WebMaster said:
Mukul, always post source of your information when you make certain claims. Don't ask people "i can post likes if you want" that just tells us you will go out and search for the links. Just post the damn thing along with your reply containing whatever you claim. :!:
India, in improving its relations with China, is trying to practice what it preaches to Pakistan: put more contentious issues on the back burner, try to solve easier problems first, while concentrating in the meantime on improving trade ties and people-to-people contacts. This strategy, the Indian leadership feels, will create an atmosphere conducive to solving bigger, more divisive issues, such as the Kashmir dispute with Islamabad.
Pursuing this strategy, during Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's six-day China visit that ended on Friday,
India and China have appointed special envoys to map out a resolution of long-standing border disputes, thus in effect putting this sensitive issue on the back burner, and instead they moved on to iron out their differences on issues such as the mutual recognition of Sikkim and Tibet as inalienable parts of each others' territory. In the meantime, they have given a big push to restarting Sino-Indian trade through traditional routes.
Making light of deeply sensitive and complex issues, seeking to get around them through semantic jugglery, both Indian and Chinese leaders appear determined to pursue their dream of making the 21st an Asian century. Indeed, Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao reminded Vajpayee of Deng Xiaoping's famous remark to Rajiv Gandhi, "The 21st century can only be the Asian century if India and China combine to make it so."
The Indian prime minister quoted Deng in his speech and argued that while India and China will always compete with each other ("there is always a sense of competition between two close and equal neighbors"), the two countries need to "understand the difference between healthy competition and divisive rivalry".
Vajpayee's speeches were not only remarkable for what he said, but also for what he left unsaid. He did not mention the vexed half-a-century border dispute - China occupied a large chunk of territory in Aksai Chin during the 1962 border war that India believes to be its own. Nor did he mention another equally sensitive issue - Chinese military and other help to Pakistan, with whom India has already fought three wars and has been engaged in a low-intensity conflict for the past 13 years.
Also absent from his speeches were Indian fears that China is engaged in a policy of encircling India through developing strategic and military ties with all its hostile and not-so-hostile neighbors, such as Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Nepal.
One of the thorniest issues has been Chinese non-recognition of Indian sovereignty over Sikkim, a state that merged with India in 1975. Article I of the memorandum on expanding border trade, signed on Monday between India and China, states, "The Indian side agrees to designate Changgu of Sikkim state as the venue for border trade market; the Chinese side agrees to designate Renqinggang of the Tibet Autonomous Region as the venue for border trade market." Article II says, "The two sides agree to use Nathu La as the pass for entry and exit of persons, means of transport and commodities engaged in border trade."
The fact that trade between India and China through the Nathu La Pass in "Sikkim state" has been officially described as "border" trade is a clear indication that China has accepted Indian sovereignty over Sikkim. However, though China has consciously decided to accept the Indian position that Sikkim is a part of India - you cannot come to an agreement with India over trade across the border of a third country - the fact remains that it is reluctant to announce this formally, and maintains that this "leftover problem of history" will take time to resolve. It must be conceded that implied de facto recognition is not the same thing as a de jure one. But it is certainly an advance.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/EF28Df07.html