One Mountain Two Tigers

One Mountain Two Tigers

The May-June standoff in Ladakh between the Indian Army and the Chinese PLA caught not just India, but the world by surprise as everyone`s attention was on tackling the Covid-19 pandemic. Why did China choose this moment to become an aggressor militarily? What are the lingering disputes between these Asian giants, who would soon become the top two economies in the world? Is India`s claim to Aksai Chin based only on the security needs of colonial India? Or did Indian control over these areas go back in history? What have been the historical links with these areas with the Indian mainland? What is the geostrategic importance of Ladakh? Did internal tensions within the Chinese Communist Party cause relations with India to break down? Has India internalised the lessons of 1962, and how is it placed militarily in Ladakh? Has India fundamentally misunderstood China? Did the Wuhan Spirit and the Chennai Connect serve any purpose? Are there other critical dimensions to the India-China relations where the latter may be at a disadvantage? This book addresses these, and many such questions in detail.

Two Tigers, One Mountain

'Two tigers cannot live on one mountain' - Chinese proverb. There can only be one winner in a battle. A truce, the Chinese say, merely delays the inevitable. In Korea, two brothers fight on opposing sides in a war where black market profiteering is rife, and patriotism and honour have lost their meanings. When they depart the battlefield, one is a hero, the other a traitor. One brother, General Lee Kwan Man-hop, returns to the volatile political climate of Beijing and an uncertain future in the communist Peoples Republic of China. The other, Wing Commander James Merchant RAF, goes home to Hong Kong to restore a family business. Through China's turbulent years of the 1950s and '60s, Lee Kwan fights to protect his family from brutal oppression, while in Hong Kong, James Merchant's family empire is in danger of disintegrating. Strong women, the lovers of powerful men, join in the fight for its preservation, and indeed their own, as the Noble House of Merchant becomes a house divided. A house plagued with treachery and haunted by tales of a long lost fortune in gold, supposedly the bequest of an illegal, secret, triad society. From the Korean War to the Cultural Revolution, TWO TIGERS, ONE MOUNTAIN is the long-awaited sequel to THE TIME OF THE DRAGONS and a dramatic story of a family dynasty on a violent course to destruction. From Hong Kong to London; from the foreign embassies of war torn Seoul to the far-east elegance of Singapore; from the narrow lanes of Bejing slums, to the famous banking houses of Geneva, TWO TIGERS, ONE MOUNTAIN, like an opiate dream, is a fabulous tale of the Orient.

Lure the Tiger Out of the Mountains