Seasoned China-watchers are not jumping with joy ahead of the much-hyped reopening of the famed Silk Road for trade and commerce which was sealed off during the brief but bloody Indian-Chinese war of 1962.
Beijing and New Delhi announced last week that in June trade vehicles will start trundling again through the 4.5km-high Nathu La pass on the Himalayan border between India's Sikkim state and China's Tibet region.
A trial run is slated for this Friday between Renqinggan, 16km from Nathu La in Tibet, and Sikkim's Chhanggu, 10km from the border, which have been designated as trading posts by the two countries, ahead of the official reopening in mid-June.
But security and strategic affairs experts have warned that India's counter-intelligence costs will rise dramatically after the reopening, as Nathu La is close to the insurgency-wracked northeastern region where Beijing has been allegedly fanning revolts for decades.
'Chinese spies and agents on subversive missions will find it easier to slip in through Nathu La,' said Maloy Krishna Dhar, a retired joint director of India's Intelligence Bureau. 'India is inviting trouble. The Chinese will stoke insurgency, monitor troop deployment and movement along the disputed border and gain access to vital installations like refineries and highly sensitive warfare training centres,' added the China specialist.
Another security expert, Professor Brahma Chellaney from New Delhi's Centre for Policy Research, said: 'At one level, India and China are cosying up to each other and talking of the 21st century as an Asian century. But the grim reality which New Delhi is inexplicably trying to shrug off is that both the Communist Party of China and People's Liberation Army are implacably hostile to India beneath the veneer of bonhomie.'
