Why We Should Worry About China and India’s Border Skirmishes
Tags: Médium, BBC, China Vs India, Viral

Three decades ago, the two countries reached an understanding not to fight. But Beijing is now a much stronger power.

Tensions between India and China are not new. The two countries — which share the world’s longest unmarked border — fought a full-fledged war in 1962 and have since engaged in several small skirmishes. Not since 1975 has a bullet been fired across their shared border. As a result, the theory that Sino-Indian clashes are flashes in the pan and unlikely to lead to more extensive fighting has become a widely held consensus. Recent events, however, suggest that escalations are highly possible. Both sides have substantial — and growing — military deployments along a mostly disputed border. And for more than a decade, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has been testing India’s military readiness and political resolve along several strategic areas. Peace can no longer be taken for granted.

The most recent clashes took place earlier this month. On May 5, Indian and Chinese soldiers clashed near the Pangong Tso lake in Ladakh. It is believed that the skirmish took place because the PLA had objected to Indian military patrols in the area. Most of these clashes apparently stem from differing assessments of the location of the so-called Line of Actual Control — the de facto international border. And then on May 9, at an altitude of 15,000 feet, in the Naku La region near Tibet, soldiers from both sides came to blows and threw stones at each other mostly in efforts to induce the Indian troops to move back from the areas they were patrolling. No arms were used but several dozen soldiers were injured, including a senior Indian officer who was required to be airlifted to a hospital.

After a long period of relative quiet along the Sino-Indian border, militarized incidents have come to the fore again. According to the Indian government, the Chinese military crossed into Indian territory 1,025 times between 2016 and 2018. Given that China and India’s borders remain unmarked, such transgressions are likely rooted in how Beijing and New Delhi have different perceptions about the extent of their territories.

In 2017, when Indian and Chinese troops faced off for two months in Doklam, an area claimed by both Bhutan and China, a serious military clash was a distinct possibility. While that particular crisis abated, it is perhaps instructive to see the standoff not as an aberration but as part of a new phase in relations between the two countries. The old phase dates back to 1988, a year after a military skirmish between India and China in the Sumdorong Chu Valley in Arunachal Pradesh, when Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi visited his counterpart Deng Xiaoping in Beijing to mend ties. The two leaders agreed to establish a forward-looking relationship even as important issues such as the border dispute were temporarily set aside. The reason for this pragmatism was rooted in economic and strategic factors: Both China and India needed a stable external environment to promote domestic economic development. China was already a decade into the dramatic economic reforms that Deng had initiated, while Gandhi’s India had also embarked on a similar path, albeit hesitantly.After a long period of relative quiet along the Sino-Indian border, militarized incidents have come to the fore again

The 1988 compromise between India and China, helped in part by New Delhi’s studious silence on developments within Tibet, was driven by the fact that the two countries were near equals on the world stage. According to the World Bank, India’s gross domestic product was $297 billion compared with China’s $312 billion that year, while India’s defense spending, at $10.6 billion, was also close to the Chinese allocation of $11.4 billion.

The material balance of power between China and India has dramatically changed since then. At $13.6 trillion in 2018, China’s GDP is now more than five times India’s $2.7 trillion. Similarly, China spent $261.1 billion on defense expenditure in 2019, almost four times India’s total of $71.1 billion. While India has risen as an economy and a global power in the past three decades, its relative strength to China has in fact greatly declined.

A new economic dynamic means that the underlying bedrock of the Gandhi-Deng bargain — of similar means and goals — is fizzling out. Although it remains unclear when exactly the understanding between New Delhi and Beijing began to fade — most likely after the 2008 global financial crisis — China has become far more assertive in its foreign affairs in recent years, from artificial-island-building activities in the South China Sea to its muscular diplomacy amid the coronavirus pandemic. Indeed, some scholars have argued that an impending power transition is underway between China and the United States, the current global hegemon. While New Delhi has also become a more assertive player in global politics its rise has not been of much concern to the United States.

