The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has been trying to promote Yunnan as a gateway to both South and Southeast Asia for nearly two decades now, in order to bring in much needed investment for developing its south-western hinterland, covering more than 60 percent of its total landmass. With an area of 394,000 square kilometres, Yunnan shares 4.1 percent of the PRC’s landmass and is its eighth largest province.
China's ascent as a global power is certainly a major geopolitical development but the imports and impacts of the process seems not fully mapped and grasped.[i] Different countries perceive the phenomenon from their own vantage points – many are anxious, some admire, and a few are apprehensive. Above all, the fundamental question raised is 'what kind of power China would become'? Will China's rise strengthen or disrupt the global order in vogue?
In the past half decade or so, China has made huge strides in the high speed train manufacturing sector and has been developing a vast high speed rail network across the large country. China has currently become one of the largest manufacturers of high speed trains in the world and boasts of world's largest high speed rail network.
"The successful launch of the GSLV-MK 2 marks a milestone for the Nation's Rocket Program" by Yang Kai and Qu Jing:
http://www.bjreview.com.cn/world/txt/2014-02/10/content_595651_2.htm
In this somewhat complementary article soon after India’s GLSV-MK2 launch, China has provided a short overview of the development of this country’s space program from their perspective.
China since mid-1990s actively pursued a strategy rooted in spin-in, as a result China’s defence economy started to reap benefits from microelectronics, space systems, material sciences, semi-conductors, propulsion, missiles, information technology and computer aided manufacturing. While China in 2012 continues to lag behind in high technology sector and is decades away from carrying-out path-breaking discoveries in field of natural science and engineering, however it is fast closing the gap with developed countries through indigenous innovation.
The Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s visit to New Delhi as the chief guest for the 65th Republic Day celebrations in January 2014 apparently sent a clear signal of the importance of Japan to India in the context of changing power dynamics in Asia-Pacific. Notably, for the first time Japanese Prime Minister was a chief guest at India’s Republic Day celebrations.
The Indo-Pacific is the new geopolitical construction that has emerged to symbolise the seamless contour of the Indian and Pacific oceans. This construction has replaced the Asia-Pacific in 2011 and has been given as a self-evident reality that has embraced the Western Pacific, the Eastern Pacific and the Eastern Indian Ocean rim. The construction has also been defined as a region that envelops a wide area from the Western Pacific to the Western Indian Ocean reaching the East African shores.
In a speech on 25 December to the 2012 and 2013 batches of our Foreign Service, the National Security Advisor (NSA), Shri Shivshankar Menon remarked: 'Life would be far too easy if we only had to deal with ourselves'. He added:
