The series of intrusions by Chinese soldiers into Indian territory in recent years, including the one in the Arunachal Pradesh sector last week, is being seen as an attempt on China’s part to create a new Line of Actual Control (LAC) that puts it in an advantageous position along the disputed border with India.
Experts say China is likely to push the envelope at the LAC to the extent possible to test India’s resolve to resist.
The LAC, a concept advanced by China in 1959, is the line up to which each side exercises control on the ground. But the line has never been formally agreed upon by the two sides.
In the 1990s, an attempt began to clarify the LAC and agree upon a shared conception of the line. But China walked back from it and has since refused to clarify the LAC.
On December 20, India and China held the 17th round of Corps Commander-level talks at the Chushul-Moldo border meeting point on the Chinese side, with a focus on resolving issues in eastern Ladakh.
It came five months after their last meeting at the 16th round of talks in July.
“Building on the progress made after the last meeting on 17th July 2022, the two sides exchanged views on the resolution of the relevant issues along the LAC in the western Sector (eastern Ladakh) in an open and constructive manner," the Defence Ministry said in a statement on December 22.
They agreed to maintain dialogue through military and diplomatic channels and work out a mutually acceptable resolution of the remaining issues at the earliest.
But despite the “free and in-depth discussions” to find a resolution to the remaining issues for restoration of normality along the LAC, there was no outcome from the talks.
Apart from agreeing to maintain “security and stability” on the ground in the western Sector, the Chinese failed to give any assurance about when they will disengage from the remaining friction points.
The talks came in the wake of fresh clashes between Chinese and Indian troops in the Yangtze area of Arunachal Pradesh’s Tawang sector on December 9.
Indian and Chinese troops had also clashed in June 2020 in the Galwan valley in Ladakh, in which 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers were killed.
But if the Galwan incident had alarmed observers, being the first violent clash leading to deaths at the LAC since 1975, the Yangtze episode has caused serious worries in the Indian establishment about China’s intentions.
“If there was an assumption that the face-off between Indian and Chinese troops was limited to the Ladakh sector of the India-China border, the latest reports from Arunachal Pradesh are a wake-up call,” said former Indian Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran.
In an opinion piece Saran said that China was engaging in a form of coercive diplomacy, engaging Indian border troops in low-intensity clashes without intending to trigger a war.
India and China have been engaged in a military stand-off since April 2020, when the Chinese army unilaterally tried to alter the status quo at the LAC.
India has been demanding that Chinese soldiers withdraw and return to the positions they held before the military face-off.
But even after 17 rounds of talks, the status quo ante that India has been asking for has not been restored.
The talks have succeeded in disengagement — or moving troops from an eyeball-to-eyeball situation to positions a few kilometres away — without any breakthrough in the resolution of the border crisis.
There is speculation in strategic circles that there has not been much progress in the talks. This has led many to wonder if the disengagement has benefitted India.
Both sides have withdrawn troops from Pangong Lake, Gogra, and the Gogra-Hot Springs area of eastern Ladakh. But there is no sign of the situation in the Depsang and Demchok regions being resolved.
The disengagements have led to the creation of buffer zones, which prevents either side from patrolling those areas. Experts consider this disadvantageous for India as these were areas India patrolled in the past, not the Chinese. The buffer has now stopped both sides — an arrangement that has worked out in China’s favour.
Commentators think the developments suggest the emergence of a new status quo. They see the recent developments as an attempt on China’s part to express displeasure with India’s external policies.
The incident at the Yangtse ridge took place within weeks of joint military exercises by India and the United States in Uttarakhand — about 100 kilometres from the Sino-Indian border.
The Chinese side saw the exercise as a violation of peace and tranquillity agreements between the two sides. But India categorically dismissed the Chinese protest.
The Indo-US joint exercise did not act as a deterrent to China. The Chinese action in Arunachal Pradesh was an attempt to warn India that it could threaten Delhi at multiple places along the LAC, and that it did not care much about its security partnership with the US.
Experts warn that China’s desire to permanently change the status quo in key areas on the LAC will lead to more turbulence at the border. They suggest India should take counter-measures like swift ingress into the Chinese side of the LAC in response to Chinese incursions.
India had adopted such tactics in Doklam and at South Pangong Tso and it gave them leverage in their negotiations with the Chinese to resolve the earlier stand-offs.
However, such a move has the possibility of escalating the situation at the LAC, and can lead to an armed confrontation between the two sides.
At a time when India is hosting both the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and the Group of Twenty summits to project itself as a global power, the situation at the LAC could prove to be a huge political challenge for the government.
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