China's Low Key Foreign Policy on Kashmir: From Apathy to Indifference

Abstract

The dispute between India and Pakistan over Kashmir has the unhappy distinction of being the longest-standing quarrel between any of the ex-colonial states and, indeed, one of the longer running quarrels between any two states. It has, of course, been the main dispute throughout between India and Pakistan and the biggest stumbling block in the improvement of relations between the two countries. It would perhaps, not to be an exaggeration to say that Indo-Pakistan relations in the past fifty-six years have been a hostage of the Kashmir dispute. Kashmir is central to India-Pakistan relations and the security paradox in South Asia. It has triggered two of the three wars between the two countries since they gained independence