China strikes back on Arunachal

Barely weeks after it failed in its attempt to block Asian Development Bank (ADB) funds to a project in Arunachal Pradesh, China has successfully struck back.

Last month, in a development New Delhi has been quiet about, China won a vote on a “disclosure agreement,” which prevents ADB from formally acknowledging Arunachal Pradesh as part of India. (A disclosure agreement is a formal notification of a project once it’s approved by the ADB Board).

On June 16, India had successfully isolated China the entire ADB Board except Beijing had voted in India’s favour and secured approval for its $2.9-billion country plan.

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T-72 tanks moved to remote Sikkim area after China tests Indian defences

Chinese moves to test Indian control of the strategic Finger Area in North Sikkim last year have prompted the Army to deploy heavy tanks and armoured personnel carriers in the region and strengthen defensive positions.

In fact, the highest gallantry award to a Border Roads Organisation (BRO) personnel was conferred to a dozer operator, Zalim Singh, who cleared a strategic road near Theing village — he was decorated with a Bar to Shaurya Chakra — for a column of advancing tanks.

While the Army brought armoured vehicles to the North Sikkim plateau in the late 1980s, the small detachment has now been replaced by the heavier and more powerful T-72 Main Battle Tanks and modern BMP troop carriers.

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Indo-Tibetan Border Police team to ski down Mount Everest

A daring bid to ski down the 8,848-metre high Mount Everest is set to start on March 23 with a 28-member team of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) commencing a two-month-long expedition from New Delhi.

Eight of these 28 men will attempt skiing down Everest sometime in mid-May after climbing it from the north side (in China), a route considered to be much more challenging than the south side route from Nepal. The mountaineers are likely to take a month to climb the peak.

The ITBP recently procured sophisticated Japanese helmet-mounted cameras to capture the journey of its men climbing the peak and then taking a shot at the world record by skiing down. Two of its men will wear these cameras as the 8-member group begins the descent skiing.

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Rate cut in the air as growth, not inflation, Government’s new headache

The government has come to a judgement that in the growth-versus-inflation debate, the balance is now clearly in favour of growth and more corrective measures, specifically, monetary actions, such as a further cut in the signal repo rate, need to be taken to help India sustain the growth momentum.

The US Federal Reserve cut interest rates by 0.5 percentage points today, joining a new round of global cuts kicked off by China. China and India increasingly appear to be the world’s last engine of economic growth. China cut its interest rate to 6.66 percent from 6.93.

“Monetary policy (in India) has dual objectives: growth and inflation. The weights have clearly changed in favour of growth,” Arvind Virmani, Chief Economic Advisor in the Ministry of Finance, told The Indian Express in an interview today. (Excerpts tomorrow).

“Producers and other economic players are not clear what is happening to the monetary stance or how the policy will evolve. So, there are apprehensions in the short-term,” Virmani said.

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India bans Chinese dairy products

The Commerce Ministry on Thursday imposed a ban on the import of Chinese dairy products after these items were found contaminated with melamine that killed children in China recently.

The ban, which comes into immediate effect for three months until further orders, follows the Union Health Ministry’s letter to the Customs Department and Commerce Ministry in this regard.

“We had asked the Customs Department and the Commerce Ministry to look into the milk products which are imported from China, as Chinese milk powder, sweets and chocolates containing milk are seen in the market,” said a senior official in the Health Ministry.

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Chinese Foreign Minister kept waiting for Sonia appointment

As New Delhi today expressed its “disappointment” over China’s role in the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group (NSG), visiting Chinese Foreign minister Yang Jiechi, who had requested for a meeting with Congress President Sonia Gandhi, was kept waiting for an appointment.

Chinese Embassy officials told The Indian Express tonight they had asked for an appointment with Sonia before Yang left Beijing — while his schedule was being prepared — but had not heard from her office until late tonight.

In his first trip to India, the Minister has kept tomorrow morning aside for “sightseeing”, said officials, and will deliver a lecture on “India-China relations” in the afternoon.

After a meeting with External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Yang denied that Beijing had attempted to block consensus at the NSG. “Facts speak louder than these reports,” he said.

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Sleepless in Vienna: China threatens to leave for home, US works into the night

With Austria and Ireland still holding out and the Chinese delegation threatening to leave for Beijing, tough negotiations were on late into the night at the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers Group in Vienna to forge a consensus to end India’s three and a half decades of nuclear isolation.

A new NSG draft was in the works and had been sent to Washington for clearance although India made it clear that there was almost no scope to revise the draft in substantive terms.

The Chinese, sources said, objected to what they called was the manner in which matters were being pushed on an issue they said involved the future of the global non-proliferation regime.

Well aware of the stakes in the Indo-US nuclear deal — and the tight Congressional calendar ahead — the “highest levels” in Washington got in touch with their counterparts in Beijing to get China to stay on by including it in the consultative process.

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China's new nuclear submarine base sets off alarm beIIs

China has deployed its latest Jin class nuclear submarine at a massive new military facility at Sanya on the Hainan Island in South China Sea - its newest and nearest naval base to India.

While the Indian Navy had been aware about the upcoming military facility for some time, satellite images for the first time show the extent of the base and the fact that the Jin Class submarine, which carries 12 nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles, has been deployed at Hainan.

This has raised concern as the Chinese naval base, complete with an underground facility that can hide the movement of submarines from spy satellites, is barely 1,200 nautical miles from the strategic Malacca Strait and an access route to the Indian Ocean a region that New Delhi considers its personal security responsibility.

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Will carry it, not for china but with a prayer forTibet, blogs Aamir Khan

After Indian soccer star Baichung Bhutia, it is the turn of film actor Aamir Khan to express his solidarity with the Tibetan cause - but in a completely contrasting fashion.

While Bhutia declined an invitation to participate in the Olympic torch relay when it comes to India on April 17, saying it was his way of standing by the people of Tibet, Aamir Khan today spurned calls for a similar boycott and said he will run "...not in support of China... but with a prayer in my heart for the people of Tibet..."

Stressing that he had "the highest regard and respect for the struggle that the people of Tibet are going through," Aamir Khan said he would still run because the Olympic Games did not belong to China but to the entire human race".

In fact, if we were to try and find on this planet a place to hold the Olympic Games where the government of that place has not been responsible for human rights violations (in one way or the other), then I suspect that we would be left with very few options, if any at all," he wrote in his blog today.

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Chinese comrades invite Rahul to mark 20th year of his father's visit

Beijing may have summoned the Indian Ambassador at 2 am to protest against the Tibetans trying to scale their Embassy wall in New Delhi but all this was off the record today as a high-level delegation of the Chinese Communist Party (CPC) came knocking on the Congress doors with a red carpet.

Signaling a readiness to look beyond its ideological brethren among the Left, the CPC came to the Congress with a proposal to hold a conference in Beijing to mark the 20th anniversary of the late Rajiv Gandhi's path-breaking visit to China in December 1988. The CPC also invited Rahul Gandhi to inaugurate the conference likely to be held towards the year-end.

The CPC proposed to sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Congress Party to form an "institutional mechanism of collaboration" between the two. The Chinese delegation, led by Li Jinjun, Vice Minister of the International Department of the CPC Central Committee, proposed that Rahul should come to China to inaugurate the conference. These proposals were accepted by the Congress delegation led by senior party leader Devendra Dwivedi.

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