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ShareIn some cases, this has even led to loose, irresponsible talk of a war: that's something that both countries can ill-afford, given that for all their blustery talk of being 'emerging superpowers', they are both still developing economies with huge numbers of their populations living in poverty.
Indicatively, China's per capita GDP, adjusted for purchasing power parity, puts it even lower down the order than Angola and El Salvador; India fares even worse, figuring even lower than Cape Verde and the Republic of Congo.
True, these rankings underplay China's and India's other strengths, but they nevertheless provide a sobering statistical backdrop to the testosterone-driven swagger that's increasingly manifest on both sides of the Himalayas.
It's fair to say that despite the repeated border incursions -- and without prejudice to the gravity of such incidents -- the more real threat to India's hold on Arunachal Pradesh (over which China claims sovereignty) may come not from the battlefield, but from elsewhere.
A better understanding of China's game plan may be gleaned from The Art of War, the ancient Chinese treatise on military strategy. Supreme excellence, says Sun Tzu in the classic, is in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting. And all warfare, he records, is based on deception.
That's precisely how the Chinese plan is unfolding. Alongside the border incursions, Chinese strategists have been working rather effectively to "internationalise" the Arunachal Pradesh issue and project it as "disputed territory".
For instance, China recently raised formal objections at the ADB to a $60 million loan to fund irrigation projects in Arunachal Pradesh. And although the loan was later approved, China is still looking to introduce into the loan framework document an ADB "disclaimer" on the political status of Arunachal Pradesh, which would symbolise a tacit acknowledgement that it was "disputed territory".
More recently, China has articulated its objection to the Dalai Lama's planned visit to Arunachal Pradesh. This echoes China's objection to the Tibetan spiritual leader's recent visit to Taiwan, the independent island-republic, over which too China claims sovereignty.
Taiwan's experience is illustrative of China's Sun Tzu strategy at work -- and of what India can expect to face in Arunachal. Taiwan represented China at the UN from the time the international body was founded in 1945; but it lost that seat in 1971, as a direct consequence of Sino-US entente following US President Richard Nixon's historic visit to Mao Zedong's China and American adherence to a 'one China' policy.
Today, although Taiwan enjoys de facto independence, it doesn't have membership at the UN or other international organisations (because of Chinese objections); it has formal diplomatic relations with only 20-plus tinpot little countries, and participates in the Olympics not as Taiwan but as Chinese Taipei. In other words, China brought about the international 'isolation' of Taiwan with its mere 'projection of perceived power' -- without having to fire a single missile.
As China leverages its increasing economic clout, including in international financial institutions like the World Bank and the ADB, that's the kind of 'isolationist' pressure that India will face vis-à-vis Arunachal Pradesh.
Strong fences, of course, make for good neighbours, but fortifications along the border, important as they are, are no defence against diplomatic and political pressures, which today are a more real threat to India's hold on Arunachal Pradesh. It isn't just a conventional war that India needs to be wary of, but a Sun Tzu-esque 'war minus the shooting'.
