China and India are to resume joint military exercises that were halted in 2008.

The first military exercise was held in Kunming, China in 2007, and the second in Belgaum in India in 2008. However, a third session in China was postponed following a deterioration in relations, including over China’s refusal to offer a visa to a senior army officer stationed in Kashmir, the scene of one of the border disputes between the two developing nations.

Whether the resumption of these exercises will solve the long-running disputes between the two is unlikely.

India is unhappy with China’s infrastructure development in Kashmir, which she calls Pakistan-controlled Kashmir. The projects, which include road building,  worries India because she fears they could be put to military use, facilitating the movement of troops to the border with India.

India has also challenged China’s control of tens of thousands of square kilometers of land bordering its state of Jammu and Kashmir since 1962, when the two countries fought a border war, which Beijing won.

India also claims that China is illegally administering around 5,200 kilometers of land that Islamabad ceded to Beijing as part of a 1963 border agreement.

New Delhi, which claims sovereignty over the whole of Kashmir, has refused to recognize that agreement. However, this border agreement is not final, as it allows room for renegotiating the border “after the settlement of the Kashmir dispute between Pakistan and India.”

Other disputes include the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, which China claims as its own, referring to it as south Tibet.