A Shadow over the Himalayas: India's Tibet Problem
This article explains the central role of the Tibetan issue in complicating Sino-Indian relations.
It analyses three years of building tensions between China and India over, nominally, the Arunachal Pradesh that could very well have led to conflict. These tensions were ultimately diffused after a high-level, bilateral discussion held on the margins of the APEC meeting at Hua Hin, Thailand on October 24, 2009. The author explains that "the root cause of China's ambivalence towards India is not the persistence of disagreement over the demarcation of the Line of Actual Control (LAC), or the status of Arunachal Pradesh, but its own failure to assimilate the Tibetans into the mainstream of its civilization and politics." But New Delhi's misreading of the importance of the Tibetan issue for Beijing is also problematic. "New Delhi's failure to link the deterioration of relations...with China's growing problems in Tibet arises from the vast asymmetry in the importance China and India attach to Tibet. To India, the Tibetans in exile (around 120,000) remain refugees who sought political asylum, and have now only to be discouraged from taking hostile political actions against China from Indian soil. Beijing, however, regards them as a well-knit insurgent group based in India that skillfully mobilizes international sympathy and uses the internet to reach Tibetans within China to foment an insurgency."
Despite the calming of tensions following Hua Hin, "the underlying problems in Tibet remain. The Dalai Lama remains in India with his freedom and respect unimpaired. The Tibetan community in India continues to grow, prosper and communicate with Tibetans in the West, and within China via internet. The Tibetan ethnic and political identity therefore remains undented. Thus a resurgence of Sino-Indian tension whenever the Chinese face problems in Tibet remains a distinct possibility."
Available in:
Regions and themes
ISBN / ISSN
Share
This page contains only a summary of our work. If you would like to have access to all the information from our research on the subject, you can download the full version in PDF format.
A Shadow over the Himalayas: India's Tibet Problem
Center for Asian Studies
Asia is a nerve center for multiple global economic, political and security challenges. The Center for Asian Studies provides documented expertise and a platform for discussion on Asian issues to accompany decision makers and explain and contextualize developments in the region for the sake of a larger public dialogue.
The Center's research is organized along two major axes: relations between Asia's major powers and the rest of the world; and internal economic and social dynamics of Asian countries. The Center's research focuses primarily on China, Japan, India, Taiwan and the Indo-Pacific, but also covers Southeast Asia, the Korean peninsula and the Pacific Islands.
The Centre for Asian Studies maintains close institutional links with counterpart research institutes in Europe and Asia, and its researchers regularly carry out fieldwork in the region.
The Center organizes closed-door roundtables, expert-level seminars and a number of public events, including an Annual Conference, that welcome experts from Asia, Europe and the United States. The work of Center’s researchers, as well as that of their partners, is regularly published in the Center’s electronic journal Asie.Visions.
Space Security and Missile Defense : Japan's Quest for Autonomy and Indispensability
Seeking greater autonomy without loosening its alliance with the United States, Japan has steadily turned space into a pillar of its defense, building sovereign capabilities that also make it an indispensable partner, to Washington and beyond. This approach raises questions for Europe, whose ties with Japan are multiplying but which has yet to define what it can concretely bring to Tokyo, particularly in missile warning.
China’s Climate Leadership after Hormuz: How Should Europe Adjust?
The effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz in early 2026 offered an unplanned stress test of China’s approach to energy security, and China passed it far better than most expected. The episode demonstrated that the underlying risk of supply disruption is real, while validating a preference for resilience and resource security that has long underpinned Chinese energy and climate policy and has now been reinforced under the banner of building an “energy powerhouse.”
China as an ambivalent supporter of the WTO and the multilateral trading system
Amid rising trade tensions between Europe and China and broader uncertainty in the international rules-based trade regime, Beijing has worked to preserve and bolster the multilateral trading system while at the same time failing to reform the domestic policies that have served to undermine that same system.
Canada in the Indo-Pacific: Sustaining the Pivot, Partnering with France
Since the launch of Canada’s inaugural Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS) in November 2022, Ottawa has moved—with notable but uneven momentum—from the margins of regional engagement to a position of growing strategic visibility. The Strategy, backed by an initial $2.3 billion five-year investment, reflects a long-overdue recognition: Canada is a Pacific nation whose prosperity and security are inextricably linked to the stability of the world’s most economically and strategically consequential region.