POREG VIEW: China is known to keep its interlocutors guessing, and at the same time retain enough elbow room for a quite retreat from the frontline, if necessary.  Surprisingly, however, the denial on troop presence in Gilgit, and the accompanying remarks on Kashmir status by the Chinese foreign office spokesperson Jiang Yu are not nuanced; they carry a matter of fact tone. Sinologists in Delhi’s South Block cannot deny they are not given enough food for thought amidst calls for revisiting India’s China policy.

One thing is clear though. Beijing’s egg heads and diplomats need a quick lesson in history – egg heads on the past, and diplomats on the current. Till about a couple of years ago, Pakistan itself had been striving to project that the Northern Areas comprising Gilgit- Baltistan were independent of Islamabad’s diktat, and the area has been given a toothless legislature only recently.

Post-Hunza lake crisis, Pakistan itself has invited Chinese military experts for rescue and relief work and to keep the Karkorum high way open to Gwadar bound Chinese traffic. This is a statement on record by Pakistan foreign office.

So, what is there for Jiang Yu to deny?