China and India Locked in 'Eyeball-to-Eyeball' Border Standoff
China and India, two nuclear-armed powers with a combined population of 2.7 billion, have been in an “eyeball-to-eyeball” military stand-off over territory in Bhutan, a kingdom in a remote area of the Himalayas, since mid-June.
The flare-up, one of the most serious since China won a border war in 1962, comes as the two rising powers jostle for regional influence.
The current dispute is near a three-way junction between Bhutan, China’s Tibet and India’s Sikkim.
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All this is taking place during a period of tense relations between two rivals competing for influence in the broader South Asia region. Bilateral relations were frosty even before the current border dispute began because New Delhi objects to President Xi Jinping’s “Belt and Road” trade-and-infrastructure initiative.
Part of it traverses the Pakistan-administered part of disputed Kashmir, which India claims as its sovereign territory.
China’s Global Times, raising Kashmir, said “under India’s logic, if the Pakistani government requests, a third country’s army can enter the area disputed by India and Pakistan.”
Read more at:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-24/what-s-the-china-india-border-stand-off-all-about-quicktake-q-a
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