Like US supplying All High tech Military Hardware to india. In that way India could have an upper hand on china in military with all these High-Tech equipments.
Instead of a border skirmish, if China became serious and started massing large numbers of troops for a major invasion of India, I believe that the US will intervene and provide India with the necessary military hardware to defend herself.
The chess match in Asia is Russia-China (respectively: lots of nuclear weapons and world's largest oil exporter; major rising world economy and conventional power) versus US-India. After decades, the US suddenly started wooing India. The US finally realized that Europe was too far away and that the European countries were not going to fight a major ground war in Asia.
When the Soviet Union was strong, the US wooed China in 1971. Similarly, the US will not permit China to have overwhelming influence in Asia. The US could easily stop China in her tracks by basing a few squadrons of F-22s in India. Also, the US could lead worldwide economic sanctions against China.
The US and China are mature powers. They understand the rules of the game. For example, China has not tried to take a territorial bite out of her smaller neighbors for thirty years or more.
While it's fun to speculate on an India-China border war, the reality is that none of us will see a real war between those countries in our lifetime.
As an example of American power, China couldn't even take a few islands off her own coast from Taiwan.
"The United States issued several nuclear threats against the People's Republic of China in the 1950s
to force the evacuation of outlying islands and the cessation of attacks against Quemoy and Matsu, part of Republic of China.[1]" See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_blackmail
The relationship between the US and China is extremely serious and that even "trash talk" is not permitted.
"Beijing is said to rebuke general
Threatening tone drew ire of US
By Benjamin Kang Lim, Reuters | December 23, 2005
BEIJING -- A Chinese general has been punished for telling reporters China could use nuclear weapons in the event of a US attack over Taiwan, military sources said on yesterday.
Major General Zhu Chenghu received an ''administrative demerit" recently from the National Defense University, which bars him from promotion for one year, said the sources, who requested anonymity.
''He misspoke.
But the punishment could not be too harsh or we would be seen as too weak towards the United States," one source said.
An administrative demerit is the second lightest punishment on a scale of one to five, but still potentially damaging to his career. The lightest is an administrative warning, while the heaviest is expulsion.
''His chances for promotion in the future are extremely slim," another source said." See
http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/2005/12/23/beijing_is_said_to_rebuke_general/ or
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhu_Chenghu