China and India’s recent border clashes look increasingly worrying in the context of these changing power dynamics. The Gandhi-Deng bargain paved the way for a number of border management agreements (including the 1993 and 1996 agreements related to confidence-building measures and the 2005 agreement on the political parameters guiding boundary negotiations). More recently, high-profile summits between the two countries’ top leaders — in Wuhan and in Mamallapuram — have played an important role in managing the overall relationship. However, even as the 1988 deal allowed relative tranquility along their border and promoted commercial links between China and India, none of their outstanding issues — including the border dispute — were actually resolved.

China and India find themselves in an “extraordinarily complex relationship,” according to Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, India’s foreign minister. In addition to the border dispute, some of the core issues in the Sino-Indian rivalry include Tibet (the presence of the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan government-in-exile, and tens of thousands of Tibetan exiles in India), the burgeoning China-Pakistan partnership, and the two countries’ overlapping spheres of influence in Asia. These issues have become more salient in the context of the two countries’ simultaneous but asymmetric rising power.While India has risen as an economy and a global power in the past three decades, its relative strength to China has in fact greatly declined

China and India’s material capabilities remain in flux; China continues to outstrip India along most axes of power even as New Delhi seeks to boost its own capabilities. According to the World Bank, India recorded higher growth rates than China every year between 2014 and 2018. While the long-term economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic remains unclear, India’s smaller economy and marginally faster growth rates mean that it has the potential to narrow its power gap with China — at least in the long term. In other words, India is the only major power that is rising with respect to China — even as China grows faster than other major powers such as Japan and the United States.

In addition to accruing power domestically, India is also building strong strategic partnerships with China’s other rivals, especially the United States and Japan. Meanwhile, a rising China has stabilized its northern borders with Russia and is working to undermine the United States’ primacy in the East Asian maritime commons through the modernization of its military and its push to build islands. This basically leaves only one border issue with a rival unresolved: namely, the Sino-Indian border. It is hardly surprising that it is exerting periodic pressure on India along this front — a trend that is only likely to escalate.

China-India border: Why tensions are rising between the neighbours

The armies of the world’s two most populous nations are locked in a tense face-off high in the Himalayas, which has the potential to escalate as they seek to further their strategic goals.

Officials quoted by the Indian media say thousands of Chinese troops have forced their way into the Galwan valley in Ladakh, in the disputed Kashmir region.

Indian leaders and military strategists have clearly been left stunned.

The reports say that in early May, Chinese forces put up tents, dug trenches and moved heavy equipment several kilometres inside what had been regarded by India as its territory. The move came after India built a road several hundred kilometres long connecting to a high-altitude forward air base which it reactivated in 2008.

The message from China appears clear to observers in Delhi — this is not a routine incursion.

“The situation is serious. The Chinese have come into territory which they themselves accepted as part of India. It has completely changed the status quo,” says Ajai Shukla, an Indian military expert who served as a colonel in the army.

China takes a different view, saying it’s India which has changed facts on the ground.

Reports in the Indian media said soldiers from the two sides clashed on at least two occasions in Ladakh. Stand-offs are reported in at least three locations: the Galwan valley; Hot Springs; and Pangong lake to the south.

by bbc

India and China share a border more than 3,440km (2,100 miles) long and have overlapping territorial claims. Their border patrols often bump into each other, resulting in occasional scuffles but both sides insist no bullet has been fired in four decades.

Their armies — two of the world’s largest — come face to face at many points. The poorly demarcated Line of Actual Control (LAC) separates the two sides. Rivers, lakes and snowcaps mean the line separating soldiers can shift and they often come close to confrontation.

The current military tension is not limited to Ladakh. Soldiers from the two sides are also eyeball-to-eyeball in Naku La, on the border between China and the north-eastern Indian state of Sikkim. Earlier this month they reportedly came to blows .

And there’s a row over a new map put out by Nepal, too, which accuses India of encroaching on its territory by building a road connecting with China.

Why are tensions rising now?

There are several reasons — but competing strategic goals lie at the root, and both sides blame each other.

“The traditionally peaceful Galwan River has now become a hotspot because it is where the LAC is closest to the new road India has built along the Shyok River to Daulet Beg Oldi (DBO) — the most remote and vulnerable area along the LAC in Ladakh,” Mr Shukla says.

India’s decision to ramp up infrastructure seems to have infuriated Beijing.

