Chinese Chicanery in Ladakh and its importance to India
Ladakh, the Northern most region of India, recently came to limelight when the Indian and Chinese forces clashed near the line of actual control (LAC).
The LAC is the demarcation that separates the Indian-controlled territory from Chinese-controlled territory. While India calls the LAC to be roughly 3500 km long, the Chinese consider it to be only around 2,000 km. The skirmish occurred during the then ongoing Sino-Indian standoff when the Chinese forces crossed the border to stop the road construction on the Indian side. After this incident, India and China increased the number of soldiers on their respective sides. This is not the first time that Indian and Chinese soldiers came face to face. There were several similar incidents in the past.
But why have China and India been fighting over this land for more than 60 years, when most of the terrain is inhospitable to human settlements due to extreme cold, lack of vegetation and dry climate?
China wants to dominate and control every region wherever they find high altitude areas, mountain passes or river valleys. It is through these areas that the Chinese can be watchful of the Indian troop activities and dominate them in every possible spar. Therefore China has extensively developed infrastructure in this border region. Since there is no official borderline accepted, China takes this as an opportunity and stops India from building any sort of infrastructure on its side and tries to grab land by making incursion wherever they find India building a stronger position. This very reason was the trigger behind the recent skirmish.
The Indian troops were laying the DSDBO (Darbuk–Shyok–Daulat Beg Oldi) road that connects to the military bases and cuts down travel from 2 days to 6 hours — this can help the Indian army to mobilize its forces faster in case of emergencies or incursion attempts by Chinese forces. This makes China very sensitive about these areas. If India successfully builds the infrastructure in these area, it would threaten the Chinese directly in the Aksai Chin region, an area it illegally occupied in 1962.
The LAC divides Pangong Tso lake into two parts, two-third of which is controlled by China. This is the first place where the standoff began in 2020 and by end of August, China was able to capture some 50–60 km of Indian area and intended to grab more by increasing its military presence. China has been applying same strategy for last 60 years.
India finally switches to Offensive Stance
For decades, India has been known to keep a defensive stance towards China and avoid confrontations. But this time, India finally went all in to defend its land and got in a step further to grab strategic heights of Blacktop and Gorkha hills. This move came as a surprise not only to China but to many who have closely followed India’s defensive strategies in the past. This gave India a dominating position to negotiate with the Chinese army.
Fear of losing Aksai Chin
The whole reason why China is so sensitive about any infrastructure build up near LAC is because it fears losing Aksai Chin. Aksai Chin used to be the eastern part of Ladakh in India before it was illegally occupied by Chinese forces in 1962 Indo-Sino war. Although Aksai Chin is a high cold desert area, china maintains it as an asset with its national highway built in this region. This national highway links two provinces of China — Xinjiang and Tibet. Both regions have struggled against Chinese oppression when it forcefully merged these ‘before-independent nations’ into itself. There is a sense of separatism in these regions and high deployment of China’s army (PLA) in Aksai Chin suppresses and keeps a check on any activist movements.
While China feels already troubled with the Human Rights Violation accusations by the western world in these regions, any possible Indian involvement in or around Aksai Chin could mean losing Aksai Chin which in turn would disconnect the Army deployments in the troubled Chinese regions — this could lead to movements within China. In my opinion if such a situation ever arises, India would definitely try to add fuel to the fire (through back-door tactics of course) and make sure that China disintegrates. Any disturbances in Tibet and Xinjiang are welcome news for India. To establish facts, India never shared a border with China, rather shared with Tibet - a peaceful neighbor, which was occupied by China in a forced annexation in 1951. Therefore it is India’s interest to liberate Tibet from China for its own security. But this is highly unlikely to happen in the near future at least, since this can’t be done without US support and US is unfortunately and unintelligently focused on Russia.
As this highway also connects western part of china to southern part of china, with Aksai Chin lost, China would literally be disconnected — leading to mass movements which would be difficult to suppress.
From the western Ladakh perspective too it is an invaluable region to India as it borders Pakistan’s illegally occupied Indian areas. Pakistan maintains a high infiltration in these areas and Indian forces have to be on high alert always to prevent any mischief from the other side of the border. Ladakh also hosts the world’s highest battlefield at the Siachen glaciers, where Indian troops sit with dominance due to the height factor.
As the area of Ladakh is highly important to India strategically, so is true for China and Pakistan too, which is why they want to take it over. India, aware of the fact and knows, that if ever there is a war in Ladakh, it won’t be on one front — it will be by all means a two front war with Pakistan on the west and China on the East and North. India understands this very well and hence wants to complete the Ladakh road connectivity infrastructure asap.
