India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s maintaining a safe distance from Chinese President Xi Jinping at the recently held (September 2022) Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Uzbekistan’s Samarkand is a pointer to the continued distrust India has for its northern neighbour China, that was compounded by the June 2020 incursion incident in India’s Galwan Valley by Chinese troops.
PM Modi and President Jinping shared the world stage for the first time after the clashes in the Galwan Valley. The tension along the Indo-China border was evident from the distance that the two leaders maintained from each other at the summit.
This is accentuated by the fact that there was no tryst between Indian and Chinese representatives on the sidelines of the 77th UN General Assembly session held between 13 September 2022 and 27 September 2022 at the UN headquarters in New York, US.
India and China share a 3,488-km-long border with each other, and much of it is under dispute. Each side currently has deployed around 50,000 to 60,000 troops along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh. The LAC is the de-facto border between the two countries.
Today, China continues to occupy vast swathes of Indian territory in eastern Ladakh. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) recently took possession of Patrolling Point (PP) 15 in Hot Springs and PP17A near Gogra post in Ladakh, which are claimed by India. And has amassed additional troops across the border, armed with artillery, air defences, combat drones and heavy vehicles.
China’s territorial excessiveness and aggression is also exhibited by its opening up additional fronts along the border with India’s states of Uttarakhand, Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim. China claims 83,743 square km of the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh that borders the LAC across from the Tibet Autonomous Region. Since China annexed Tibet in 1950, it has laid stakes on Arunachal Pradesh, calling it ‘southern Tibet’ and hence, its territory.
In October 2021, some 200 PLA soldiers came close to attacking Indian positions in the Tawang region of Arunachal Pradesh. However, they turned back without any scuffle or damage to Indian property.
Most border demarcations with India are contentious, as far as China is concerned, despite at least three border agreements in the past. In 2017, China trespassed into the Doklam plateau, which is divided between India, China and Bhutan.
In 1962, in the only war between the two countries, that lasted for around four weeks, China captured the 37,244-square-km Aksai Chin, that India still claims as part of Ladakh. Following the skirmish in Doklam, the PLA has constructed military infrastructure and permanently stationed troops there.
The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) made a surprise incursion in April 2020 across the Line of Actual Control in Ladakh. To destabilise relations further, the Galwan clashes between the two sides mid-June 2020 saw blood shedding for the first time on the China frontier in nearly five decades. India imputed that these incidents violated the spectrum of bilateral agreements negotiated by the two countries over the last three decades to bring calm to the disputed frontier.
India also felt it was deceived by China’s previous intentions to resolve the boundary issue through dialogue, invoking distrust in New Delhi towards Beijing. As a result, a severe chill has descended on the relations between the two Asian regional powers.
Following the Chinese incursion and violence across the LAC in the contested areas of Ladakh in 2020, India had imposed a spate of restrictions on Chinese goods and investments. India then avowedly reiterated that it was not business as usual between the two countries, making it explicit that normalisation of relations would be impinged by the situation at the border.
In late August 2022, India’s External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said, at the launch of the Asia Society Policy Institute, that the state of the border will determine the state of the India-China relationship. He also said that for ties to return to a positive trajectory and remain sustainable, they must be based on the three mutuals — mutual sensitivity, mutual respect, and mutual interest.
In an implicit allusion to China, he said: “We can reasonably expect Asia to continue rising because the economic and demographic trends point in that direction. How divided it would be depends on how well or badly its fissures are managed. And this, in turn, would demand adherence to laws, norms and rules. For a start, sovereignty and territorial integrity will have to be respected. Initiatives that impact the region must be consultative, not unilateral.”
India is currently making it clear that it views China with circumspection and it is not impressed with the latter’s recent overtures. Many in New Delhi believe that the latest disengagement on the border, which China acceded to, was merely an attempt by Xi to have the SCO proceed without an incident and to mollify and incite Modi to attend. And they are wary that China will not seek any resolution to border disputes without garnering an undue advantage for itself. That the latest disengagement is neither a permanent withdrawal nor the augury of an abiding disposition.
The fact is, India perceives all border disputes as Chinese aggression on its own territory and any disengagement will incur an Indian pushback from its own territory.
India has continued to heighten its strategic deterrence measures against China since 2020, even as China has been relentlessly building infrastructure at a hectic pace along its border with India, to enable the quick mobilisation of troops in case of battle. China is now constructing a second bridge in an area held by it around the strategically key Pangong Tso lake in eastern Ladakh, provoking India’s denigration.
The Chinese have been building dozens of large weather-proof structures in eastern Ladakh for their troops to stay in during winter. New helipads, wider airstrips, new barracks, new surface-to-air missile sites and radar locations have also been reported by Indian media.
In turn, the Indian government said it has stepped up construction of border infrastructure, especially since 2014, including roads and bridges, to protect its security interests.
The Indian upgradation is agitating the Chinese PLA that, over the past four months, has been flying its fighter jets, including J-11s, close to the LAC. Cases of violation of the 10 km Confidence Building Major (CBM) line have been reported. This is being seen as an effort to check Indian defence mechanisms in the region.
On 23 October 2021, China’s National People’s Congress, exceptionably to its neighbours, approved a new border law asserting that the sovereignty and territorial integrity of China are “sacred and inviolable”. The new border law, which became operational from 1 January 2022, stipulated that “the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the People’s Republic of China are sacred and inviolable”.
The border law came not without India’s reaction to it. India protested China’s new law blaming China for its “unilateral” decision to bring about a new land border law and said it was a matter of concern as the legislation could have implications on the existing bilateral pacts on border management and on the overall boundary question.
