NEW DELHI/GORAKHPUR: India considered reviewing clearance for Chinese investment in a tit- for- tat response on Monday after Beijing snubbed New Delhi by blocking a move to have Pakistan-based Jaishe-Mohammed militant group chief Masood Azhar on the UN sanctions list.
Official sources said the move to review security clearance for Chinese firms investing in India is meant to send a message to Beijing for its action in the UN four days ago. India has reasons to be upset because Azhar is the lynchpin in the audacious Pathankot airbase attack in January.
“Pakistan has an important place in Chinese diplomacy … China’s intervention in that case must be seen in this context. China will stop supporting Pakistan when it starts being affected by terrorism,” junior foreign minister and former army chief VK Singh said in Gorakhpur.
India and China share an uneasy relationship since the 1962 war between the two Asian giants over longstanding territorial disputes in Arunachal Pradesh and Jam mu and Kashmir’s Ladakh region that the Chinese claim to be theirs. The Chinese intimacy with Pakistan, supplying India’s bitter rival with arms and tipping the regional balance, has been a diplomatic thorny point too.
But the two neighbours tried to mend fences since Narendra Modi rode to power in 2014.