to announce further fiscal spending.
Despite economic headwinds and uncertainty around Trump's foreign policy, DoubleLine Capital's Jeffrey Gundlach told Barron's over the weekend that India is an attractive destination for investors. Bombay's Sensex stock index is trading about 6 percent below its all-time closing high.

A possible area of conflict?
One point of contention between Trump and Modi could be immigration. 

India is home to many companies that host technology work for U.S.-based companies — meaning that they employ Indians to do work previously done by American workers.
Companies in India are able to provide highly skilled workers at a discount to what Americans get paid. 

Trump arguably has been more outspoken about protecting U.S. jobs than any other president in decades.
"They also have a major item that needs to be resolved around IT outsourcing," said M.R. Rangaswami, a software executive and founder of Indiaspora, a U.S.-based community for people of Indian descent.
"The president has stated that jobs be kept in the U.S., while India is the place most Fortune 500 companies have direct IT operations or outsourcing partners. Most H-1B visas" — supposedly temporary passes that give skilled foreign nationals the right to work in the United States — "are used for supplementing the U.S. IT workforce by bringing professionals from India," Rangaswami said.
"This could become a messy issue that could cause tension."

Welcome to an emerging Asia: India and China stop feigning friendship while Russia plays all sides

By Harsh V Pant

In a hard place.

After a few timid signs of warming, Sino-Indian relations seem to be headed for the freezer. 

While Beijing refuses to take Indian security concerns seriously, New Delhi may have decided to take the Chinese challenge head-on. 

To complicate matters for India, its erstwhile ally Russia, which has become a close friend of China, is showing interest in establishing closer ties with Pakistan.
The latest move that clenches teeth in India is China refusing to lift a hold on Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar, accused of plotting multiple acts of terrorism against India, and blocking him in December from being listed as a terrorist by the United Nations. 

Since March, China has blocked India’s attempts to put a ban on Azhar, under the sanctions committee of the UN Security Council, despite support from other members of the 15-nation body. 

In response, India has gone beyond expressing dismay by testing its long-range ballistic missiles—Agni IV and Agni V—in recent weeks. 

Pakistan, aided by China, has also jumped in by testing its first sea cruise missile that could be eventually launched from a Pakistani submarine.
China has upped the ante, indicating a willingness to help Pakistan increase the range of its nuclear missiles. 

China’s official mouthpiece, Global Times, contended in an editorial: “if the Western countries accept India as a nuclear country and are indifferent to the nuclear race between India and Pakistan, China will not stand out and stick rigidly to those nuclear rules as necessary. At this time, Pakistan should have those privileges in nuclear development that India has.”

China’s $46 billion investment in the so-called China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, or CPEC, also troubles India as the land corridor extends through the contested territory in Kashmir which India claims as its own. 

India views CPEC as an insidious attempt by China to create new realities on the ground and a brazen breach of India’s sovereignty and territory. 

The Chinese media have suggested that India should join CPEC to “boost its export and slash its trade deficit with China” and “the northern part of India bordering Pakistan and Jammu & Kashmir will gain more economic growth momentum.”
New Delhi has questioned if China would accept an identical situation in Tibet or Taiwan, or if this is a new phase in Chinese policy with China accepting Pakistan’s claims as opposed to the previous stance of viewing Kashmir as disputed territory.

Faced with an intransigent China, India under the centre-right government led by Narendra Modi is busy reevaluating its China policy. 

Modi’s initial outreach to China soon after coming to office in May 2014 failed to produce any substantive outcome and he has since decided to take a more hard-nosed approach. 

New Delhi has strengthened partnerships with like-minded countries, including the United States, Japan, Australia, and Vietnam. 

India has bolstered its capabilities along the troubled border with China and the Indian military is operationally gearing up for a two-front war. 

India is also ramping up its nuclear and conventional deterrence against China by testing long-range missiles, raising a mountain strike corps for the border with China, enhancing submarine capabilities, and basing its first squadron of French-made Rafale fighter jets near that border.
More interesting is a significant shift in India’s Tibet policy with the Modi government deciding to bring the issue back into the Sino-Indian bilateral equation. 

India will openly welcome the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s spiritual leader who has lived in exile in India since 1959, at an international conference on Buddhism to be held in Rajgir-Nalanda, Bihar, in March. 

