Is Beijing Planning Another Confrontation With India At The Border Soon?

By Tanmay Kadam

The trajectory of Sino-Indian relations in recent months has raised expectations of a potential thaw between the two countries. Nothing wrong with seeking stable relations with neighbors but New Delhi should exercise caution, as the discourse within the Chinese strategic community has been suggestive of further deterioration of relations in the coming months.

Officials from Indian and China held the 30th meeting of the Working Mechanism for Consultation & Coordination on India-China Border Affairs (WMCC) in New Delhi on July 31st, to discuss the “early resolution of the outstanding issues” in their ongoing stand-off along the Line of Actual Control (LAC).

The meeting comes days after talks held between the Indian External Affairs Minister (EAM) S. Jaishankar and his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi on July 25, on the sidelines of the ASEAN Foreign Ministers' Meeting in Laos, where the two had decided on an “early meeting” of the WMCC for the speedy resolution of the border dispute.

The EAM Jaishankar had expressed hope that the meeting on July 25 would allow the two ministers to “give stronger guidance” to officials to complete the disengagement process which had “cast a shadow” over India-China ties.

Most notably, the meeting between the Indian and Chinese foreign ministers on July 25 was the second such meeting between the two in less than a month, and the occurrence of the 30th WMCC meeting mere days after that is indicative of a sense of urgency in efforts to resolve the border issue.

Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar MetWith The Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi On July 25, On The Sidelines Of  The ASEAN Foreign Ministers' Meeting In Laos. (Image Source: X)

The last WMCC grouping held its meeting in March in Beijing. Although the two sides had managed to realize troop disengagement from five out of the seven flashpoints in between 2020 and 2022, subsequent rounds of talks in the WMCC and between border commanders have not yielded any results, as dispute over troop positions at Depsang and Demchok continue to remain unresolved.

Per the official statement from the India’s External Affairs Ministry (EAM), the discussions in the latest WMCC meeting were “in-depth, constructive and forward-looking” with both sides agreeing “to maintain the momentum” while upholding “peace and tranquility on the ground.” The leader of the Chinese delegation also called on Indian Foreign Secretary.

While China’s post-meeting readout is yet to appear as of the writing of this article, per the EAM’s statement, the Chinese side also seems to have agreed on the “respect for the LAC as an essential basis” for normalization of India-China relations, which if true could be indicative of some real progress.

This is because China is reportedly trying to pressure India into accepting the new normal at Depsang wherein the Chinese troops deployed well inside the Indian territory along the LAC are blocking the Indian Army’s access to Patrolling Points 10, 11, 12, 12A, and 13, as well as at Demchok where the face-off still continues.

To that effect, the Chinese side has been claiming that the disengagement of troops from the Patrolling Point 15 (Gogra-Hotsprings area) in September 2022 marked the restoration of normalcy along the LAC in the eastern Ladakh sector.

However, the EAM Jaishankar insisted that “the state of the border will necessarily be reflected in the state of our ties,” in his post on X after the meeting with the Chinese counterpart on July 25 which had decided on the “early meeting” of the 30th WMCC that was held on July 31st.

The current progress in discussions over early resolution of the border issue is perhaps as a result of the efforts of the new Chinese ambassador to India, Xu Feihong, who is said to have been undertaking quiet diplomacy since his arrival in India by meeting with key stakeholders including the Indian EAM Jaishankar and former ambassadors.

Chinese Ambassador to India Xu Feihong With India's External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar During A Meeting In New Delhi, India. (Image Source: The Press Trust Of India (PTI))

Notably, Xu Feihong hinted at this before his arrival to India in an interview with the state-run China Global Television Network (CGTN), wherein he said that he would “contact Indian friends from all walks of life, sincerely enhance mutual understanding and trust” to restore normal relations with India.

However, the discourse within the Chinese strategic community on matters of border issue and overall relations with India in the aftermath of Galwan Valley clash of June 2020 has been suggestive of further deterioration of relations in the coming months.

