Chinese didn't get much in return from their deals with Vietnam and Russia, but they were willing to make a deal.
How do you know the exact details of these deals, you surely do not expect a commie china or a commie vietnam or a highly restrictive and conservative russia to make every thing public, heck we dont even know what exact are the details of the negotiation going on between india and china where the scope of leaks is way-way more since in our country every tom, **** and harry who is shown a few ghandi notes is too eager to share all the details with media.
1. They think the border dispute is the only thing holding off better ties with these countries, so they want to end it asap.
2. The land they were giving up claims on, are not that important, tactically or strategically.
Chinese highly suspects the russians and same is the case with veitnam, they hardly have any faith in them much like the way it is with india, on the contrary india has excellent relations with both these countries with which the chinese are certainly not comfortable.
I have mentioned this before, they have settled sikkim after all which was again a part of south tibet, may be we are jumping the gun too soon, may be there will be a day when we can settle out these disputes.
Don't you feel there is too much speculation around on which we are trying to base this discussion. Other than a handful
experts who tend to give just one side of the picture and ToI/times now not many fault the whole thing, others see it as an on going process which will take its own time.
And more than all this, the bigger problem for better ties between the two countries are India's association with Dalai lama and China's association with Pakistan. Is India willing to abandon Dalai lama? Is China willing to abandon Pakistan? Probably not in both cases.
Yes there is the pakistan angle and absolutely no denying that but was the same pakistan also not doing a lap dance with the americans sometime back but we don't have a problem sitting around with the same americans now, it is also the same america which quite literally looked the other side when pakistan was making those nuke weapons, and they still are arming them with f16s, harpoos and a lot more which has absolutley nothing to do with the WoT. A few days back ajtr made a valid point, we pay billions and billions for each weapon purchase from the americans but the same americans dole out critically harmful weapon systems that can be used against as aid, so in a way are we not financing the same weapon supply to the pakistanis, so does that not make us our own worse enemies? Leave that alone in the past russians have armed the chinese to teeth, a country which is seen as a military and strategic challenge to us but still we call russians our best friends.
I have a feel that we remian largely suspect of the chinese because of 62 more than anything else, which is again fair enough but I doubt the chinese will ever dare such a misadventure or they will be left with a bloody nose, a huge economic lose and the dream of being a super power unfulfilled, they wont even dare a war on the taiwan issue, they will try and talk that out as well.
I am not sure if india is willing to abandon dalai lama or not, may be we could if the chinese were to come up with an exceptional deal since national interest is paramount, who knows.
So how could the two countries get to a stage where they could actually become allies.
The reason I think this can happen is because our two countries share a border and it will be only sensible for both to have a meaningful relationship than one which is too tensed. Kindly reflect a year back when the media was filled with news of border dispute but where has all that disappeared now, it surely shows that there are sensible heads on both sides who do not want to flare up things as happened in 62.
May be not exactly allies, but when you talk about sharing a wider role at the world stage you make sure there is no vacuum left for someone else to fill up that space, and so I mentioned let china be with the rouges and we align with not so rouge states and still at the end of the day have a reltionship with the chinese where we don't openly challenge each other or harm each others interests and if that can be worked out, it is good enough.