MC EXCLUSIVE Beyond Pakistan: How China’s Shaksgam build-up creates a new Siachen threat for India | Explained

China opens new route to Siachen

For decades, India’s military planning around the Siachen Glacier, the world’s highest battlefield, rested on a single assumption, that any threat would come from Pakistan. Professor Kondapalli, a leading China scholar at Jawaharlal Nehru University, believes that assumption no longer holds.

What is unfolding in the Shaksgam Valley, he argues, marks a deeper strategic shift, one that introduces a Chinese approach to Siachen, something India was never prepared for.

A new approach to an old battlefield

Siachen has always been difficult terrain, but its access routes were well understood. India guarded against Pakistan’s positions across the glacier. China, until now, remained geographically distant from the battlefield.

That distance is now shrinking. “Now Siachen Glacier can be approached from Indian side and Pakistani side. In Skardu airfield, they have that provision. But today China is planning to have an approach from the Chinese side.”

This, Professor Kondapalli says, is the real concern. “So we were prepared for the Pakistani contingency, but not the Chinese contingency. So this opens up a new road, and that is the major concern,” he said.

The change is not sudden. It is the result of a slow but deliberate transformation of infrastructure in the Shaksgam Valley — territory that India considers part of Jammu and Kashmir.

From a mountain road to a military corridor

China’s access through this region dates back decades. The original all-weather road linking Xinjiang to Pakistan-occupied Kashmir was completed in the mid-1980s.

“The all-weather road has been built in 1986, long ago.” This road, now known as the Karakoram Highway, runs from Kashgar through Mintaka Pass and Khunjerab Pass, down into Gilgit-Baltistan and onward to Islamabad.

“So Kashgar to Mintaka Pass, Kunjerab Pass, and then to Gilgit-Baltistan to POK and Islamabad. That is the rough route of this all-weather road.”

What has changed, Kondapalli explains, is not the existence of the road but its scale and purpose.

“What CPEC did was to expand this into 40 meters wide. Forty meters is quite wide.”

Why width matters in mountain warfare

A 40-metre-wide highway in the high Himalayas is not just about smoother transport. Kondapalli points out that such dimensions dramatically change military possibilities.

“Forty meters wide means even aircraft can land.” To underline the point, he offers a striking comparison. Hea says, “We landed some aircraft on the Delhi-Agra highway. That is not even 40 meters wide.”

In other words, the Shaksgam corridor is no longer just a road. It is a potential air-capable military artery, allowing rapid movement of forces and equipment.

“So aircraft landing means that you're taking the war into offensive posture.”

Workers, troops or both?

Another layer of ambiguity surrounds who is actually present on the ground. Kondapalli recalls an early warning from India’s military leadership.

“In 2009, the then chief of army staff, General Deepak Kapoor, mentioned that China is planning to deploy 36,000 workers in the CPEC projects.”

More than a decade later, the question remains unanswered.

“Now we don't know whether they are actually workers or troops. So that is the second red herring.”

He points out that in a region where civilian and military infrastructure often overlap, such uncertainty itself becomes a strategic problem.

Underground networks and forward positioning

The concern goes beyond surface infrastructure. Kondapalli says China is also building below ground.

“What I hear is that they are having an underground defence network.”

This matters because proximity is power in high-altitude warfare. Unlike India, which would have to move forces over long distances, China’s positioning brings it right to the edge.

“They're not coming from Lhasa, which is 500–600 kilometres away. They're coming straight on the border and you're not there on the border.”

Outflanking Siachen from the north

Taken together, roads, potential airstrips, underground defences and manpower create something new, the ability to outflank India’s Siachen deployments from the north.

Kondapalli warns that such presence can quietly translate into territorial claims.

“So they can also expand their claims further. If you're on the border, residing on the border, and the other side, Indians are not on the border, you can occupy some land and say that these are mine.”

He is clear about the legal status of the region. “Shaksgam Valley was never part of China,” he says.

Yet infrastructure, once normalised, has a way of reshaping the realities on the ground.

A silent shift in the Siachen equation

For Kondapalli, what is happening in Shaksgam Valley is not a tactical manoeuvre but a strategic reconfiguration.

“So why now is because of this civil-military infrastructure project in Shaksgam.”

A road built in 1986 has evolved, under CPEC, into a wide, dual-use corridor capable of supporting aircraft, large troop movements, and sustained military presence. That evolution, he suggests, quietly alters the balance around Siachen, turning a once two-sided contest into a potential dual-front challenge for India in the high Himalayas.