Is China Sincere About Resolving The Border Stand-off?

The Galwan Valley clash between India and China in June 2020 that resulted in the death of 20 Indian soldiers and loss of at least four Chinese soldiers based on official confirmation from China, marked the first instance of fatalities on the LAC in 45 years.

Naturally, this violent clash brought the Sino-India relations to their lowest point since the Indo-China war of 1962 with tens of thousands of troops from both sides, equipped with advanced weaponry, currently deployed along the LAC in Ladakh sector.

India has suggested a graded three-step process to China for resolution of the standoff, in which, the first step would involve disengagement of troops within close distance of each other in grey zones along the LAC and moving back to positions as of April 2020. The next two steps— de-escalation and de-induction — would involve withdrawing troops and equipment to the pre-April 2020 levels.

Accordingly, the disengagement of troops was realized at five out of the seven flashpoints, namely, the Galwan Valley, the north and south banks of Pangong Tso Lake, Gogra and Hot Springs in between 2020 and 2022, however, dispute over troop positions at Depsang and Demchok continue to remain unresolved even after four years since the stand-off began.

A Senior Indian Army Commander Meeting Troops At A Forward Location In Depsang (Image Source: 14 Corps, Indian Army)

This begs the question if China is even sincere about normalizing its relations with India because if even disengagement of troops has not been realized in four years, how long will it take to withdraw troops and equipment to the pre-April 2020 levels.

In addition to that, over the course of past three and a half years, there has been a consistent buildup of infrastructure as well as significant deployment of troops and weaponry from the Chinese side along the LAC which has raised the level of potential military threat to India significantly.

For instance, satellite images of Pangong Lake from a US-based commercial satellite imagery firm, BlackSky, published by Hindustan Times (HT) on July 30 show the completion of a nearly 400-meter-long bridge by China which connects the north and south banks of the lake.

The bridge is located about 25 km from the LAC and reports about its ongoing construction first surfaced in early 2022. Experts say that it could reduce the travel time between Chinese military bases in the two sectors from 12 hours to around fours, thereby enabling faster mobilization of troops and equipment.

Only weeks before this, HT had reported, again citing BlackSky’s satellite images of the Pangong Lake area that China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has built underground facilities to store weapons and fuels, and hardened shelters for protection of its armored vehicles at a base in Sirijap, an alluvial plain situated in the thick of mountains on the northern shore of Pangong Lake.

PLA Base At Sirijap, Pangong Tso, Ladakh (Image Source: BlackSky)

The base serves as the headquarters for the PLA troops in the region and is located in an area claimed by India, roughly 5 kilometers from the LAC. It was constructed during 2021-22. Before that, the area was almost uninhabited.

The above developments in the Pangong Lake area which has only undergone disengagement of troops so far are not indicative of a willingness on part of the Chinese side to withdraw troops and equipment to the pre-April 2020 levels, meaning Beijing is not sincere about resolving the border stand-off with India.

The question then remains is what are Beijing’s real intention toward India. The answer to that question lies in the reason that led Beijing to commit the border transgressions to begin with, four years ago.

China’s Real Intention Toward India

In May 2023, Hu Shisheng, probably one of China's most authoritative experts on India, gave detailed reasons that led to the Chinese aggression in May 2020.

"In China's view, the Galwan Valley incident is the inevitable result of India's long-term violation of the 1993, 1996, and even 2005 and 2013 agreements," wrote Hu, who is the director of the Institute for South Asian Studies of the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR), which is one of China’s most influential think tank and is directly under the Ministry of State Security (MoSS), China’s external intelligence arm.

Hu was commenting on the Chinese social media website, Weibo, and as per the translation of this post by Aadil Brar, an Indian expert on the PLA and China affairs, Hu gave four reasons “why China believes India violated peace at the border”.

