Though General Naravane's visit will not deal with 'impermanent' issues like the changing stands of politicians, it will certainly reinforce the deeper 'permanent' links between the people of Nepal and India. Time will hopefully tackle the present impermanence of the Sino-Nepalese romance, notes Claude Arpi.
The government's programmes should be expected to generate some momentum, but the macro-economic numbers are not encouraging, observes T N Ninan.
Overt displays of physical machismo is the stamp of the strongman and it's a symptom that manifests itself in direct proportion to their sense of insecurity, says Kanika Datta.
Xi, the most powerful leader in recent decades heading the ruling Communist Party and the military, will now be the first Chinese leader after the founder chairman Mao Zedong to remain in power lifelong.
China will flood direct flights to India with wholesale takeaways of the authentic stuff; Indian businessmen will fight for the commission and the consumers for the cuisine, predicts Sunanda K Datta-Ray.
The summit is being seen as an effort by India and China to rebuild trust and improve ties that were hit by the 73-day-long Doklam standoff last year.
Now, as before, India's vote at the UN was dictated by paramount national interests. Though the Indian vote was 'neutral', its explanation was explicit in its criticism of the Russian actions. India took back with the left hand what it had given with the right, explains Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
China's GDP took the worst hit since the disastrous Cultural Revolution in 1976, plummeting by 6.8 per cent in the first quarter of 2020 as the country took unprecedented measures to fight the coronavirus pandemic that brought the world's second largest economy to a standstill. China's gross domestic product stood at 20.65 trillion yuan (USD 2.91 trillion, approx) in the first quarter of 2020 amid the Covid-19 impact, down 6.8 per cent year on year, China's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Friday.
'The leadership is confronted with an economy growing at its slowest pace in 20 years,' points out Claude Smadja.
Arpi deserves to be complimented for the commitment and hard work that have gone into this production. The frustrations of seeking reliable documentation from the catacombs of the Indian bureaucracy did not deter him from going after the best information available, and the result is one that he can take much satisfaction in. Ambassador Prabhat P Shukla, Member Advisory Council, Vivekananda International Foundation, reviews Claude Arpi's The End of an Era: India Exits Tibet.
'It is not the country's interests alone that lead to all this secrecy.' 'More usually, the reason is the threat from political rivals: What will they do if they find out?', notes T C A Srinivasa Raghavan.
Naga splinter groups impatient with stalled talks as well as rebel Manipuri groups who have a stake in disrupting upcoming elections to the state assembly, are believed to be regrouping in the borderlands of China's Yunnan province and Myanmar, taking advantage of the turmoil in the latter by using it as a transit corridor.
The removal of the term limit will give Xi a limitless tenure.
India and China achieved a major milestone this year when their bilateral trade crossed the landmark figure of $100 billion but it did not generate any fanfare in both capitals as the two Asian giants are going through a "particularly bad patch" in their relations due to a set of actions by Beijing in violation of agreements that led to the military standoff in eastern Ladakh. Starting with a modest $1.83 billion in 2001, the bilateral trade crossed $100 billion-mark in the first 11 months this year, a significant milestone for which the two countries carried out campaigns to boost trade and build it as a major stakeholder to improve the relations between two nations, whose ties otherwise remained frosty over the festering boundary dispute and strategic rivalry. According to last month's data from China's General Administration of Customs (GAC), the India-China bilateral trade totalled $114.263 billion, up 46.4 per cent year-on-year from January to November 2021.
There is growing alarm at the inexorable rise of China, both of its military prowess and its aggressive bullying of other countries plus its subjugation of whole portions of its own population.
The just-concluded plenary session of the ruling Communist Party of China (CPC), headed by Xi, adopted his proposals for the formulation of the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025) for National Economic and Social Development and the Long-Range Objectives Through the Year 2035.
We have our own problems for sure and they are not trivial, but for now, our economy is in not too bad a shape, our politics is as personality-driven and authoritarian as that of most countries in the world. We must make the best of what we have and not be excessively unhappy looking at the grass on the other side of the septic tank which may not be greener after all!, observes Shreekant Sambrani.
