wolfgang

China has stressed its objection to the Dalai Lama's plan to visit the so-called "Arunachal Pradesh" in November, while India has made it clear that it won't stop the exile from making the visit."We firmly oppose the Dalai Lama visiting the 'so-called Arunachal Pradesh,'" Foreign Ministry spokesperson Jiang Yu told the Global Times Sunday, adding that China holds a persistent stance on "Arunachal Pradesh," which is a part of Chinese territory.


The Dalai Lama intends to travel to "Arunachal Pradesh" in mid-November, after his Taiwan visit earlier this month was met with strong protests.


"There are no restrictions on the Dalai Lama's travel in India," The Hindu newspaper reported, citing Indian officials.


Jiang voiced "strong concern" of the development, and said it "further reveals the Dalai Lama clique's anti-China and separatist essence."


"The Dalai Lama forgets his origins," Zhao Gancheng, director of South Asian studies at the Shanghai Institute for International Studies, told the Global Times. "He acknowledged last year that the city of Tawang in 'Arunachal Pradesh,' where the sixth Dalai Lama was born, as being the territory of India under the agreement between Tibetan and British representatives in 1914. "


"The Chinese government never acknowledged the legitimacy of the MacMohan Line," Zhao said, adding that until the 1950s, the Tibetan government had tax records in "Arunachal Pradesh," a proof that the state is part of China.


According to The Times of India, India's possible decision to let the Dalai Lama go ahead "is certainly a step forward from 2008, when it stopped him from undertaking the same visit, terrified of angering the Chinese."


"India's encouragement of the Dalai Lama's visit betrays its promise to China," Zhao said, adding that India promised to oppose any anti-Chinese activities by the Dalai Lama and Tibetans in India.


"The continuous instigation will not only harm bilateral ties, but also do no good to the settlement of the China-India boundary question," Zhao said.


Indian media repeatedly creates a tense atmosphere in the wake of the 13th China-India Boundary Talks held in early August in New Delhi. China stands ready to work with India in the spirit of mutual understanding, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said.


"The Dalai Lama is ludicrously ignorant of his strength," Zhao said, adding that Dalai's anti-China activities could not change the reality.


Senior officials in the administration of US President Barack Obama held talks yesterday with "the premier of the Tibetan government in exile," ahead of a planned meeting with the Dalai Lama today, according to AFP.


The Dalai Lama is expected to return to the US next month, when he hopes to meet with Obama.


"It is up to Obama," Zhao said, adding that the possible meeting between Obama and the Dalai Lama, which attacks China's core benefits, would damage China-US ties.


Global Times

The Dalai Lama is flaring up trouble even within the Chinese territory, first in Taiwan, then in China's South Tibetan areas, which has fully revealed his iron-clad separatist nature. Emboldened by the U.S., Indian government has  repeatedly ventured out to provoke China in both physical and verbal forms. More and more Chinese now join in the chorus calling on the Government to take immediate actions and necessary steps to safeguard China's core interests, in face of escalation of the boundary situation, the U.S. tough stance on China's imports, and attempts to split China made desperately by  the hard-line separatists seeking asylum abroad.  It is high time Government stood up for the national common good.

moveman

There is no point reasoning and negotiating with a Hooligan state like India. Even if the U.S. is waiting for a good tussle between China and India and the U.S. will be the third party to benefit from the tussle, as is well-known to any educated Chinese, China still needs first to weigh over the situation and then find the good but immediate timing to fight back. At least, China should let them know it stands ready for the possible war, if India goes any further to harrass China's national interests.

seesaw

Indeed, it is high time China taught India another good lesson reminding them what had come about in 1962.

baransam

At the risk of repeating a cliche, war is the last option. As user named moveman hinted in his/her post, a war between India and China will not help any cause.
On a separate note, as an Indian I am extremely curious about the version of 1962 war that is fed to Chinese population. An internet web link will be highly appreciated.

highlow

The Chinese netizens also remain blind to whatever indian media and Hawks spoonfed and manipulated the Indian public over the 1962 border war. We just know the result----

jimmy67

Dalai Lama trip strains India-China ties......


