A great quote from Kym Bergmann of the Asia Pacific Defence Reporter:

"The China-India border dispute is also a product of history – and of British military surveyors, who have a lot to answer for.

The areas – there are two main zones of dispute and several minor ones – are at such high altitude that crops don’t grow and to date no natural resources have been discovered, except for huge quantities of very hard rock."

The lack of comments (but one) so far appears to suggest the OLO readership couldn't care less if non-white people kill each other.

Further views from Kym Bergmann of the Asia Pacific Defence Reporter at http://asiapacificdefencereporter.com/ are:

"However, nationalism being what it is, as China and India have continued to grow their populations, their economies and their regional influence, these extremely remote areas have become of ever greater symbolic value.

The first – and by far the most serious - of the clashes occurred in 1962. While both sides typically continue to blame each other, the result was extremely lopsided when during some quite intense clashes the Chinese prevailed over their far less well organised and supplied opponents.

There were around 8,000 Indian casualties; China lost only one tenth of that number, plus seized quite a lot of desolate, wind swept frozen wasteland into the bargain.

British surveyors get part of the blame because the entire border is unmarked, despite various attempts back in the days when the sun never set on the Empire to carve up that part of the world, principally between India, Tibet, Burma and China – but also involving smaller local entities.

The Johnston line of 1865 was an early attempt, followed by Macartney-Macdonald line (1899) and the McMahon line (1913-14), creating a complex soup of boundaries.

Without seeking to unpack the entire history of border disputes in this vast area – the current boundary between China and India runs for 3,488km, which is about the distance by road from Sydney to Perth – it is clearly complex and ill defined.

The current flare up started in late May with Chinese and Indian soldiers throwing punches and rocks at each other – and then both sides rushed more troops to the area for another very tense standoff.

Apparently, tensions have been running high for the last few months as India has constructed a road and an airstrip in the disputed area."