On 13 April 2018, The Vivekananda International Foundation (VIF) hosted Prof. Hon-Shiang Lau, a research scholar of Chinese history, whose research findings have been well received in Taiwan and Belgium. Prof Lau gave a presentation on ‘How Tibet was never a part of China’ since antiquity. Dr. Arvind Gupta, Director VIF, presided over the meeting.

A brainstorming session on ‘India-Bhutan Relations and the Chinese Factor’ was conducted on 19 March, 2018. Director VIF, Dr. Arvind Gupta, delivered the opening remarks and laid out the context of India-Bhutan situation in the light of the Chinese road building and military activity going on in the disputed Doklam region of Bhutan, which was the major reason for India-China stand-off last year. Amb. Sudhir Vyas, Amb. Rajiv Sikri, Amb. TCA Rangachari, Lt. Gen. SL Narasimhan, Amb. Ashok Kantha, Col. V. Shankar, Amb. Dinkar Srivastava, Amb. Anil Wadhwa, Amb. Kanwal Sibal, Prof. Sujit Dutta, Lt.

Abstract The transit trade problems of Afghanistan are typical to any other landlocked country. As a landlocked country, Afghanistan has relied on Pakistan for its international trade. However, the transit trade of Afghanistan has remained unstable akin to escalated political relations between the two countries. Given economic importance of access to sea, the landlocked countries continued to raise their voice at the United Nations.

The Dokalam crisis, i.e. the border stand-off between China and India, which had kept the bilateral ties between the two neighbouring countries on the boil for over two months, came to a peaceful resolution on Aug 28, 2017, with both sides disengaging their troops from what had seemed like an eyeball to eyeball confrontation. While the crisis has been resolved for now, its recurrence in some form or the other along the India-China border cannot be ruled out, especially with China taking the unsettled border as an excuse to push its territorial claims in contested territories.