New Delhi: The bi-lateral relationship between India and China is under visible stress and strain over a complex set of contested issues that relate to 'territoriality' and this pertains to recent developments across the 4000 km long 'un-demarcated' LoAC (line of actual control).
Currently, the troop level along the contested LoAC is much higher than the norm and Indian media reports refer to 1200 to 1500 PLA soldiers engaged in almost 'eyeball-to-eyeball' face-offs at five locations in eastern Ladakh including the northern bank of the Pangong lake and the Galwan river valley.
However it is encouraging, in a modest manner that neither India nor China has made any official statement that would be deemed provocative or intemperate. But will this prudence and restraint last for a gradual de-escalation of the tension?
In an extension of this political and military discord, Beijing has also announced that it will ‘evacuate’ its citizens who are stranded in India due to the COVID-19 lockdown from next week – that is early June. This is seen as a stand-alone provision, being made for the few thousands of Chinese citizens currently in India even while more than a million Chinese nationals are ‘stranded’ in other parts of the world.
Thus this period of dissonance and discord in the bi-lateral relationship between the world’s two largest nations (by way of demography) merits preliminary review, both for the trigger that led to this impasse and the likely scenarios that may unfold in the near future.
India and China attained independence in 1947 and 1949 respectively and while they are both old civilizations with a history of having been empires in their time, they are relatively young modern nation-states. Colonial rule led to its cartographic divisions in the 19th century and consequently while they had frontiers as part of the colonial compulsion, consensually agreed borders remained elusive for both India and China.
Both nations engaged in a brief war in October 1962 over a complex territorial dispute that ended with no resolution and almost seven decades later, the uneasy stasis continues. Hence both nations have a LoAC – the line of actual control that is notional; and a claim line – the limit to which their armies carry out patrols. Thus there is a CCL – Chinese Claim Line and its Indian counterpart and while it would be logical for both sides to have their claim lines behind the LoAC pending final political resolution – the ground reality is very different.
Assertive patrolling by the troops on the ground along the LoAC has led to tense situations in the past but to the credit of both sides, since an agreement reached in the Rajiv Gandhi period and later formalized in the tenure of PM Narasimha Rao (1993). Thus despite the sizable troop deployment in the vicinity of the LoAC by both nations – not a bullet has been fired in anger for more than 25 years. Three major incidents of military tension along the LoAC took place over the last decade – Depsang (2013), Chumar (2014), and Doklam (2017) but each was resolved through the politico-diplomatic route.
The current chronology of events reported in India suggests that in the third week of April PLA troops were fortifying their positions along the LoAC in Ladakh in an unobtrusive manner (?) and that this was noticed only later. Shades of Kargil? By early May this PLA incursion/transgression spread to other locations and PLA numbers went up to 5000 plus. India has adopted what is referred to as mirror deployment – meaning that a similar Indian army response was mounted to match the PLA transgression and the situation is now brittle.
In essence, this stand-off appears to be different in terms of both quantity and quality - meaning that the number of places in eastern Ladakh where the transgression has taken place and the number of Chinese troops/ personnel involved is of a much higher order than what had been evidenced in the past.
The qualitative strand is in the nature of the location/area where this has taken place in Ladakh, which has 489 km of the LoAC. The Galwan valley for example is an area where historically, there has never been any kind of similar transgression/assertion of patrolling rights for decades and the multiple incursions since April point to a higher level of planning than the routine tactical probes by local troops that take place daily. The latter for the record are in the order of 600 plus on an annual basis along the entire length of the LoAC.
Thus the current stand-off has the potential to become quite 'serious' and warrants speedy political resolution. The reason for this Chinese move is opaque. My conjecture is that some of the triggers could be more aggressive patrolling by one or both sides; and improved surveillance that may have noted the build-up of infrastructure/troop deployment by the other, which may not have been noted earlier.
Furthermore, there has been a certain pattern in the PLA’s creeping assertiveness - whether in the South China Sea apropos ASEAN nations or along the LoAC with India. Under President Xi Jinping there has been a greater focus by Beijing on the sanctity of 'territoriality' for China and this is most intense in relation to Taiwan.
Whether the current stand-off will escalate to a higher level of military tension remains moot. Both nations have similar narratives about the nature of the territorial 'transgression' and emotive nationalism and a hyper-active audiovisual media abetted by social media-warriors could aggravate the situation.
Even as the COVID-19 pandemic poses a serious challenge to the political apex in both countries, it is hoped that prudence and restraint will prevail.