One of those reasons occurred way back in time, in 1999, when India took control of the Chumi Gyatse Waterfalls - a grouping of 108 waterfalls near Yangtse along the LAC in the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh. This is interesting, considering the fact that Indian and Chinese troops had clashed again after the Galwan Valley incident in December 2022 at Yangtse.

PLEASE TURN OVER

By Tanmay Kadam

The second reason Hu gives is India’s revocation of Article 370 of its Constitution in August 2019 which allotted a special status to the erstwhile state of Jammu & Kashmir (J&K). In addition to that, the Indian government also withdrew the statehood of J&K and divided it into two centrally governed Union territories of Ladakh and J&K. This according to Hu, amounted to a unilateral change in the political status of what is a disputed land between India, Pakistan and China.

The third reason Hu gives is that of new aggression exhibited by the Indian military patrols since early 2020 as well as the increase in infrastructure and overall connectivity through bridges and roads on the Indian side of the LAC.

The final reason given by Hu was that the Indian government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi had shifted its attitude toward relationship with China by making the border issue a central aspect of bilateral relations, thereby violating the 1988 agreement reached between Rajiv Gandhi and Deng Xiaoping, to put the border dispute on the back burner while developing other aspects of the relationship.

The above reasons offered by Hu give a localized impression of reasons behind China’s aggression in Galwan Valley in June 2020 and at Yangtse in December 2022, limited to measures taken by the Indian government to improve its border infrastructure and connectivity as well as to assert its sovereignty in J&K and Arunachal Pradesh. However, this is not the case.

In reality, China’s aggression in the above two instances was driven by larger geostrategic reasons, as enumerated by Hu himself way back in 2020, mere months after the Galwan Valley incident.

Hu Shisheng co-authored a 33-page article titled ‘The Behavioural Logic behind India’s Tough Foreign Policy toward China’, in the Sept-Oct 2020 issue of Contemporary International Relations (CIR), the official publication of the CICIR.

In that article, Hu wrote that the clash at Galwan was “not incidental” but the “inevitable” result of the “high risk, high yield” policy implemented by the Modi government to realize “absolute security and dominance in the regional order” for India and “overtake China by taking advantages of India’s favourable external strategic environment”.

China's President Xi Jinping With India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi In Ahmedabad In 2014 (Image Source: The Press Trust Of India (PTI))

After that he alleged that it was India that provoked the conflict in the Galwan valley by carrying a surprise attack on the Chinese-controlled area in the middle of the night and further said that “the Modi administration has become increasingly tougher in its policy toward China hence building up antagonism between the two countries and putting China-India relations on a downward trend”.

Most noteworthy is Hu’s description of the Galwan Valley incident as “anything but the end” and the grim assessment of the future of the border issue which foresees more standoffs and skirmishes between Indian and Chinese border troops, with the likelihood of escalation to use of firearms.

Shortly after this article, Hu authored another piece that was published in mid-December in the state-owned Global Times, in which he accused India of trying to compete with China for the position of the representative of developing countries’ interests by disrupting China’s agenda in multilateral mechanisms as well as internally sabotaging multilateral organisations like BRICS and SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organisation) where China does have a prominent role.

Hu then highlights India’s assumption of the role of the net security provider of the Indian Ocean region (IOR) as a bone of contention for China by saying that India regards “the Indian Ocean as its pond” and with the advent of China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative in South Asia and the IOR, New Delhi is finding it difficult to maintain a dominant position in the region, which has led India to align itself with the US’ Indo-Pacific strategy.

Hu then goes on to say that “in India’s view, China is its top geopolitical competitor,” which is most telling of how Beijing views India. Basically, China is worried by the rise in India’s status at the global stage since 2014 as well as the increasingly assertive security posture adopted by India to uphold its sovereignty.

According to Jayadeva Ranada, President of the Centre for China Analysis and Strategy (CCAS), both the articles by Hu Shisheng certainly had high-level official approval and their publication in English was obviously intended to ensure wider publicity for China’s views of its relations with India.

