If this is the attitude of small-time career diplomats, one can well understand the mental framework of the Chinese leadership towards India. Despite this, the Manmohan Singh government still stands accused by the Left — some of whose leaders had sided openly and unapologetically with China over 1962 — of collaborating with Americans to encircle China. In fact, the political debate over the Indo-US nuclear deal is about how India is either being used by America or China or Russia, as if India is not confident enough to act independently in its own interest.

The overall trade China has with the SAARC nations stands at $9 billion; India’s with SAARC countries comes second with $7 billion. China has an overall trade of $160 billion with ASEAN countries, as compared to India’s $30 billion. Yet it is New Delhi that is seen to be building economic leverage in an effort to encircle Beijing and not the other way round.

The India-China Special Representative dialogue on the boundary dispute is a work in progress, Chinese incursions into the Indian side of the LAC have become frequent and the exercise to exchange the western sector maps has been put on the back-burner. In the meantime, China has tripled its military deployment capability in Tibet through the new railroad to Lhasa and road infrastructure to the Indian border. The only positive out of this is that India-China trade now stands at over $20 billion. It is time that New Delhi got out of its defensive mindset and built up infrastructure and capability to deal with any situation that may possibly be thrown up by China. A step in this direction would be to identify the vital areas on the Indian side of the LAC, and build presence and capability through road infrastructure and revival of the advanced landing grounds that are lying in disuse since the border conflict.

... contd.