Apparently, China’s brazenness comes from its aggressive line of reckoning that it has the right to be truculent while others do not. In fact, China has completely encircled India by wooing all of India’s South Asian neighbours with its economic, diplomatic and military might.
But it is not only India’s immediate vicinity that China wants to lay its stake on. In June 2022, Chinese and Cambodian officials signed a secret deal for China to set up a naval base at the Ream base in Cambodia, which was earlier an area where the US operated military facilities.
China is increasingly eyeing new military bases in Indian Ocean-rim countries, while adding to its pre-existing facility in Djibouti. It is reportedly seeking military footholds in Thailand, Myanmar, Indonesia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Kenya, Seychelles and Tanzania, apart from Cambodia. And is reportedly building a port facility with possible military uses in the United Arab Emirates. In contrast, India, attempting to contend with China’s expansionism in the Indian Ocean, has naval bases in Madagascar, Mauritius, Seychelles and Singapore.
Apart from endeavouring to gain a mighty foothold in Indian Ocean coastal states, China is all set to make its military presence in the waters themselves.
China has been building a sizeable number of strategic warships that are aimed at establishing itself as the dominant power in the Indian Ocean. Around 80 percent of the global seaborne trade transits through the Indian Ocean.
China aims at straddling these seas, by taking command of the critical space stretching from the Malacca Strait to the Bab-el-Mandeb strait. This dominance in the Indian Ocean could enable China to hold the US and its allies at ransom, by threatening maritime shipping and even stymieing the US military from accessing the Indian Ocean in the event of a war in Asia. This becomes pertinent because China has been increasingly assertive about its claims on Taiwan and the South China Sea, and its influence on the Indo-Pacific, and it may become exigent for the US to move its forces from Europe, to the Middle East, to the Pacific.
In this context, India is increasingly becoming an invaluable counterpoise to China from the US perspective in its hegemonistic tussle with China.
US Admiral Mike Gilday, chief of naval operations, told an in-person seminar hosted by the Heritage Foundation in Washington in August 2022: “The Indian Ocean battlespace is becoming increasingly more important for us…The fact that India and China currently have a bit of a skirmish along their border … it’s strategically important.”
“They now force China to not only look east, toward the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait, but they now have to be looking over their shoulder at India,” he said.
In June 2022, as the leaders of the Quad — the US, Japan, India and Australia — were meeting in Japan, former Pentagon official Elbridge Colby told Nikkei Asia that while India would not directly contribute in a local battle over Taiwan, it could draw China’s attention to the Himalayan border.
“What the US and Japan need India to do is to be as strong as possible in South Asia and effectively draw Chinese attention so that they have a major second-front problem,” said Colby, the principal author of the 2018 National Defense Strategy under former President Donald Trump. India, in the meantime, draws the same benefit from China’s difficulties in facing a strong US-Japan alliance around Taiwan, he said.
The US military is planning to hold high-altitude ground training with India less than 100 kilometers away from the South Asian country’s disputed border with China — which would put the exercises closer to Chinese territory than ever before. The timing and location of the drills are probably intended to send a strong message to the Chinese Communist Party. This is seen as underscoring the potential second front for China.
The mountaintop drills are set to take place from 18-31 October 2022. The maneuvers, which will be part of the annual Yudh Abhyas (War Practice) series of Indo-US military exercises, will take place near Auli in Uttarakhand, a state that borders Tibet to the north and has been the site of what New Delhi describes as “numerous incursions” into Indian territory by Chinese PLA troops.
In an opinion piece titled “India has a stake in Taiwan’s defence,” columnist Brahma Chellaney wrote in Nikkei Asia that Indian activities in the Himalayas could help Taiwan’s defence. It would be “tying down a complete Chinese theater force, which could otherwise be employed against the island,” he wrote.
But such a two-front strategy must be coordinated with the US, he added.
In turn, India’s ambiguity on the issue of Taiwan has Beijing annoyed. India has consistently abstained from reiterating the One-China policy, itself perceiving Taiwan as a security leverage against China. And Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s echoing the Organization of Islamic Cooperation’s stance on Kashmir’s right to self-determination in March this year (2022), has further fanned Indian reservations.
India perceives Taiwan not only as an economic partner but also as strategic to its interests. This, as India feels vulnerable that China may launch into a short war with it rather than invade Taiwan, to grow feelings of nationalism within its boundaries, especially in times of internal economic turmoil and a restive population. As a result, many in India, and India-sympathisers overseas, feel India should increase its defence expenditure to counter China’s own burgeoning defence spend.
The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) estimated that Chinese defence-related expenditure actually reached USD240 billion in 2019 — nearly 40 percent higher than the official budget (USD183.5 billion). In 2022, the Chinese government announced a defence budget of USD229.5 billion, the highest year-on-year increase (of 7.1%) ever. In contrast, India’s defence budget in 2020 was USD 72.9 billion.
To India’s disadvantage is the heightened amity between Russia and China, that will ensue in India’s increasing dependence on the US for its military needs. Russian arms are less expensive than American arms, and are suited to India’s budgetary requirements. India’s inclusion in the US-led Quad and China’s rhetoric in favour of Russia in the Russian war in Ukraine has pushed India’s traditional ally Russia even closer to China, much to India’s chagrin.
For India, it will simply have to raise its defence budget for as long as necessary in pursuit of costlier American hardware to keep in check a war-ready China.
For China, its triggering off hostilities with India at the height of the pandemic in 2020 while it was already on alert in the Western Pacific was enough notice to the US that it could concurrently mobilise on two fronts, even in times of distress (like the pandemic). And that it has the economic wherewithal to effectuate it as well.
montes-musings.blog 
Fantastic research Minte
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