The August 28 SCO summit in Dushanbe will be viewed with keen concern by most international watchers. It comes on the heels of China’s successful conduct of the Olympics and Russia’s military assertion in Georgia. Both Russia and China have been keenly nurturing the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation as an exclusive nucleus to undercut the US strategic outreach.
The PLA Navy (PLAN)'s capabilities in key areas (assets, trained personnel, experience) are currently insufficient to support long-range sea lanes of communication (SLOC) defense missions. With sufficient effort, Beijing may eventually overcome these obstacles, but it would probably also have to acquire some form of overseas basing access, which its foreign policy still proscribes.
A neo-liberal economy, an integrating component of the global village, a Confucian society ruled by a Leninist Party structure, a 21st century economic modernization endeavour cohabiting with an early 20th century political system, China offers a tantalizing proposition for looking into the crystal ball, and whither China becomes a legitimate subject of inquiry, both fascinating and complicated, full of pitfalls and open to dangerously misleading presumptions.
The SCO— a linchpin of China's Eurasia policy is viewed ominously by most international watchers. China is nurturing the SCO as an exclusive nucleus to undercut the US strategic outreach. But, Central Asia, the main nucleus, suffers from strategic ambiguity and the states there seek varied goals and play major power off each other. There is also an ostensible mismatch between Russia's liberal and China's expansionist approach. Will the SCO emerge as a distinct pole or will it remain an opportunistic alliance of desperate states?
In recent years, China has again publicly revived its territorial claims over India's northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh. However, by insisting on these claims, China is making a settlement of the territorial issue virtually impossible and seriously misperceiving public opinion trends in India. China has failed to appreciate that if Arunachal is claimed to be the southern part of Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), India cannot accept Tibet to be within China.
