China/India: What Dispute? India and China Ignore Land Squabble

Aug 30, 2014 | Tim Sullivan, Associated Press / ABC News
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For more than 50 years, it has pitted India against China — a smoldering dispute over who should control a swath of land larger than Austria. Two militaries have skirmished. A brief, bloody war has been fought. And today, thousands of soldiers from both countries sit deployed along their shared frontier, doing little but watching each other.

But as Beijing confronts countries across the South China and East China seas, displaying its diplomatic and strategic strength in a series of increasingly dangerous territorial disputes, the India-China standoff results in almost nothing beyond regular diplomatic talks and professions of international friendship.

Because the last thing the world's two most populous countries want right now is war with each other. Not when things are going so well.

"The territorial issues and the sovereignty issues have not gone away," said Sujit Dutta, a China scholar at New Delhi's Jamia Millia Islamia University. "But the Chinese are not pushing further (into the disputed regions) and neither are the Indians."