Although neither China nor India wants a repeat of the 1962 conflict between them, each side is wary enough of the other to see the need to make its military presence felt, even as they try to solidify the political ties between them. The mutual militarisation along their shared border, though, has had a curious result: remote areas long ignored by their respective governments are getting attention they've never had before. The result is that the build-up of infrastructure has opened an economic door, even to the extent of cross-border trade - at least on the local level. New Delhi has been constructing strategic highways and railways in response to China's rapid expansion of defence installations along their disputed border - along with the infrastructure to reach them - over the past two decades. But Beijing insists the new transportation networks are completely civil in nature. It maintains that improving the infrastructure is just part of its effort to boost trade and economic development along its border with India in the remote Himalayan region. But the Indian Defence Ministry sees another angle, saying the more than 58,000 kilometres of road-rail links on the Tibetan Plateau could help the People's Liberation Army mobilise up to 30,000 soldiers at the border in just 20 days, compared with the 90-odd days that would have been needed before. Part of Beijing's rail and road build-up in the region has been the 33.1 billion yuan (HK$39.6 billion) Qinghai-Tibet Railway, the most expensive and the highest railway in the world, which opened in 2006. Plans call for it to eventually extend to border areas with India and Pakistan. What's more, the central government is planning another railway connecting Chengdu , the capital of Sichuan, with Tibet. Construction of the project, projected to cost 104 billion yuan, is expected to start this year and finish in 2015. The PLA could then send thousands of soldiers and their supplies from its Chengdu Military Command, which overseas Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou, Tibet and Chongqing , to Lhasa in just eight hours. 'The orientation of railway projects reflects a country's strategic development direction because military capability can expand wherever they can be built,' said Ni Lexiong, a Shanghai-based military expert. Another example, besides 37 roads linking key passes and military units along the border with India, is a 117-kilometre highway to remote and forbidding Metok county in Tibet, which will be completed this year at a cost of 950 million yuan. The reason the highway project raised eyebrows among the Indian army is that the county of about 10,000 people is on the border of the Indian-controlled state of Arunachal Pradesh, an area of nearly 90,000 square kilometres that China also claims, calling it Southern Tibet, though it lost the territory after the 1962 war. 'It's obviously a strategic highway for the PLA because it doesn't make sense to spend nearly 1 billion yuan to build up a highway in such a lightly populated area,' said Antony Wong Dong, president of the International Military Association in Macau. 'It reminded people of the painful lesson that the PLA learned from its war with India in 1962. It was poor logistics that forced it to withdraw from southern Tibet, which it had occupied.' New Delhi's response involves a plan to build 558 strategic roads totalling nearly 28,000 kilometres along its borders with China and Pakistan by 2030, at a cost of more than US$10 billion, to narrow its military-strength gap with China, according to Indian media. China said India had deliberately moved people into Arunachal Pradesh since 1962, which had brought the state's population to more than 1 million. Beijing proposed in August 2009 that India cede Tawang district - which is part of Arunachal Pradesh - arguing that it is a pilgrimage destination for Tibetans because the sixth Dalai Lama, Tsangyang Gyatso, was born there. New Delhi refused, citing the rule that 'areas with settled population would be excluded from territorial exchanges'. The same year, India also announced that an additional mountain division would be deployed to the area along its border with China, bringing the number of troops there to more than 100,000. Additionally, since early this year the Indian air force has beefed up its deployment at eight important bases near the Chinese border, according to The Wall Street Journal. Indian Sino-India experts said the continuing border defence competition would not harm bilateral ties, as Beijing and New Delhi had the means to manage border affairs. 'However, a Sino-Indian border defence competition may have strategic implications for bilateral ties in the long term,' said D.S.Rajan, director of the Chennai Centre for China Studies. 'Chinese official media continue to criticise India's deployment of additional troops and the establishment of air bases capable of handling advanced fighter aircraft in Arunachal Pradesh, signalling that Beijing's strategic suspicions vis-a-vis New Delhi remain strong. 'The two countries will have a heavy responsibility in the future to avert any crisis that may inadvertently arise as a result of a border military build-up by either side.' While all this posturing has prompted much discussion of the military 'big picture' in the region, Professor Manoranjan Mohanty, chairman of the New Delhi-based Indian Institute of Chinese Studies, pointed out some social benefits the poor and long-neglected communities along both sides of the border have derived from it. 'These border project measures are to be welcomed as much-needed interventions to improve communications, social development and trade, and are some of the many steps needed to integrate Tibet with China's national economy, and the trade and economic development of the whole region with neighbouring countries,' he said. 'As for the implications for the whole of Asia, the infrastructure development in border areas has to be seen in the larger perspective of multiple developments taking place in the region. Both China and India are in the final stages of their negotiations with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations for a free trade agreement and have achieved partial agreements on many specific sectors of trade.' Since Beijing and New Delhi both focused on domestic economic development, Mohanty said he believed the border disputes would be solved through peaceful negotiations, as both were rising as regional and global powers and any conflict between them would have far-reaching consequences. 'Both countries face enormous domestic problems to tackle despite their high rates of economic growth. Their tensions affect the entire neighbourhood,' he said. 'The present trend is in a positive direction of expanding China-India trade, building mutual trust and increasing regional co-operation. There will be a collective effect on the shaping of the global economic and political order.' Rajan said he believed border disputes between the two countries would not escalate into a major confrontation in the near future, but 'China will be reluctant to make any compromise' on the border issue because of its 'core interests'. First-class travel The expected cost of a railway connecting Chengdu and Tibet, in yuan, is: 104b