Image copyrightAFP

Image captionThere have been protests in Nepal against India’s new road link

Chinese state-run media outlet Global Times said categorically: “ The Galwan Valley region is Chinese territory , and the local border control situation was very clear.”

“According to the Chinese military, India is the one which has forced its way into the Galwan valley. So, India is changing the status quo along the LAC — that has angered the Chinese,” says Dr Long Xingchun, president of the Chengdu Institute of World Affairs (CIWA), a think tank.

Michael Kugelman, deputy director of the Asia programme at the Wilson Center, another think tank, says this face-off is not routine. He adds China’s “massive deployment of soldiers is a show of strength”.

The road could boost Delhi’s capability to move men and material rapidly in case of a conflict.

Differences have been growing in the past year over other areas of policy too.

When India controversially decided to end Jammu and Kashmir’s limited autonomy in August last year, it also redrew the region’s map.

The new federally-administered Ladakh included Aksai Chin, an area India claims but China controls.

Senior leaders of India’s Hindu-nationalist BJP government have also been talking about recapturing Pakistan-administered Kashmir. A strategic road, the Karakoram highway, passes through this area that connects China with its long-term ally Pakistan. Beijing has invested about $60bn (£48bn) in Pakistan’s infrastructure — the so-called China Pakistan Economic corridor (CPEC) — as part of its Belt and Road Initiative and the highway is key to transporting goods to and from the southern Pakistani port of Gwadar. The port gives China a foothold in the Arabian Sea.

In addition, China was unhappy when India initially banned all exports of medical and protective equipment to shore up its stocks soon after the coronavirus pandemic started earlier this year.

How dangerous could this get?

“We routinely see both armies crossing the LAC — it’s fairly common and such incidents are resolved at the local military level. But this time, the build-up is the largest we have ever seen,” says former Indian diplomat P Stobdan, an expert in Ladakh and India-China affairs.

“The stand-off is happening at some strategic areas that are important for India. If Pangong lake is taken, Ladakh can’t be defended. If the Chinese military is allowed to settle in the strategic valley of Shyok, then the Nubra valley and even Siachen can be reached.”

In what seems to be an intelligence failure, India seems to have been caught off guard again. According to Indian media accounts, the country’s soldiers were outnumbered and surrounded when China swiftly diverted men and machines from a military exercise to the border region.

This triggered alarm in Delhi — and India has limited room for manoeuvre. It can either seek to persuade Beijing to withdraw its troops through dialogue or try to remove them by force. Neither is an easy option.

“China is the world’s second-largest military power. Technologically it’s superior to India. Infrastructure on the other side is very advanced. Financially, China can divert its resources to achieve its military goals, whereas the Indian economy has been struggling in recent years, and the coronavirus crisis has worsened the situation,” says Ajai Shukla.

What next?

History holds difficult lessons for India. It suffered a humiliating defeat during the 1962 border conflict with China. India says China occupies 38,000km of its territory. Several rounds of talks in the last three decades have failed to resolve the boundary issues.

China already controls the Aksai Chin area further east of Ladakh and this region, claimed by India, is strategically important for Beijing as it connects its Xinjiang province with western Tibet.

n 2017 India and China were engaged in a similar stand-off lasting more than two months in Doklam plateau, a tri-junction between India, China and Bhutan.

India objected to China building a road in a region claimed by Bhutan. The Chinese stood firm. Within six months, Indian media reported that Beijing had built a permanent all-weather military complex there.

This time, too, talks are seen as the only way forward — both countries have so much to lose in a military conflict.

“China has no intention to escalate tensions and I think India also doesn’t want a conflict. But the situation depends on both sides. The Indian government should not be guided by the nationalistic media comments,” says Dr Long Xingchun of the CIWA in Chengdu. “Both countries have the ability to solve the dispute through high-level talks.”

Chinese media have given hardly any coverage to the border issue, which is being interpreted as a possible signal that a route to talks will be sought.

Pratyush Rao, associate director for South Asia at Control Risks consultancy, says both sides have “a clear interest in prioritising their economic recovery” and avoiding military escalation.

“It is important to recognise that both sides have a creditable record of maintaining relative peace and stability along their disputed border.”