The Kadavul Temple in Hawaii was amongst the thousands of Saivite temples celebrating the festival of Thai Poosam this month.

The Kadavul temple is attached to the Kauai Aadheenam or monastery, which traces its guru lineage directly from Jaffna’s well known sage Yogaswami.

The guru lineage is named Kailasa Parampara, after the Kailasa mountain range in the Himalayas where the earliest of these yogis is said to have meditated.

Kauai is the oldest of Hawaii’s main islands. The Kauai Aadheenam was established in 1973, by Sivaya Subramuniyaswami, an American priest initiated by Yogaswami in Jaffna in 1949.

In 1986, the World Religious Parliament in New Delhi honored Sivaya Subramuniyaswami as one of the five Hindu spiritual leaders outside India who had most dynamically promoted Hinduism in the previous 25 years. He passed away in 2001.

Here’s something for pundits of US-China military rivalry to think about:

The US giant General Electric, one of the aviation industry’s biggest suppliers of jet engines and airplane technology, is to share its most sophisticated airplane electronics with the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC).

State-owned AVIC also supplies China's military with aircraft and weapons systems.

Avionics are the electronic and computer systems that control an airplane and determine its capabilities.

The Chinese government insists Western companies operating there should be “willing to share technology and know-how.”

However, the G.E.-AVIC avionics joint venture, analysts say, appears to be the deepest relationship yet and involves sharing the most confidential technology.

See reports by the New York Times (NYT) and Wall Street Journal (WSJ).

US President Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao at their bilateral meeting last month in Seoul before the G20 summit . Photo Tim Sloan/AFP/Getty Images

It has become routine in much analysis of international affairs to position China as an opponent of the West (i.e. not just a competitor), and as prioritizing state sovereignty and non-interference in a state’s internal affairs above other international principles.

The one is also often suggested as the explanation for the other.

However, China’s changing role in Sudan over the past two decades demonstrates that neither can be taken as a given.