A series of factors, ranging from growing Chinese sense of competition towards India, the perception that the neighbour is getting too close to the United States and Beijing’s domestic politicomilitary compulsions have contributed to the slowing down of Sino-Indian border talks.

Added to these is a perception that China wants to step up its pressures on India on the border in Arunachal Pradesh, where the Tawang monastery is located. It is crucial to Tibetan Buddhists and to the future succession of the Dalai Lama.

Yet another factor is seen in the Chinese insistence that India vacate two bunkers on the border with Bhutan. India is responsible for Bhutan’s security and negotiating the border on Bhutan’s behalf, but China wants to drag in Bhutan directly, say some Indian officials.

At the September 24-26 border talks, India and China agreed to resolve their stand-off over the presence of two Indian Army bunkers along the Line of Actual Control in the Thagla ridge area of Arunachal Pradesh through diplomatic means.

Indian official sources played down the implications of the alleged Chinese troops’ intrusion into Bhutan, whose security is handled by India.They said it appeared to be a ploy to get Bhutan to negotiate a border settlement.

“There probably has been an intrusion in Bhutan and we are still checking it out. As for intrusion in the rest of the border with India [including Sikkim] that is not true. Agreed there are differences of perception of the Line of Actual Control at certain places but we have mechanisms to discuss them. It is very easy to say they have intruded,” said the sources.

“We are talking to both and assessing what is the actual situation [on Bhutan’s border with China]. The Chinese have been known to do it at a certain period of the year. It is probably part of their negotiating strategy,” the officials told The Hindu.

Both India and China know the areas where they lay claim for the same place. For a number of years now, the responses of both sides have fallen into a certain pattern. A patrol from one side goes to the disputed area when it is sure the other side is not around and leaves ‘tell tale’ marks such as cigarette packets and eatables. The other side does the same — removes the signs and places their own ‘tell tale’ signs. But there has been no confrontation.

On the issue of Indian bunkers at the Thagla ridge, the sources said a Chinese official had come over and asked the Indian troops to remove them but they refused.

A couple of Chinese officials turned up after a few days and said the issue could be discussed diplomatically. “That happened about 45 days ago. Since then we have yet to hear from them. In the first case it was probably a local official who exceeded his authority,” the officials said.

It is a moot point whether the “Bhutan factor” has contributed to the slowing down of the border talks. But both sides have broadly agreed that there has been no breakthrough in the yet another “useful and positive” round of negotiations held on September 24-26.

It is also agreed that while they may be cooperating and competing in matters of trade and other issues, a settlement of the border cannot happen for a long time for a number of factors.

Talks for a settlement have now gone on for more than a quarter of a century (since 1981, to be precise) -- with a “big push” given to them by Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s visit to China in 1988, the second one by Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s sojourn in Beijing in 2003 and a third one by Manmohan Singh’s talks with Premier Wen Jiabao in 2005 and President Hu Jintao in 2006.

Yet the slowdown has taken place. As a result, the 4,056-kilometer (2,520 miles) frontier between India and China, one of the longest interstate borders in the world, remains the only one of China’s land borders not defined, let alone demarcated, on maps or delineated on the ground. While Indians doubt China’s sincerity in border negotiations, Chinese question India’s leaders’ will and capacity to settle the dispute in a “give-and-take” spirit, says Dr Mohan Malik in Policy and Interest News Report (PINR), a Chicago-based think tank.

Up until 2005, there was a great deal of optimism about a possible breakthrough. Evidence of this came during Prime Minister Vajpayee’s China visit in June 2003 when New Delhi’s readiness to address Chinese concerns on Tibet was matched by Beijing’s willingness to resolve the Sikkim issue by recognizing the trade route through the Nathu La Pass on the China-Sikkim frontier with India and later showing Sikkim as part of India in its maps.

For its part, New Delhi reiterated its stance on the Tibetan Autonomous Region as part of China. This visit also paved the way for border talks to be held through special representatives of the leaders to find an early “political solution” to the boundary question, rather than going only by the legal and historical claims of the two sides. India indicated its willingness to settle for the territorial status quo by giving up claims to the Aksai Chin in Ladakh and hoped China would give up its claims to Arunachal Pradesh in the eastern sector and recognize the McMahon Line just as Beijing had accepted Tibet’s British-drawn boundaries with Afghanistan and Myanmar (formerly known as Burma).

In order to give a new thrust to the ongoing border negotiations, an “Agreement on the Political Parameters and Guiding Principles for the Settlement of the Boundary Question” was signed during Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao’s visit to India in April 2005. The joint statement issued at the end of the visit talked of a “Strategic and Cooperative Partnership” between India and China.

