File photo: The first military drill of the ground troops of China and India.
The 4th Sino-Indian defense dialogue will kick off in New Delhi on Friday, but analysts say it is of greater political than military significance since thorny issues such as border disputes will not be discussed and remain unresolved.
General Ma Xiaotian, deputy chief of the People's Liberation Army General Staff Department, will meet with Indian Defense Secretary Shashikant Sharma on December 9, the highest level military contact between the two nations this year. The last round of defense talks was held in Beijing in January 2010.
"The meeting may help defuse misjudgments of the two nations' intentions in military modernization and result in a resumption of bilateral military exchanges," Hu Shisheng, a researcher on South Asia issues at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR), told the Global Times Thursday.
India has replaced China as the world's top weapons importer, according to a study by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, aiming to modernize its military strength and defend against threats from Pakistan and China.
Hu said issues on military safety will be the major concern of the military contact. However, the two sides may only reiterate the general military stance and discuss abstract doctrines, including the military strategic concepts and the modernization of their armed forces, rather than any specific issues, according to Hu.
The two sides will not go deep into the border issues as a special mechanism between the two military high-level sides has been set up to address the issue, said Hu.
He also said that the South China Sea issue will not be mentioned in the meeting as it is inappropriate to address a non-military conflict between the two nations in a military setting.
Pan Zhenqiang, a researcher on international relations at the China Institute of International Studies, said that the talks are of more political than military significance, adding that anti-terrorism issues might also be touched on in the dialogue, Jiefang Daily reported.
Sino-Indian military dialogues were previously been frozen after China issued a visa to an Indian army officer in charge of forces in Kashmir without stamping his passport last year. The boundary talks, scheduled for November 28 and 29, were also postponed as India allowed the 14th Dalai Lama to deliver a speech in a Buddhist conference in New Delhi in spite of China's objections.
The coming military talks also draw the attention of the overseas media.
"Nothing creates more stress in military circles than not knowing the intentions of your potential adversaries, and with tensions between China and India seemingly rising, dialogue between both nations' armed forces is clearly more important than ever," the Diplomat reported.
However, Bloomberg stated that the contact "does not signal the overall tensions underpinning such disputes have been resolved."
Fu Xiaoqiang, a researcher at the CICIR, told the Global Times Thursday that possible clashes over the southern area of China's Tibet Autonomous Region and the bordering Indian areas would be most likely to badly damage Sino-Indian relations.
Indian's agreement with Vietnam in October in joint oil and gas exploration in the South China Sea, where China claims over the resources, is another severe threat, Fu said.
Agencies contributed to this story.