And ignoring Beijing’s protests, the Dalai Lama will also visit the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh which China claims as part of its own territory.
After initially ceding ground to Chinese sensitivities on Tibet and refusing to explicitly acknowledge official interactions with the Dalai Lama, a more public role for the monk is now presented as an essential part of the Indian response to China. 

In the first meeting in decades between a serving Indian head of state and the Dalai Lama, Indian President Pranab Mukherjee hosted the Buddhist leader at the inaugural session of the first Laureates and Leaders for Children Summit, held at the president’s official residence in New Delhi in December.

Pawn for giants: China strives to curb the influence of the Dalai Lama, who lives in India. The religion emerged in India during 5th century BC and has numerous sects.

China has not taken kindly to these moves by India and vehemently opposes any attempt to boost the image or credibility of the Dalai Lama.
China has been relentless in seeking isolation for the Dalai Lama and often succeeds in bullying weaker states to bar the monk. 

After the Dalai Lama’s November visit to the predominantly Buddhist Mongolia, where he is revered as a spiritual leader, the nation incurred China’s wrath and soon apologised, promising that the Dalai Lama would no longer be allowed to enter the country.
But India is not Mongolia. 

There is growing disenchantment with Chinese behaviour in New Delhi. 

Appeasing China by sacrificing the interests of the Tibetan people has not yielded any benefits for India, nor has there been tranquility in the Himalayas in recent decades. 

As China’s aggressiveness has grown, Indian policymakers are no longer content to play by rules set by China. 

Although India has formally acknowledged Tibet as a part of China, there is a new push to support the legitimate rights of the Tibetan people so as to negotiate with China from a position of strength.
This Sino-Indian geopolitical jostling is also being shaped by the broader shift in global and regional strategic equations. 

Delhi long took Russian support for granted. 

Yet, much to India’s discomfiture, China has found a new ally in Russia which is keen to side with it, even as a junior partner, to scuttle western interests. 

Historically sound Indo-Russian ties have become a casualty of this trend and to garner Chinese support for its anti-West posturing, Russia has refrained from supporting Indian positions.
Worried about India’s growing proximity to the United States, Russia is also warming up to Pakistan. 

The two held their first joint military exercise in September and their first bilateral consultation on regional issues in December. 

After officially lifting an arms embargo against Pakistan in 2014, Russia will deliver four Russian-made Mi-35M attack helicopters in 2017 to Pakistan’s military. 

It is also likely that the China-backed CPEC might be merged with the Russia-backed Eurasian Economic Union. 

Jettisoning its traditional antipathy to the Taliban, Russia indicates a readiness to negotiate with the Taliban against the backdrop of the growing threat of the Islamic State in Afghanistan. 

Towards that end, Russia is already working with China and Pakistan, thereby marginalising India in the regional process.
As the Trump administration takes office in Washington on Jan. 20, it will be rushing into headwinds generated by growing Sino-Indian tensions and a budding Sino-Russian entente. 

Trump’s own pro-Russia and anti-China inclinations could further complicate geopolitical alignments in Asia. 

Growing tension in the Indian subcontinent promises to add to the volatility.

Target: Beijing

India successfully tested a nuclear-capable ICBM that can reach Beijing
By Joshua Berlinger

The Agni-V is displayed during the Republic Day parade in New Delhi on January 26, 2013.
Hong Kong -- It's a frightening prospect, India and China going to war.
The countries are home to 2.5 billion people, a long and sometimes disputed border -- which they've fought wars over -- and each have nuclear weapons.
And India announced last month it successfully tested the Agni-V intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), which could deliver a nuke to Beijing.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted the accomplishment "makes every Indian proud."
But some in China see the test as a provocation. 

And provocations can make the region less stable, which can lead to hostilities, says Victor Gao, the director of the China National Association of International Studies.
An Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman responded by telling CNN that its "strategic capabilities are not targeted against any particular country," and that the country abides by its international obligations.
But not everyone shares such a sanguine view of the Sino-Indian relationship.
"Everyone should be interested in and concerned about India's successful ICBM test, inc(luding) China because it's within range of this new missile and because it especially of the major Asian countries understands the dangers of nationalism and its volatility," says Yvonne Chiu, a professor of at Hong Kong University.