Since then, however, Beijing has upped the ante by demanding major territorial concessions in populated areas of Arunachal Pradesh on terms that many in New Delhi see as “humiliating and non-negotiable.” Ties between China and India were strained even further in May 2007 when the Chinese government refused a visa to an Indian official from disputed Arunachal Pradesh to visit China, and the Indian government’s invitation soon thereafter to Taiwan’s opposition Kuomintang (K.M.T.) party presidential candidate, Ma Yingjeou, to visit India in June 2007 to hold talks with senior Indian officials. China voiced its opposition to Ma’s visit and called on India to abide by the “One China policy.”

Thereafter came media reports of the People’s Liberation Army (P.L.A.) encroachments across the Line of Actual Control (L.A.C.) and Chinese small arms supplies to insurgents in India’s volatile northeast via Bangladesh and Myanmar. Then, in August 2007, Beijing demanded the removal of two old Indian Army bunkers near the tri-junction of Sikkim, Bhutan and Tibet, claiming that these were located on their territory. This move raised questions about China’s declared policy of treating Sikkim as part of Indian territory. Not surprisingly, China’s increasing assertiveness over the disputed borders has led to a rapid meltdown in the Sino-Indian border talks and a “mini-Cold War” has quietly taken hold at the diplomatic level during the past two years, despite public protestations of amity. Some observers argue that Hu Jintao’s desire to control the choice of the next Dalai Lama has led to pressuring India to concede access to the Tawang Monastery, which is crucial to this choice. The deterioration in Sino-Indian relations under Hu, however, should not have come as a surprise given his reputation as a hardliner over Tibet. In this context, the rapid pace development of road, rail and military infrastructure in Tibet close to its borders with India and Nepal is seen as preempting any possible destabilization of Tibet post-Dalai Lama.

Others, however, do not see any sinister designs in western China’s development. Instead, they attribute the recent downturn in Sino-Indian relations more to domestic power struggles within the Chinese Communist Party (C.C.P.) than to the Dalai Lama succession issue or to Chinese concerns about India’s growing tilt toward the United States. While there may be an element of truth in all these arguments, there are other more fundamental reasons behind the recent chill in Sino-Indian relations, says Malik. Apparently, the strategic consequences of India’s economic resurgence coupled with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s offer in March 2005 to “help make India a major world power in the 21st century” have greatly bothered the Chinese. This offer, and the long-term India-U.S. defense cooperation framework and the July 2005 U.S.-India nuclear energy deal that followed soon after, have been compared by Chinese strategic analysts to “the strategic tilt” toward China executed by former U.S. President Richard Nixon in 1971 to contain the common Soviet threat. Claiming that these developments have “destabilizing” and “negative implications” for their country’s future, China’s India-watchers have started warning their government that Beijing “should not take India lightly any longer.” An internal study on India undertaken in mid-2005 (with inputs from China’s South Asia watchers such as Cheng Ruisheng, Ma Jiali, Sun Shihai, Rong Ying, Shen Dingli, among others) at the behest of the Chinese leadership’s “Foreign Affairs Cell” recommended that Beijing take all measures to maintain its current strategic leverage (in terms of territory, membership of the exclusive Permanent Five and Nuclear Five clubs); diplomatic advantages (special relationships, membership of regional and international organizations); and economic lead over India.

Although the evidence is inconclusive, the most plausible deduction is that this internal reassessment of India lies behind the recent hardening of China’s stance on the territorial dispute and a whole range of other issues in China-India relations.

The Chinese are concerned that the U.S.-India nuclear deal and related agreements would bring about a major shift in the power balance in South Asia that is currently tilted in China’s favor. The recent strengthening of China’s strategic presence in Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Myanmar and overtures to the Maldives should, therefore, be seen against this backdrop.

Despite protestations to the contrary from India and the United States that New Delhi is unwilling and unlikely to play the role of a closely aligned U.S. surrogate such as Japan or Britain, China’s Asia strategy is based upon the premise that maritime powers such as the U.S., Japan, Australia, and India would eventually form an informal quadrilateral alliance to countervail continental China. The fact of the matter is that China and India are locked in a classic security dilemma: one country sees its own actions as self-defensive, but the same actions appear aggressive to the other. India feels the need to take counter-balancing measures and launch certain initiatives to stay independent of China -- such as the “Look East” policy -- which are perceived as challenging and threatening in China. Like China, India is actively seeking to reintegrate its periphery with the framework of regional economic cooperation. Like China, India seeks greater international status and influence commensurate with its growing economic power. However, like any other established status quo great power, says Malik, China wants to ensure that its position remains strong vis-à-vis challenger India for strategic, economic and geopolitical reasons. Through closer strategic ties with India’s neighboring countries, China is warning India not to take any counter-measures to balance Beijing’s growing might.