India and China in deep water over sovereignty

An unidentified Chinese warship demanded that the INS Airavat, an amphibious assault vessel, identify itself and explain its presence in the South China Sea after it left Vietnamese waters in late July, London's Financial Times reported.

The Indian warship was completing a scheduled port call in Vietnam and was in international waters. Although the Indian navy promptly denied that a Chinese warship had confronted its assault vessel, it did not completely deny the factual basis of the report.

The Sino-Indian strategic relationship is rapidly evolving and tensions are building up as was underlined in an incident in 2009 when an Indian kilo-class submarine and Chinese warships, on their way to the Gulf of Aden to patrol the pirate-infested waters, reportedly engaged in rounds of maneuvering as they tried to test for weaknesses in each others sonar systems. The Chinese media reported that its warships forced the Indian submarine to the surface, which was strongly denied by the Indian navy.

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