The Himalayan Face Off

?Even if bilateral trade between India and China goes beyond $100 billion in the coming years, China?s posture towards India is adversarial and will perhaps remain so in the future, with Beijing viewing New Delhi through the prism of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government-in-exile? A rising China, inflexible on boundary dispute resolution and with strong tentacles across South Asia and beyond, could encroach on India?s strategic space and lead to a potential crisis this decade.? In April 2013, Indian troops sighted an advance patrol of the Chinese People?s Liberation Army (PLA) 19 km deep within Indian territory, a considerable distance from the Line of Actual Control, the de facto border claim line that was drawn up after the 1962 war between the two countries ? a war that still traumatizes the mind of India?s political and military establishment. Protracted negotiations led to the withdrawal of Chinese troops, but the incursion laid bare the intent of the world?s largest standing army. Despite recent advances in the bilateral relationship, highlighted by the nearly $70 billion trade between the two countries, China continues to regard Indian interests as secondary, and India as a regional adversary. In this breakthrough work, seasoned journalist and author of the bestselling Indian Mujahideen Shishir Gupta details the various advances made by Beijing, particularly the PLA, in encircling India and stifling the latter?s bid to break out as an aspiring superpower. Gupta discusses Indian political, diplomatic and military responses to China?s assertion in the subcontinent and beyond, and the various course corrections India must undergo in its foreign and defence policies to counter China?s might and influence on matters of India?s national security. In describing how India must realize and counter China?s clout over its friends and enemies if it is to achieve superpower status, Gupta sheds new light on Indo-China relations. The Himalayan Face-Off: Chinese Assertion and the Indian Riposte is an important reminder of the realigned geopolitics of the modern world, where the two most populous nations on the planet are essentially battling each other over their share of the global pie ? sometimes on the world?s highest battlegrounds. '

Examines the reality of international migration today, including where migrants come from and go to, how governments manage migration, how migrants perform in education and the workforce and migration's impact on developing countries.

This book analyzes when, how, why, and to what effect China has used its armed forces in recent decades to coerce other actors in the international system. Over the past 20 years, China’s international status as a “great power” has become undeniable. China’s “peaceful rise” has included substantial investments in military modernization and an increasingly assertive regional posture. While China has not waged war since 1979, it has frequently resorted to what the U.S. State Department has referred to as “gangster tactics” – threats, intimidation, and armed confrontation – to advance its strategic aims. This volume illuminates the ways in which China has employed its military and paramilitary tools to coerce other states, and examines the motivations and specific foreign policy objectives that China has pursued using force short of war. The study presents new analysis of an original dataset on coercive actions undertaken by China’s armed forces, taking into account the political objectives pursued and the environmental contexts in which these operations occurred. It also presents a series of expert case studies addressing the most consequential examples of China using force to coerce in recent decades. The volume contributes to a more historically informed, empirically based understanding of great power competition. This book will be of much interest to students of Chinese security and foreign policy, strategic studies, Asian politics and International Relations.

From internationally renowned mountain historian Bernadette McDonald comes a highly readable, intense and exciting look at the explosion of Slovenian alpinism in the context of that country’s turbulent political history. After the Second World War a period of relative calm began in Josip Broz Tito’s Yugoslavia. During the next thirty years citizens could travel freely if they had the money. Most did not, but alpinists did. Through elaborate training régimes and state-supported expeditions abroad, Yugoslavian alpinists began making impressive climbs in the Himalaya as early as 1960. By the ’70s, they were ascending the 8000ers. These teams were dominated by Slovenian climbers, since their region includes the Julian Alps, a fiercely steep range of limestone peaks that provided the ideal training ground. After Tito died in 1980, however, the calm ended. Inter-ethnic conflict and economic decline ripped Yugoslavia apart. But Serbian strongman Slobodan Miloševic misread the courage and character of several Yugoslavian states, including Slovenia, and by 1991 Slovenia was independent. The new country continued its support for climbers, and success bred success. By 1995, all of the 8000ers had been climbed by Slovenian teams. And in the next ten years, some of the most dramatic and futuristic climbs were made by these ferocious alpinists. Apart from a few superstars, most of these amazing athletes remain unknown in the West.