China will reach the Indian Ocean

Maps show that China has everything to gain by getting access to the Indian Ocean.  She's walled into the South China Sea by a string of strong island neighbours with alliances to the United States.  The lion's share of its goods have to travel back and forth through the narrow Malacca Straits over which it has no direct control. It's paid for oil and gas lines running through Burma/Myanmar. (Gas complete July 29th and oil a couple months behind). It's paid for major ports in Sri Lanka and Pakistan.  There are frequent border provocations between China and India and you have to wonder why bother with these Himalayan high spots. Lhasa, the capital of Tibet is close to India's bottleneck between Bangladesh and Tibet. It's hardly a dozen miles from Bangladesh to Nepal and maybe fifty miles from Bangladesh to Bhutan. That's almost indefensible and if Bangladesh was a strong supporter of a decision by China to interdict transport there, the east of India could easily be conquered.    Bangladesh already uses Chinese tanks in its army, frigates in its navy and jets in its air force.

Lhasa, Calcutta and the two bottlenecks highlighted.

This is strictly speculation, but if I were an Indian general tasked with defining worst case scenarios, I'd be losing sleep over that bottleneck of land bet
ween Bangladesh and the Tibetan highlands.

From the Economist via Via Media