CHINA AND INDIA

Q&A - WHAT'S BEHIND INDIA AND CHINA'S DIPLOMATIC SPATS

Sanjeev Miglani

Reuters, September 7, 2010

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Trade between India and China is booming but diplomatic ties have become increasingly fraught over an unsettled border, the disputed Kashmir region and the competing global aspirations of the world's most populous nations.

China is seeking to expand its influence in South Asia and could use India's "soft underbelly" of Kashmir to box it in, a newspaper quoted Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as saying, a rare public criticism of his giant neighbour.

WHAT IS THE LATEST PROVOCATION?

Last month China refused a visa to an Indian military general based in the disputed region of Kashmir, prompting New Delhi to suspend defence ties, a defence source and local media said. Defence relations between the two countries, which fought a brief border war in 1962, are in any case limited to visits by military officials and the occasional, low-level exercises, nowhere near the scale and sophistication of the wargames that India conducts with the United States each year.

Beijing had for decades maintained a low profile on Kashmir, where Indian forces have been trying to quell a 20-year separatist revolt that New Delhi blames on Pakistan. But China signalled a more assertive policy last year when it started issuing different visas for residents of the territory.

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