India was fooled into believing that Communist China wanted a 'negotiated' settlement with the Tibetans; it was never the case, says Claude Arpi.
From Covid to climate change, Shankar Acharya's look at some of the trends and events that might shape 2022.
The activist, who advises various farmer organisations, was arrested when Assam was witnessing widespread protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act.
'Its aim is to force the Bhutanese government to cede territory that China wants elsewhere in Bhutan to give Beijing a military advantage in its struggle with New Delhi.'
The armies are working to schedule their seventh round of talks to take steps towards "early and complete" disengagement of troops along the LAC in eastern Ladakh.
The chapters were dropped by the Assam Higher Secondary Education Council (AHSEC) for the 2020-21 session, as part of the 30 per cent reduction of the syllabus, keeping in mind the loss of academic schedule that the students had to face because of the pandemic.
India must be aware that there is no question of the US fighting the Chinese on land. We have to fight our own battles, points out Virendra Kapoor.
The new law, effective from January 1, weakens the role of the State Council, China's Cabinet headed by Premier Li Keqiang, in formulating military policy, handing decision-making powers to the Central Military Commission (CMC), the overall high-command of the two million-strong People's Liberation Army (PLA) headed by Xi, Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported on Sunday.
'The Olympic Spirit has been thrown to the wind in Xi Jinping's China.' 'The International Olympic Committee is ready to kowtow to totalitarian China,' notes Claude Arpi.
'There is little doubt that China today stands in the dock, charged with misdemeanour with regard to the health and well-being of its own citizens and of the people of the world,' notes Amulya Ganguli.
Addressing the centenary celebrations of the Communist Party of China at the historic Tiananmen Square, Xi in over an hour-long address also said that integrating Taiwan with the Chinese mainland is a historic mission of the ruling party.
Former prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru had sought American assistance and wrote to the then US president John F Kennedy to provide India jet fighters to stem the Chinese tide of aggression during the 1962 Sino-India war, according to a new book.
Two elderly Chinese aerospace experts are hospitalised after a violent attack by a 'Princeling', states Jayadeva Ranade, the distinguished China expert and retired RA&W officer, highlighting the power the 'Princelings' ironically hold in the Communist People's Republic.
India needs to be alert on how the Doklam standoff plays into the factional infighting in China's Communist Party, says Ambassador Shyam Saran, the former foreign secretary.
Zhu, 56, was found to have hanged himself in the office's garage, a report on the online edition of Chinese magazine Caixin said.
China is set to open a 2,298-km high-speed railway line, the world's longest, in about two weeks, linking the capital city with the country's trading hub of Guangzhou.
'Let us assume that opinion polls do affect voting behaviour in some way or the other. What is wrong with that? Don't political speeches affect voting behaviour? Don't editorials affect voting behaviour? Don't political advertisements affect voting behaviour? Don't manifestos affect voting behaviour? So, why not opinion polls?' asks well-known Election Analyst Dorab R Sopariwala.
'We've never really been in the situation of having a difficult time with the Chinese and an increasingly difficult time with the Russians along with a relationship with the Americans which is important.'
In a rare honour, chairman of Tata group of companies, Ratan Tata was on Wednesday made honorary economic advisor to the booming east Chinese city of Hangzhou.
By the year 2027, which marks the centennial of the founding of the People's Liberation Army, China will build a fully modern military, a goal that is in alignment with the national strength and will fulfil the future national defence need, state-run Global Times quoted Chinese analysts as saying.
Japanese figure skater Mao Asada, who rebounded from a disastrous short programme at the Sochi Olympics to gain the best score of her career in the free skate, is now wavering on whether to retire from competition.
The summit is being seen as an effort by India and China to rebuild trust and improve ties that were hit by the 73-day-long Doklam standoff last year among other contentious issues.
Thousands of Chinese are on Tuesday observing the 24th anniversary of the bloody military crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square.