India definitely has the potential to surpass China as a contender for the position of global superpower by virtue of its growing economy, high population, and large labour force. Therefore, Beijing seems to consider maintaining a contentious front with India as a way to arrest its rise as a ‘geopolitical competitor’ and for that, occasional flare ups along the border are necessary.

That said, it should not be so difficult to discern why China would want to continue to flare up trouble at the LAC and not want the current border standoff to be resolved anytime soon.

Therefore, in author’s view, the resolution of the current border standoff seems highly unlikely and the next major confrontation at the LAC is a matter of when and not if.

When Will The Next Flare Up On LAC Come?

While China is worried by India’s rise as a potential geopolitical competitor, its real competition for global supremacy is with the United States (US) and therefore in recent years, much of the thinking in Beijing about India is being driven by the latter’s growing degree of closeness with the US.

The latest evidence of this can be found in a recent article authored by another prominent expert of CICIR’s Institute of South Asian Studies, Lou Chunhao – institute’s Executive Director – published in August 2023 by China Daily, which is one of the major propaganda and cultural units of the Chinese government.

In that article, Lou’s basic argument is that India believes the ‘American order’ is more in line with its interests than the ‘Chinese order’ due to the US’ greater “comprehensive national strength” vis-à-vis China and India’s structural problems with China, such as border disputes and the Tibet issue.

Therefore, in Lou’s view, India is increasingly trying to take advantage of the ongoing Sino-US strategic competition to "rely on the United States to resist China" and "ally with the United States to contain China", which is making “the sensitive issues between China and India more complicated.”

He then gives the border issue between India and China as an example of a ‘sensitive issue’ between the two countries, and alleges that “India has accepted US support either explicitly or implicitly,” citing revelations from several unnamed senior US administration officials during former US President Donald Trump’s tenure that the US government decided to "provide as much support as possible based on India's needs."

India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi With The Former US President Donald Trump On The Sidelines Of The G7 Summit In Biarritz, France (Image Source: X)

After that Lou cites the 18th edition of the annual India-U.S. joint military exercise Yudh Abhyas held in November 2022 as another such example of complication in this sensitive border issue between India and China. 

The exercise in question was held less than 100 kilometers from the LAC in Auli in the Indian state of Uttarakhand, however what makes Lou’s mention of this exercise noteworthy is the clash between Indian and Chinese troops that ensued only a month later at Yangtse in the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh.

Considering the above, Lou’s remarks just before the concluding paragraph of his article are possibly most revealing of how China decides when to cause trouble at the border with India. He says that “the United States is the main driving force of Sino-Indian relations” and warns New Delhi that “excessive binding with the United States will…. worsen Sino-Indian relations.”   

Also important to consider is Beijing’s perception of threat level to Chinese interests from the US which seems to have reached at an all-time high if the recent remarks made by retired PLA Colonel Liu Mingfu, known as one of the most trusted advisors to President Xi Jinping, are anything to go by.

Liu said in an interview in March that the Sino-US competition has entered its final phase which could last 2-3 decades, making China “the most unsafe country in the world under the increasingly serious threat from the United States” and recommended strengthening country’s national defense and military construction.

This means that instances of growing US-India cooperation such as joint military exercises, sale of arms and other military equipment, publicized intelligence sharing agreements etc., could be an indicator of upcoming Chinese trouble at the border.

Now to those who would say that rhetoric alone cannot be considered an effective basis to arrive at such an assessment, let us also take a brief look at the empirical evidence that substantiates the above assertion.

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By Tanmay Kadam

A group of researchers from Dartmouth College, USA, together with colleagues from Technical University of Delft in the Netherlands and the Netherlands Defence Academy made an attempt to develop a statistical understanding of how various factors like overall China–India relations, internal political affairs, international political issues, and domestic economic situation contribute to the likelihood of Chinese incursions across the Indian border with a lead time between 1 and 6 months.