Twin thorns in the side of India-China relations will get a simultaneous tweak this weekend when the Dalai Lama visits a Buddhist region at the heart of a border row between the Asian giants.

Sandwiched between Myanmar, the kingdom of Bhutan and Tibet, the lush, forested state of Arunachal Pradesh in the Himalayan foothills is governed by India but claimed by China.

Beijing tends to view visits to Arunachal by senior Indian officials as an unnecessary assertion of sovereignty and it protested vigorously over a tour of the region last month by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

A visit there by the Dalai Lama is seen as a double provocation, given China's sensitivity to anything involving the exiled Tibetan leader whom it regards as a "splittist" intent on fomenting separatist unrest in his homeland.

According to Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu, the three-day visit set to begin Sunday "further exposes the anti-China and separatist nature of the Dalai clique".

The mere presence of the Dalai Lama in India, where he has lived for 50 years and set up his government in exile, has been a constant irritation in a bilateral relationship that has struggled to overcome decades of distrust.

China and India fought a brief but bloody war over their Himalayan territories, including Arunachal, in 1962.
The conflict left a festering border dispute which 13 rounds of bilateral talks have failed to resolve.

India's growing economic and diplomatic clout has made it more assertive in dealings with its regional rival and the government has stood firm in the face of increasingly shrill Chinese protests over both the prime minister's and the Dalai Lama's trips to Arunachal.

During a regional summit in Thailand last month, Singh told Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao that India considered the Dalai Lama an "honoured guest" while foreign secretary Nirupama Rao stressed that he was "free to visit any part of our country".

Indian strategic analyst Pre Shankar Jha believes such statements are indicative of the failure of successive Indian governments to understand the depth of Chinese concern over the Tibetan issue in general and the Dalai Lama in particular.

"China has not been able to assimilate Tibet, and blames India for its failure because, by giving the Dalai Lama shelter, it has kept the Tibetan political and cultural identity alive," Jha wrote in the latest issue of the influential Outlook magazine.

India, Jha argued, views the Tibetan exiles here as refugees who must simply be discouraged from anti-China political activity on Indian soil.

"Beijing, however, regards them as a well-knit insurgent group that skillfully mobilises international sympathy and uses the Internet to reach Tibetans within China to foment insurgency," he said.

China has ruled Tibet since 1951 after sending in troops to "liberate" the Himalayan region the previous year.
Opposition to Chinese rule has bubbled over from time to time, most recently in March last year when fierce anti-China protests erupted in Lhasa and spread across the region.

Rahul Roy-Choudhury, who runs the South Asia security program at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, agrees that New Delhi and Beijing approach their common disputes from different angles.

"For India the border issue is much more of a concern, along with trade issues. For China, the greater concern is Tibet," Roy-Choudhury told AFP. "There is no common view on where the priority lies and it's this lack of consensus which is preventing any resolution."

The Dalai Lama, meanwhile, has expressed "surprise" at China's protests over his Arunachal visit and suggested that Beijing was being over-sensitive.

"The Chinese government politicises too much wherever I go," he told reporters on a visit to Japan last week. The Nobel peace laureate has an emotional attachment to Arunachal which provided his point of entry into India when he fled Tibet in 1959 following a failed uprising against Chinese rule.

During his visit, he will give teachings at India's biggest Tibetan monastery in Tawang, which was briefly occupied by Chinese troops in 1962 before they withdrew. (AFP)

jimmy67

Snub it, and leave it alone.  

rahulkm79

this is one of the most disputed political issues in history of both the nations, on one hand it can't be dealt lightly and on the other hand it can't be left alone, isolation from this issue is not in the national interest of both the countries,
on chinese side they have some proof of arunanchal pradesh being part of tibet china, on indian side we never saw arunanchal pradesh as an alien though it is far north eastern state, many of the students from north eastern states go to other indian states for education and jobs,
history shows border states covers the culture of both the sides, as with india and pakistan, china and russia,
border issues should be dealt in close study with the culture and language of the place, it should be openely debated among the people of that place, which is sure will not be completely free from affuent affects of reactionaries.