'Precisely ambiguous'
India and China both maintain what's called a "no first use" policy as part of their nuclear doctrine.
The policy means exactly what it sounds like -- in the event of a war, the country won't use nuclear weapons unless they're attacked by an enemy using nuclear weapons.
But India's nationalist defense minister, Manohar Parrikar, publicly mused in November whether India should be bound by the "no first use" policy.
"If a written down policy exists, or you take a stand on a nuclear aspect, I think you are truly giving away your strength in nuclear," Parrikar said. 

"Why should I bind myself? I should say I'm a responsible nuclear power and I will not use it irresponsibly."
It's important to note that Parrikar said those were his personal opinions, and that India's nuclear doctrine was not changing.
And he made those comments in November, after tensions with Pakistan were on the rise due to unrest in Kashmir.

Kashmir: A bitter dispute

But Parrikar isn't the only one in India questioning the "no first use" doctrine.
"Nuclear deterrence is a curious thing -- it succeeds when it creates doubts in the mind of the adversary state, and doubt is created in the nuclear realm by being precisely ambiguous about your intentions, your capabilities and about the possibilities of its use," said Bharat Karnad​,​ a professor of national security studies at the Indian Centre for Policy Research.
"We are far too certain about our retaliatory strike certainties. It's not the kind of certainty you'd like your adversaries to believe, primarily because it undermines your own deterrent posture."
It could be all smoke and mirrors -- what better way to publicly sow doubt about your intentions than to publicly muse about changing them, but in private, stay committed to "no first use."​
But any ambiguity doesn't look great from China's position.
What would you do if southern neighbor, which you fought a war against in the 1970s, starts beating nationalist drums and gives mixed messages on whether or not they'll fire a nuke first in a war?

Keeping enemies closer?
Indian Prime Minister Modi has made rapprochement a staple of his China policy since he took office.
Modi and Xi Jinping met early at the start of the Indian leader's premiership in 2014. 

The two sides spoke glowingly of what the countries could accomplish by working together.
Gao, who was Deng Xiapoing's translator, believes Modi has done a good job engaging with China.
But just because trade and diplomatic ties are strengthened doesn't preclude India from trying to catch up to China militarily.
"There are long-standing tensions and ongoing disputes between the two countries, and one possible path to better relations is to come at it from a position of relative strength, particularly if the increased strength in question is both a genuine threat (nuclear capability)," Chiu, the professor at HKU, told CNN in an email.


The elephant in the room
Pakistan is the big wild card.
The country, which boasts its own nuclear arsenal, is India's historic adversary and considered an "all-weather" friend of China.
Those relationships form a double-edged sword, analysts say.
On the one hand, it offers India an excuse for building up its missile systems that doesn't involve China, so "both sides can continue relations without the sense one of them has suddenly been put under undue pressure," Chiu says.

Tensions flare between nuclear neighbors
But it's not clear if China is buying that argument.
Patrick Bratton, an associate professor of national security strategy at the US Army War College, says that contrary to popular beliefs, China, not Pakistan, was the original focus of the Indian nuclear weapons program.
And Pakistan was already in range of India's nuclear-capable missiles before the Agni-V was developed.
The other big concern is that Pakistan sees the Agni-V development as proof it's falling behind in an arms race.
"There are multiple audiences for this missile test and multiple possible targets, and I think India's increased capability will ultimately be more of a concern for Pakistan, since it does not yet have a missile with that range of capacity," says Chiu.
So by trying to level the playing field with China in terms of nuclear deterrence, India could in effect have spurred Pakistan into the arms race.
"That's both the logic and illogic of nuclear deterrence," Chiu says.

Many analysts don't believe the countries would go to war for a host of reasons, the biggest being that both sides are acutely aware of how destructive it could be.
As far as we know, India does not currently keep its warheads and delivery systems -- the missiles and rockets that would be used to launch a nuke at an adversary -- in the same location, ready to use at a moment's notice, Bratton said in an email to CNN.
And though the December missile test of the Agni-V was the fourth successful one, it was only the second time the projectile was launched from a canister.
That likely means India will need to conduct more tests, meaning it could be years before the system is deployed and operational, Bratton said.
"India has been working on developing this capability for a number of decades and it's no surprise for China," he said. 

"This should not be seen as a radical departure in Sino-Indian relations."

Beijing has fallen?