The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation is an intergovernmental mutual-security organisation which was founded in 2001 in Shanghai by the leaders of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.
Except for Uzbekistan, the other countries had been members of the Shanghai Five, founded in 1996; after the inclusion of Uzbekistan in 2001, the members renamed the organisation.
The official working languages of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation are Chinese and Russian.
In the 1962 Sino-Indian War, China seized a Switzerland-sized area, Aksai Chin (Aksayqin), and overran Arunachal Pradesh (an Indian state the size of Austria). There are also other, smaller pockets of disputed area
The PRC withdrew from virtually all of Arunachal Pradesh to the Line of Actual Control (LAC), which approximates the McMahon Line that is found in a 1914 agreement initialed by British, Tibetan, and Chinese representatives
India’s ambivalence about celebrating the founding of its capital, New Delhi, by the British Raj a hundred years ago today underlines the pathetic hypocrisy of our political class, which feeds off the empire’s legacy but is unwilling to acknowledge it.
Consider in contrast the Chinese Communist Party, which by nature, is hostile to inconvenient history.
The emergent powers of the world are casting themselves in the same imperialist moulds.
Last month Brazil proposed a meeting of the finance ministers of the BRICS bloc – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – to discuss ways in which they could help the European Union overcome its financial crisis.
The old Silk Road connected China, India, Persia, Arabia, Rome and Egypt through a network of routes that moved merchants and preachers, goods and ideas across the vast Eurasian landmass.
The creation of modern territorial states steadily closed down inner Asian frontiers that were once the most open and productive in the world. As a result, Afghanistan, Central Asia and western China are now landlocked.
The eight-member South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC), whose leaders are meeting this week in the Maldives, already has nine observers.
These are the United States, China, Japan, South Korea, Myanmar, Australia, Iran, Mauritius and the European Union. Turkey is now pressing to join SAARC as an observer.
As the subcontinent’s geopolitical weight grows, India must devote some attention to the emerging role of South Asia as a bridge between different regions —East Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East.
This week marks the 40th anniversary of China’s admission into the United Nations as a permanent member of the Security Council.
The last four decades have seen the end of China’s international isolation, its emergence as the world’s second largest economy, and its rising profile in the United Nations and other multilateral institutions.
Analysts at home and abroad find the temptation to view the India-Myanmar bilateral relationship through the distorting China prism very hard to resist.
Dr Singh and Sein are fully conscious of the real and undeniable triangular dynamic between New Delhi, Naypyidaw and Beijing.
Realists in Delhi recognise that Myanmar and China have strong incentives for expansive bilateral cooperation.