These researchers assembled a dataset by compiling monthly information on Chinese incursions into India from 2005 to 2019, together with a monthly dataset containing 18 independent variables that serve as a measure of aforementioned factors. Their findings were disseminated through a paper in the peer-reviewed journal of ‘Humanities & Social Sciences Communications’, published by Nature Portfolio.

Their findings suggest that strengthening India-US relations positively contribute to the likelihood of Chinese incursions over the period of next six months, which can be considered as increasing the chances of conflagration at the border, and therefore also as a corroboration of author’s assertion that publicised instances of growing US-India cooperation could be an indicator of impending Chinese aggression at the border.

In light of the aforementioned observations, it is important to take note of the US’ approval of the sale of 31 MQ-9B armed drones to India at a cost of $3.99 billion in February and the entry of India’s state-run Cochin Shipyard Limited (CSL) into a Master Shipyard Repair Agreement (MRSA) with the US in April that enables it to repair the US Navy Ships, marking the entry of third Indian shipyard after Larsen & Toubro (L&T) and Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders Limited (MDL).

An MQ-9 Reaper Drone Flying A Combat Mission In Afghanistan (Image Source: Wikimedia)

Both of the above developments are alarming from Beijing’s point of view. The sale of MQ-9B drones empowers the Indian military against China, as was observed during the border stand-off in the aftermath of the Galwan Valley clash when at the request of the Indian Army, the Indian Navy flew one of its MQ-9Bs – taken from the US on lease – along the LAC to provide real-time battle picture of the Chinese activities to the Indian troops stationed in the eastern Ladakh sector.

The ship repair agreement with Indian shipyards enhances the US Navy’s ability to operate in the Indian Ocean, thereby limiting the PLA Navy’s ability to do the same, which is an essential requirement for China in the event of a war with the US, as the Indian Ocean happens to be a major trade route for China’s energy and raw materials supplies.

There is no shortage of such developments, take for example, the meeting between the National Security Advisors (NSAs) of the US and India in June in New Delhi to discuss the progress of the US-India initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology (iCET) – a mechanism for military-technical cooperation on areas like Artificial Intelligence (AI), quantum computing, semiconductors, and wireless telecommunication.

This should also ring alarm bells in Beijing, considering the fact that President Xi Jinping’s emphasis on AI in his quest to make China a dominant power, going so far as to issue a mandate to become fully modernized by 2035 and on par with the US military by 2050, as part of which the PLA is making relentless efforts to research, develop, and operationalize AI for military purposes.

And now add to all of the above, the measures taken by India to tighten screws on Beijing in the South China Sea (SCS) region – outside of the Indian Subcontinent and the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) – such as the sale of arms to countries like the Philippines who have disputes with China in the SCS or cultivation of technology ties with Taiwan.

Quite simply, China’s aggression in Galwan Valley in June 2020 and at Yangtse in December 2022 has done nothing to arrest the forward trajectory of the US-India relations as well as what Hu Shisheng would describe as the Modi administration’s increasingly tough policy toward China.

Image Of The Clash Between Indian And Chinese Troops In The Pangong Lake Area In The Early Days Of The Border Stand-Off That Began In May 2020. (Image Source: X)

So, unless Beijing reconsiders its approach toward its relations with India, the only behaviour it is likely to engage in is that of more aggression sooner rather than later.

If we look at the timeline of major incidents of friction at the LAC since 2014, namely, the Doklam military standoff, the Galwan valley clash and the clash at Yangtse in December 2022, they have occurred after intervals of 2-3 years.

Therefore, based on the discourse within the strategic circles in China pertaining to India and the US, and the aforementioned empirical evidence pertaining to Chinese incursions into India from 2005 to 2019 as well as the trend of major incidents of Chinese aggression since 2014, occurrence of Chinese aggression at the LAC in the duration of next 6-12 months should not come as a surprise.

