74 0 { China’s Quest
sales and training, intelligence cooperation, financing and construction of
dual-use infrastructural projects—were part of the normal panoply of rela-
tions between sovereign states, Beijing insisted. Military and security ties
between China and various SA-IOR countries were purely defensive and did
not threaten India or any other country. India should understand this and
take China’s assurances at face value. To do otherwise was evidence of hostil-
ity toward China, or of influence by a hostile great power, the United States,
which cooked up and peddled ideas of a “China threat” in order to divide and
rule. To question such normal cooperation between China and its SA-IOR
neighbors, after professing a desire for friendship with China, was a manifes-
tation of Indian insincerity, Beijing insisted.^8
India, for its part, watched with trepidation the seemingly inexorable
growth of Chinese influence in the SA-IOR. It sought to counter China’s
advances by opening Indian markets and higher education to SA-IOR coun-
tries, stepping up infrastructure development in and supply of economic
assistance to neighboring countries. Many Indian analysts spoke of China’s
“creeping encirclement.” Historically, India’s profound advantage over China
in the SA-IOR was the tyranny of distance: India was at the center of the
SA-IOR, while China was far away and separated by very difficult terrain.
That traditional Indian geopolitical advantage was now being dissolved by
modern transportation and communications technologies. As high-speed
rail lines and modern highways linked Kunming in Yunnan to Kyaukpyu on
Myanmar’s Bay of Bengal coast or Kashgar in western Xinjiang to Gwadar
on Pakistan’s Baluchi coast, distance becomes less relevant. As had happened
many times in history, the geopolitical significance of advanced transpor-
tation technology was transforming the significance of terrain. China was
becoming a SA-IOR country, much to India’s unease.^9
The territorial conflict between China and India also remained unre-
solved. The Sino-Indian border remained undefined and undemarcated.
China claimed ownership of some 90,000 square kilometers constituting the
Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh. The two sides did not agree where the
line of actual control lay. Except for the middle sector, which was the least
important, as of 2014 the two sides had not exchanged maps showing where
each believed the LOC actually was. What India deemed to be Chinese incur-
sions into the Indian side of the LAC typically occurred scores of times a year,
sometimes more. The frequency and depth of penetration of these incursions
seemed, in the Indian view, to be proportional to levels of Chinese displea-
sure with India. Across the Himalayan frontier in Tibet, India saw steadily
improving PLA capabilities. The opening in 2006 of a high-speed rail line
from Xining in Qinghai to Lhasa in Tibet caused Indian military planners to
reduce from ninety to twenty days the estimated time it would take China to
mobilize two divisions on India’s northeastern borders. New Delhi responded
by strengthening its defenses. In the early 2010s, India deployed its most