Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Tension grows between China and India

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6913250.ece?&EMC-Bltn=CBQF61F
Tension grows between China and India as Asia slips into cold war
The Maldives
You have to go to a tropical paradise to find the latest front in the 
brewing cold war between China and India.
On the southernmost tip of the Maldives lies the island of Gan, a tiny 
patch of coconut palms and powdery white beaches. It was here that 
Britain set up a secret naval base in 1941, building airstrips and vast 
fuel tanks to support its fleet in the Indian Ocean during the Second 
World War.
The RAF then used it as a Cold War outpost until 1976, when the British 
withdrew and the officers’ quarters were converted into a resort called 
Equator Village.
Now, 33 years later, India is preparing to reopen the base to station 
surveillance aircraft, helicopters, and possibly ships, to monitor 
Chinese vessels in the Indian Ocean. Under a deal signed in August, 
India is also installing radar across the Maldives, linked to its 
coastal command.
Both countries publicly deny that the move is aimed at Beijing, but 
privately admit that it is a direct response to China’s construction of 
a giant port at Hambantota in nearby Sri Lanka.
The plan is also being seen as the latest move in a low-level, but 
escalating struggle for economic and military supremacy between Asia’s 
two emerging giants. This week the flashpoint is their disputed 
Himalayan border, as China protests over the Dalai Lama’s visit to a 
northeastern Indian state that it claims. But they are also competing 
over naval control of the Indian Ocean, resources and markets in Africa, 
strategic footholds in Asia — and are even in a race for the Moon.
“It doesn’t have the same proportions as the Cold War,” said Alexander 
Neill, head of the Asia programme at the Royal United Services 
Institute, a research centre. “But there is potential for this to spiral 
out of control. Allies of both countries need to think carefully about 
the consequences of this rivalry.”
Relations were cordial for the first decade after India’s independence 
in 1947, and the founding of communist China in 1949. They quickly 
deteriorated, however, when the Dalai Lama escaped from Tibet in 1959 
and was granted refuge in India. China then humiliated India in 1962 
when its troops briefly occupied the northeastern state of Arunachal 
Pradesh and seized the region of Aksai Chin. Beijing also began to 
provide aid and weapons to Pakistan — India’s rival.
In the past decade, the frost had been thawing as bilateral trade 
expanded from $3 billion in 2000 to $51 billion last year — the two even 
began joint military exercises.
Yet this year, things have taken a sudden turn for the worse as China 
seeks to project its economic and military clout, and a more assertive 
India tries to respond. Militarily, India frets over China’s recent 
efforts to improve infrastructure around its frontiers and force a 
compromise on the disputed border. It also worries about China’s plans 
to develop a “blue water” navy capable of protecting trade routes 
through distant waters, including the Indian Ocean.
India feels particularly threatened by China’s “string of pearls” 
strategy, building ports in Burma, Sri Lanka and Pakistan that could be 
used by its navy. Beijing is concerned that a nuclear deal finalised 
last year between India and the US, was designed as a counterbalance to 
China. The deal not only lifted a ban on India buying US nuclear 
supplies, it also opened the door for India to take part in joint 
military exercises and buy billions of dollars of US weaponry.
“Since 1962, I think Chinese strategists have basically decided that 
they can deal with India on their own terms,” said Evan Feigenbaum of 
the Council on Foreign Relations, an American research centre. “But when 
you introduce the United States into that equation, it introduces all 
kinds of uncertainties. I think we’re in for a period of India-China 
tension.”
Economically, the competition is most intense in Africa, where India and 
China are vying for resources and markets in a rerun of the “Scramble 
for Africa” by colonial powers.
China began courting African nations a decade ago, offering investment 
and trade in exchange for soft loans and development aid with no 
political conditions attached. But India is catching up fast, pledging 
$5 billion in credit and hundreds of millions of dollars in financial 
help at an inaugural India-Africa summit last year. At stake is not just 
access to industrial raw materials, but support for India’s bid for a 
permanent seat on the UN Security Council, which China opposes. India is 
also trying to make up lost ground in South, South-East and Central Asia.
China has been trying to negotiate a friendship treaty with Nepal to 
replace the one that has tied the country to India since 1950. Beijing’s 
growing clout in Bangladesh was highlighted last week when armed police 
closed a photo exhibition organised by Tibetan activists. India has 
poured $1 billion in aid into Afghanistan, while a Chinese company has 
invested $3 billion in a giant copper mine in the country. 
Technologically, the contest is playing out in a 21st-century Asian 
version of the Cold War space race. India launched its first unmanned 
lunar mission, Chandrayaan-1, last year and plans to land a man on the 
Moon by 2020. China sent its first taikonaut into space in 2003, and 
plans its first manned lunar mission by 2024.
Yet the most fundamental source of rivalry is also the most abstract: 
the relative merits of Indian-style democracy and Chinese-style 
autocracy. Although neither promotes its political system, they are seen 
as rival models for the developing world. And if this is the “Asian 
Century”, as many agree, then it will be defined to a large extent by 
that ideological contest.

 The Maldives
mi dirai come mai hai abbandonato il tuo argomento principale per 
queste...'futilità'... :-)