How Pakistan Might Factor In The Future Chinese Aggression At The LAC?

Another larger geostrategic factor, particularly responsible for China’s aggression in the eastern Ladakh sector is the Beijing’s ambitious $62 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project.

Strictly geopolitically speaking, the CPEC project is aimed at addressing China’s energy security needs by providing it a land corridor for transporting energy resources, thereby reducing its reliance on maritime routes passing through strategic choke points in the Indian Ocean, which as pointed out earlier, would come under threat in the event of a conflict with the US.

This land corridor passes through the Gilgit-Baltistan region in the Pakistan Occupied Jammu & Kashmir (PoJK) which is claimed by India, and is therefore under risk of an eventuality of war between India and Pakistan.

Also, the infrastructure projects led by the Modi government near the LAC, for instance, the expedited construction of the 225-km Daulat Beg Oldie (DBO) road in eastern Ladakh provides the Indian military with an opening to the Karakoram Pass, threatening the China-Pakistan Karakoram highway to the north of this pass, which serves as a major communication route to the CPEC across Khunjerab Pass in Pakistan’s illegally occupied city of Gilgit.

So, China and Pakistan are hand -in-gloves in their efforts against India because of their shared perception of India’s rise as a potential threat to the CPEC project, which is a game changer for both the countries.

Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif With China's President Xi Jinping In Beijing In June 2024 (Image Source: Xinhua News)

According to a Pakistani media report citing Dr. Wang Shida, the Deputy Director of CICIR’s Institute for South Asian Studies, China was forced to enter into the Kashmir dispute because of India’s change to J&K’s status in August 2019.

“India ‘opened up new territory on the map,’ incorporated part of the areas under the local jurisdiction of Xinjiang and Tibet into its Ladakh union territory and placed Pakistani-administered Kashmir within its so-called union territories of Jammu and Kashmir,” Wang was cited by Express Tribune as having written shortly before the violent Indo-China standoff in June 2020.

“This forced China into the Kashmir dispute, stimulated China and Pakistan to take counter-actions, and dramatically increased the difficulty in resolving the border issue between China and India,” Wang further said.

It is in this light that the recent spate of terror attacks in India’s Jammu region along the Line of Control (LoC) – de facto border between India and Pakistan – as well as the uptick in ceasefire violations by the Pakistani Border Action Teams (BATS) in recent weeks must be viewed.

Experts suggest that this spurt in violence in Jammu could be part of a well-planned strategy of China and Pakistan to stretch the Indian military thinner by forcing it to deploy troops on two fronts. This is because the stand-off with China forced India to divert its troops from Jammu to Ladakh region, leaving the former vulnerable to militancy.

For years, India’s security experts have feared the prospect of a two-front war along the country’s northern and western borders, and according to the author, India is not very far from finally coming face to face with these fears, if China decides to commit another act of aggression in the Ladakh sector.

With tens of thousands of troops from both sides equipped with heavy weaponry currently deployed along the LAC, the Ladakh sector is a tinderbox waiting to be lit by the next major confrontation between the two sides.

Therefore, early resolution of the current border stand-off in Ladakh is very important because if it does not happen soon, the risk of a Sino-Indian regional conflict is only going to increase with the progress of CPEC.

This is because, per the US Department of Defense’s (DoD’s) 2023 annual report on China, the CPEC energy pipeline could be completed in a decade at the earliest, relieving China of its dependence on maritime routes for energy imports.

And as the author pointed out earlier, Beijing is probably gearing up for the final phase of its competition with the US, which it expects to last for the next 2-3 decades, meaning China’s resolve to protect its investments in the CPEC is currently perhaps the highest ever.

Tanmay Kadam is a geopolitical observer based in India. He has experience working as a Defense and International Affairs journalist for EurAsian Times. He can be contacted at tanmaykadam700@gmail.com

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