I had earlier written about the significance of REEs in this newspaper on August 31, 2012 (A doctrine of no use).India needs to focus on economic growth. China has, not surprisingly, described the tribunal’s ruling as "ill-founded".China’s claims to about 90 per cent of the SCS were first promulgated on a 1947 map showing a "9 dash line". At some future date of its choosing, the Chinese government is quite capable of producing a "new, just-found 700-year-old document" that would purport to show that Admiral Zheng He had visited the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, in support of China’s claims to these islands.The second critical item that India imports from C  the tense SCS, which is already teeming with warships and coastguard ships of rival claimant nations.On April 19 this year, in anticipation of an adverse ruling by the UN tribunal at The Hague known as the Permanent Court of Arbitration, that was delivered on Tuesday, the Chinese embassy in New Delhi, as part of a global diplomatic offensive by Beijing, had invited some scholars from various think tanks in New Delhi to a presentation on China’s claims to the South China Sea (SCS).

The officiating Chinese ambassador ended the presentation by saying that should India back the Chinese position on the South China Sea, Beijing could accommodate New Delhi on the McMahon Line in the Himalayas, where both nations have an ongoing decades-long border dispute. India relies on the sea for 90 per cent of its imports and exports, and 50 per cent of its seaborne trade passes through the disputed SCS. Hence, freedom of navigation in the SCS is vital for India’s economic growth.At present, India is somewhat vulnerable as two critical items have to be imported from China, and hence it has no choice but to maintain cordial relations with Beijing while not compr ing through the Malacca Straits, visiting Thailand, Sri Lanka, Kerala, the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. At the same time, it must deter any Chinese or Pakistani misadventure by tweaking its Nuclear No-First-Use doctrine to ensure that it actually deters the buildup of any blue-water navy that can operate in the Indian Ocean region as well as in the Western Pacific Ocean. However, India, by becoming a member of the 35-nation Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), can "quietly" oppose any Chinese attempts to enter the MTCR (China’s application to enter the MTCR was made in 2004).The writer retired as Flag Officer Commanding-in-Chief of the Eastern Naval Command, Visakhapatnam. In 2013, the Philippines, after 17 years of fruitless talks with China over the disputed Scarborough shoal (located 555 miles from China’s Hainan island and only 137 miles from the Philippines) had asked the UN tribunal to adjudicate on China’s claims in the SCS. Today, China makes about 97 per cent of the global REE output."In May 2016, when an Indian maritime Wholesale industry air pump for sale think tank visited China for discussions, the Chinese hosts, discreetly and "off the record", reiterated that in "future the Andaman and Nicobar Islands could be disputed by someone". The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor is an essential ingredient of the OBOR, and hence Pakistan has become an indispensable strategic ally of Beijing, which indirectly supported Islamabad by blocking India’s entry into the 48-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) in June