India's stand on border getting tougher: Chinese thinktank

India's stand on the border issue is getting tougher but the dispute need not be an obstacle in deepening bilateral ties, a Chinese thinktank today said, coinciding with President Xi Jinping's visit to India.
"New Delhi keeps making efforts in solving the border issue through negotiations. But its stance is getting tougher, and it is brewing new strategic adjustments," said an article by Qian Feng, a counsellor of Chinese Association for South Asian Studies in state-run Global Times online.
It said the border issue certainly does not represent the whole picture of the Sino-Indian relationship, but it is indeed an obstacle that restrains the deepening of bilateral ties.

"Superficially, New Delhi is showing a tougher attitude. For instance, Modi himself once said 'No power on Earth can take away even an inch from India.' And more recently, India's foreign minister made a public statement about 'one India.'
"It seems a natural conclusion that the Modi administration is tending to be tougher on border talks," it said.
But in fact, such toughness should be understood within the context of India's domestic political ecology of complex party wrangles. This decides that such toughness, in many occasions, is more symbolic, it said.

"At the current stage, India and China actually have no alternative. They have to continue negotiations over the border issue, and jointly protect peace in the border regions before the issue is ultimately addressed in a peaceful manner," the write-up said.

"The most controversial zone between China and India contains an eastern part and a western part. The eastern part is Indian-controlled. China dominates the western part, where frequent confrontations between the two armies are witnessed," it said.
"Why did India only bring up the eastern part (Arunachal Pradesh) when talking about 'one India' and not mention the western part at all? Does this mean the Modi administration is now considering more strategic adjustments on this issue? This deserves our close attention," it asked.
India and China have held several rounds of talks to resolve their long festering border dispute but little progress has been achieved.

The past few years have seen several flares up with Chinese soldiers repeatedly intruding into Indian territory.