By Bhaskar Roy
Recent provocations by China in the India-China bilateral relations calls for a review of Beijing's strategic planning in a much larger context.
China is now trying down play their refusal of visa to Lt. Gen. Jaswal, GOC Northern Command, as a minor issue with their Defense Ministry, stating that they pay 'serious' attention to India-China military relations. But the 'minor issue' is that China views Jammu and Kashmir as a disputed territory and hence does not want to deal with it.
Yet, China signed an agreement with Pakistan in 1963 by which Islamabad ceded over 5000 sq. km of Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK) to China. There is increasing infrastructure construction by China in PoK.
And the latest report in The New York Times which says that between 7,000 to 11,000 Chinese soldiers are deployed in the Gilgit and Baltistan area of PoK is certainly not the figment of imagination of the writer Selig S. Harison, whose reputation of checking facts is well known.
The presence of Chinese troops in this sensitive and critical area raises the threat to India's security to a new level.
This new dynamics adopted by China has its roots in its own internal politics including the urge for power projection, big power ambition, Asian leadership, energy security and the internal factional power struggle which may have emerged in a dimension not seen before - the CPC versus the Peoples' Liberation Army (PLA).
This is disturbing news for all of China's neighbours including Pakistan, unless Pakistanis takes pride in being a subservient vassal of China and not a real independent nation.
Image: People's Liberation Army soldiers march during a training for China's 60th anniversary military parade at a military base in Beijing, September 2009. Photograph copyright AP. Unauthorised reproduction prohibited.
Also see: Why Chinese troops in Gilgit should worry India | PM holds meeting to discuss China threat
