The Editorial Analysis: The Chinese challenge uncovers India’s fragilities

India China relations: Relevance

• GS 2: India and its neighborhood- relations.

Recent issues in India China relations

• China has recently renamed 15 places in Arunachal Pradesh, following the six it had done in 2017.
• Beijing’s new land border law: It provides the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) with full responsibility to take steps against invasion, encroachment, infiltration, provocation” and safeguard Chinese territory.
• The law supports — and mutually reinforces — the construction of 628 Xiaokang border villages by China along its disputed border with India.
• As per available satellite imagery, at least two of border villages have been constructed on the Indian side of the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Arunachal Pradesh.
• These villages would come under the jurisdiction of Beijing when the principle of ‘settled areas’ is invoked to resolve the border dispute in the future.
• Recently, Political Counsellor of the Chinese Embassy, wrote a letter to Indian Members of Parliament for attending a meet organised by the Tibetan government-in-exile.
• QUAD—a regional grouping involving Australia, India, Japan and the U.S.—remained a non-military grouping while Australia, the United Kingdom and the U.S. AUKUS, a military pact.
• The unplanned withdrawal of forces from Afghanistan has also made India cautious of US tactics in case border issue with China arises in future.
• The two countries have an increasingly lopsided trade relationship driven by Indian dependency on Chinese manufacturing, thus widening the trade deficit.

India China relations: Way forward

• Informal summits like Wuhan Summit and Xiamen Declaration should not be halted.
• Both India and China represent the voice of developing nations at global platforms like WTO and G20.
• There should be increased P2P and cultural exchanges.
• The founder and mentor of Singapore has famously said that China and India are twin engines of Asian aircraft which together can lift the continent as a whole on the new trajectory of growth.

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