India and China, which have fought a war over their disputed border and compete for resources to feed Asia’s two fastest growing economies, will hold their highest level military talks in almost two years.
General Ma Xiaotian, the deputy chief of the People’s Liberation Army General Staff, will lead a delegation to New Delhi for meetings Dec. 9 with Indian Defense Secretary Shashikant Sharma and ministry officials. The previous round of defense dialogue was held in Beijing in January 2010.
The nuclear-armed neighbors, home to more than a third of the world’s people, claim territory held by the other and clashed during a brief border conflict in 1962. India has replaced China as the world’s top weapons importer, according to a study by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, as it aims to modernize its armed forces and defend against security threats from Pakistan and China.
Ma’s visit indicates that China and India have for now “resolved a degree of their tit-for-tat diplomacy,” said Lora Saalman, a Beijing-based analyst at the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy. “It does not signal that the overall tensions underpinning such disputes have been resolved.”
Military relations between the world’s two most populous nations were suspended in August 2010 after China issued a visa to an Indian army officer in charge of forces in Kashmir without stamping his passport, an act seen as questioning India’s rule over the disputed Himalayan territory. China has a close alliance with Pakistan, which has waged two wars with India over Kashmir.
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