That is how Myanmar is being portrayed, and not without reason. For both China and the United States, the stakes couldn’t be higher. China has invested heavily in the country. According to an article published recently in the New York Times “the pipelines are finished. The oil storage tanks gleam in the tropical sun. The deep-sea port set in jade-coloured waters awaits the first ships bearing crude from the Middle East.” Yes, billions have been poured into infrastructure projects, and yes, China helped the impoverished country giving it a Lifeline during the long years it was under a UN embargo.

China's military action of occupying a forward position in Ladakh, though not wholly unanticipated, only reinforces the image of a belligerent state.

To everyone's relief, China and India have ended their three-week stand-off in Ladakh. Troops on both sides agreed to pull back to their positions before April 15, avoiding a potentially dangerous confrontation. The peaceful resolution of the latest unhappy incident in troubled Sino-Indian relations raises many questions.

China and India have recently reached understanding on proper settlement of the incidents in the western section of the China-India boundary through consultation. Border troops of the two sides have now pulled back from the area of stand-off at the Tiannan River Valley area/Daulat Beg Oldie sector by the Indian side. I believe that our two countries have the ability and wisdom to manage any differences or problems between us as long as we keep the larger interest of bilateral relations in mind, and jointly work on the differences or problems through friendly consultations with a constructive and cooperative approach.

The timing of the Chinese incursion may have been related to Xi Jinping's need to establish his hardline credentials and Li Keqiang's forthcoming visit

China's newly released Defence White Paper (WP) is nobody's idea of light reading. It is at least mercifully short, yet the propaganda content, combined with dense verbiage about war under "informationised conditions" and the "transformation of the generating mode of combat effectiveness" are enough to test even the most committed of China defence watchers. Nevertheless, when we consider what is in the document and what is left out, we learn a few things about how China sees itself and its place in the world.

China's investment binge of 2009-10 is dragging down its economy. China's policymakers obviously recognised the challenge in 2008. Unfortunately, they botched their policy response. Instead of channelling resources to boost domestic consumption and the private sector, Beijing splurged roughly $2 trillion on fixed investments, most of them undertaken by local governments and state-owned enterprises. Predictably, such investments, financed largely by bank debt, were doomed to be unproductive.

As Delhi watches Tokyo's outreach to Russia and the Middle East, one can only hope some of Abe's audacity will rub off on Manmohan Singh, who plans to visit Tokyo at the end of this month. With Abe pushing Japan into a rare moment of creative diplomacy, Delhi must match Tokyo's new strategic imagination.

Unlike in India, the slowdown in Chinese growth appears to be not merely a cyclical downturn, but lower trend growth rate that Chinese policymakers see as desirable. It forms part of China's strategy to rebalance the domestic macroeconomy towards a slower growth rate of employment, lower investment and higher consumption.

Over a year ago, President Obama announced America’s strategic pivot to Asia, away from its century-old Eurocentric focus. The rationale offered for the pivot was to counter the presumed challenge from a rising China. The case made in Washington was that China had not responded to President Obama’s early attempts at engagement on political and economic issues. The Chinese armed forces were engaged in a massive, non-transparent build-up that would threaten US and regional stability. The Pentagon’s strategy review identified China as America’s adversary.