Sikkim standoff: Chinese experts warn India, forget history at your own peril

China would be forced to use a “military way” to end the standoff in the Sikkim sector if India refuses to listen to the “historical lessons” being offered by it, a Chinese expert has warned.

As the standoff at the Doka La area continued for the third week, the official media and the think-tanks here have said that “war is possible if the conflict between India and China is not handled properly”.

“China is trying its best to use historical lessons to reason with India and show sincerity in peacefully solving the problem, but if India refuses to listen, then China would have no other choice than to use a military way of solving the problem,” Hu Zhiyong, a research fellow at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, told the state-run Global Times.

Hu claimed that India is provoking China because it wanted to prove to the US that it could contain China while Prime Minister Narendra Modi was in the US. But Hu said US President Donald Trump was not like his predecessor Barack Obama.

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“Obama believes India is important only because they share the same values, but Trump is very pragmatic, and he doesn’t treat India as a valuable ally because New Delhi is too weak to confront Beijing,” Hu opined.

Although India always treats China as its biggest rival, China does not think so as India lags far behind China, Song Zhongping, a Beijing-based military expert, was quoted as saying by the daily.

“Experts also scoffed at India’s military threat after Indian Defence Minister Arun Jaitely asserted on Friday that the India of 2017 is different from what it was in 1962,” said the report in the daily, known for its nationalist stance.

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“The gap between the militaries of China and India today is even bigger than in 1962, and I hope India can keep calm for its own good,” Hu said.

Since the standoff on June 6, when the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) destroyed bunkers of the India Army claiming the area belonged to China, Chinese media have carried several pieces warning India for escalating border tension and “reminding” the Indian Army about the 1962 war.

Of the 3,488-km-long India-China border from Jammu and Kashmir to Arunachal Pradesh, a 220-km section falls in Sikkim.

China has cited the 1890 Sino-British treaty to settle the dispute over the Sikkim section of the boundary.