Word: tibet
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
China claims the region where Tawang sits and the area surrounding it as a southern extension of Tibet, which Beijing rules; India has long maintained that the land, which comprises its northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, is an inalienable part of its territory. Tensions over the border dispute have flared recently, raising the specter of a budding rivalry between the two Asian giants who fought a brief, wintry war in 1962. Reports of troop buildups and border incursions have increased. A visit to the state by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in mid-October to campaign in local elections...
...early April 1959, with some 50,000 Chinese soldiers scouring the mountains in search of him, the Dalai Lama escaped from Tibet into northeastern India. Beijing blamed him for fomenting an uprising among Tibetans, which the People's Liberation Army was then quashing. While foreign spies and correspondents filled up sleepy hill stations on the Indian side, the Dalai Lama took refuge in an old monastery, guarded by a detachment of Indian solders and a sect of 600 shaven-headed Buddhist monks. His brief sojourn at the 400-year-old monastery in the town of Tawang would be the first...
...Chinese eyes, the prospect of the Dalai Lama ginning up emotions and support in Tawang poses a challenge to its vision of dominion over all of Tibet. The boundary separating Arunachal Pradesh from Tibet - dubbed the McMahon Line - was drawn up by the colonial British and officials from Lhasa in 1914, an act of map-making that China to this day refuses to recognize. According to Beijing, Tawang and its surroundings were under the suzerainty of the Qing dynasty after its armies extended China's frontiers to Tibet and Central Asia in the 18th and 19th centuries. If Tibet...
...tells TIME the additional troops were planned well before any hint of tension - and they haven't arrived yet. ("That's a future plan," Singh says.) With or without extra soldiers, India is watching the border. Singh says the Chinese army recently staged a massive training exercise in Tibet, with 50,000 personnel. (See TIME's photo-essay "The Tempestuous Nehru Dynasty of India...
...military details obscure a more significant, if less glamorous, theater of conflict: infrastructure. It's telling that India has demanded that China cease work on the $2 billion Kohala power plant in Pakistani Kashmir. (The 62-year dispute with Pakistan over Kashmir is as sensitive for India as Tibet is for China.) The plant is part of a systematic effort by China to assert its presence on the rim of the subcontinent, where India has long been the acknowledged superpower. In both Pakistan and Sri Lanka, the Chinese are funding new ports. The Chinese Foreign Minister visited Nepal last December...