India China Face Off – Border Dispute #aksaichin #mcmahonline #pangong #indo-china
Channel: MentorTalk
Date: 02/06/2020

India China Face Off – Border Dispute

In August 2017, Indian and Chinese forces near Pangong Tso threw rocks at each other. On September 11, 2019, People's Liberation Army troops confronted Indian troops on the northern bank of Pangong Lake. On May 5-6, 2020, there was a face-off between about 250 Indian and Chinese troops near Pangong Tso lake. Authority and legitimacy over two fairly large pieces of territories and several smaller ones have been the subject matter of dispute between India and China for decades now. These two larger contested territories being Aksai Chin and McMahon Line. The 1962 War between Indian and China was fought in both of these areas. I Hemant Batra shall be taking you through some important facts connected with the disputed territories between India and China so keep watching this video. 
Hemant Batra, Hemant K Batra, Mentor Talk, #HemantBatra, #MentorTalk

Do you know that the Sikh Empire of the Punjab region had invaded and occupied Ladakh making it part of the state of Jammu in 1834? In 1841, through an armed exercise, they conquered Tibet. Chinese forces later entered Ladakh and sieged Leh. However, after being stopped by the Sikh forces, the Chinese and the Sikhs signed a treaty in September 1842, which specified no intrusion or intervention in the other country's boundaries. During the colonial rule, the British took over Ladakh. The British and Chinese accepted that a traditional border was recognised and defined by natural elements, and the border was not delineated or defined. The boundaries at the two extremes, Pangong Lake and Karakoram Pass, were relatively well-defined, but the Aksai Chin area in between lay largely undefined. During the British rule, there was a civil servant named W. H. Johnson, with the Survey of India. He proposed the "Johnson Line" in 1865, which put Aksai Chin in Jammu and Kashmir.
Upon independence of India in 1947, Aksai Chin was part of India and the government of India fixed its official boundary as per Johnson line. 
Kindly see this image. It is interesting. See the black grey dotted line which is India’s claim based on the Johnson line. Then see china’s claim into the Indian territory based on the 1962 forced advancement. See line dotted pink black grey. Then see the blue line which is the one that separated Indian and Chinese forces in 1962. It is complicated with claims and counterclaims.
The other alleged disputed territory lies south of the McMahon Line. It was formerly referred to as the North-East Frontier Agency and is now called Arunachal Pradesh. The McMahon Line is the demarcation line between the Tibetan region of China and the North-east region of India proposed by British colonial administrator Sir Henry McMahon at the 1914 Simla Convention signed between British and Tibetan representatives. 
Kindly see the image The McMahon Line forms the northern boundary of Arunachal Pradesh (shown in red) in the eastern Himalayas administered by India but claimed by China. The area was the focus of the 1962 War between China and India.
It is presently the active boundary between China and India, while its legal position is disputed by the Chinese government on the ground that Tibet was not a sovereign state and therefore did not have the power to conclude treaties.
Interestingly, The 14th Dalai Lama did not initially recognise India's sovereignty over Arunachal Pradesh. In fact in  2003, he said that "Arunachal Pradesh was actually part of Tibet". In January 2007, however, he said that both the Tibetan government and Britain recognized the McMahon Line in 1914. In June 2008, he unequivocally recognized for the first time that "Arunachal Pradesh was a part of India under the agreement signed by Tibetan and British representatives". 
An agreement to resolve the dispute between the two nations was concluded in 1996, including "confidence-building measures" and a mutually agreed Line of Actual Control. In 2014, India proposed China should acknowledge a "One India" policy to resolve the border dispute. However, with the recent muscle-flexing and high tension between the two nations, I hope 1962 does not repeat.