evidence: Once the CPC had consolidated what it considered as vassal territory, China turned its attention to its neighbours. Its first target was India under an idealist Nehru. Even as it proclaimed amity between Indians and Chinese (Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai), China encroached into Indian territory (Aksai Chin) and surreptitiously constructed a road linking Tibet to Xinjiang. When India objected, China settled the issue via a bloody border war in which it dealt India a decisive and humiliating defeat. [...] Today, China remains in control of 38,000 sq km of what is legally Indian territory in Aksai Chin. China is also in possession of another 5,300 sq km (Trans Karakoram Tract in the Hunza-Gilgit region of Pakistan Occupied Kashmir, which legally belongs to India), which was ceded to China by Pakistan in I963. The current dispute is another attempt to make further inroads into Indian territory. That China is embroiled in no less than 18 boundary disputes, both land and maritime, with its immediate neighbours is further evidence of its hegemonic trait. China demands complete suzerainty over the South China Sea to the detriment of countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines. Large tracts of land belonging to Russia, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Tajikistan are claimed by China, based on historic precedent.