China Vs India

PRESENT-DAY

As in most of the world, the coronavirus was the biggest story in India until recently.
That changed when news of a violent clash between the Indian Army and the People’s
Liberation Army (PLA) troops on the night of June 15, 2020 broke. Two weeks on, the
story continues to dominate the Indian airwaves. It makes sense.

China and India have a rocky past and this latest clash left 20 Indian troops, including
the commanding officer of 16 Bihar, the unit involved in the clash, dead. Over 100 other
soldiers from the unit received non-life-threatening injuries. Three days after the clash,
PLA returned 10 captured Indian Army personnel, including one lieutenant colonel and
three majors.

Before the June 15 clash in Galwan in Ladakh, after several rounds of meetings
between local commanders and at least two meetings at the level of major generals
which didn’t resolve the issues, India and China held lieutenant-general-level talks on
June 6. Reports suggested that the Chinese side, led by Major General Liu Lin,
commander of South Xinjiang Military Region, refused to discuss Chinese positions in

Galwan.
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Keeping Galwan off the table was not without operational sense. PLA troops have
positioned themselves on high ground in the sector at the confluence of Galwan and
Shyok Rivers. These positions give them the advantage of observing and, if required,
interdicting India’s crucial line of communication, the Durbak-Shyok-Daulat Beg Oldie
(DSDBO) Road. Galwan, thus, acquires a more than tactical advantage, as we shall
shortly discuss.

In the theatre of operations, the other places where PLA troops have come up to their
claim line include Hot Springs, south of Galwan, Pangong Tso, a high-altitude lake
further south and Demchok, the southernmost point of forward PLA deployments. Each
of these points gives PLA a tactical advantage and combined turn that into a theatre
advantage (see accompanying map).

Therefore, any analysis of the situation and forward deployments have to be seen at the
tactical, theatre and politico-strategic levels.

Narratives

Expectedly, India blames China for ingressing into Indian territory, west of the LAC.
This claim is false on two counts: one, as per the UN Resolutions on Jammu and
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Kashmir, India is in illegal occupation of territory, including Ladakh, where we are

witnessing the current stand-off between India and China; two, the LAC is not
demarcated and both sides have their claim lines — Indian patrols show their presence
east of the LAC, while PLA patrols push west of it.

Ironically, China’s claim that its troops are present on Chinese territory is in line with the
argument mounted by the Indian side, including by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi,
who said in a televised statement that Chinese troops had not intruded across the
country’s borders. Modi’s statement contradicted the position taken by his foreign
minister.

While there are two sectors where India and China meet, the other being in the east
where the boundaries of Nepal end, this article will primarily focus on the western
sector, which is eastern Ladakh and currently the theatre of tensions.

Many Indian and foreign analysts have tried to figure out why the border has suddenly
flared up. This question is important for many reasons:

The June 15 clash in Galwan is the second, though more violent, such incident in more
than 45 years. Before the Galwan incident, Indian and PLA troops clashed on May 5/6
and then 16/17 in the Pangong area. At least 72 troops on the Indian side sustained
injuries and the commanding officer of the unit, 11 Mahar, sustained life-threatening
injuries.

Agreements between China and India

On September 7, 1993, the two sides had entered into an agreement that binds them to
resolve the boundary question through peaceful means.
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• The 1993 agreement was bolstered by more specific provisions in a 1996

arrangement.

• The latest arrangement is the 2013 Border Defence Cooperation Agreement (BDCA).
On October 23, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh met with Chinese Premier Li
Keqiang to sign the BDCA in the wake of a stand-off in Depsang (Daulat Beg Oldie) area
(northwest of Galwan).

Trade between China and India

• India and China trade, as of 2019, stood at 85 billion dollars, with both sides
committed to enhancing the trade volume and China allowing India to reduce the latter’s
50 billion dollar trade deficit.

• Finally, overall, relations between the two have been improving since former Prime
Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s path-breaking visit to China in 1988.

Possible reasons behind recent stand off

Indian Argument

Various reasons are being put forward for China’s assertive behaviour. The most
favourite with analysts, in India and elsewhere, is the argument that China has
responded to India’s improvement of its lines of communication infrastructure along the
LAC. Most such analyses suggest that this is what China has been doing for long on its
side and, now that India has taken a leaf out of China’s playbook, the latter has reacted.
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Standalone, this argument is a lazy way out of a more complex situation. Its relevance,
however, increases if you plug it into other developments that combine enhanced
capabilities with intentions. Consider:

• India reopened the Daulat Beg Oldie (DBO) air base in 2008. It had abandoned it
during the 1962 war with China, when troops stationed there just left helter-skelter,
though the PLA never got to DBO and never occupied it. By 2013, the Indian Air Force
had built the DBO advanced landing ground to the point that its transport aircraft C-130
and C-130J-30 could land there. While China was aware of this development, it didn’t
protest.

• Ditto for the DSDBO(Durbak-Shyok-Daulat Beg Oldie (DSDBO) Road) all-weather road,
that was commissioned to be built in 2000. However, in 2011 it was found that there
was a problem with the alignment of the DSDBO Road and work had to be initiated to
realign it. Most of it was completed in 2019. India has also constructed a Bailey bridge
— the Col Chewang Rinchen Setu — on Shyok River, which was inaugurated in October
2019. Both the road and bridge cut down the time for reinforcements or forward
deployments of troops and equipment from two days to just six hours. India is also
building feeder communication lines to the east from the main DSDBO Road to supply
its deployments.

It should be obvious that with other developments at the politico-strategic level, these
tactical and theatre developments assume military-operational significance.

The other reason trotted out by various analysts, notably the Indian-American scholar
Ashley Tellis, are about a China under pressure internally and from the world on the
mishandling of the Covid-19 crisis, an economic downturn, troubles in Hong Kong etc.
In other words, Xi Jinping is facing the heat at home and wants to be assertive abroad.
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Yet another argument pins these developments on India’s strategic partnership with the
US, Washington’s Indo-Pacific strategy and India’s inclusion in the Quad (short for
Quadrilateral Security Dialogue), which includes the US, India, Japan and, now,
Australia. As a February 2019 report, carried online by research organisation RAND,
notes, “For now, the US is probably content with simply using the Quad as a way to
signal unified resolve against China’s growing assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific, without
directly antagonising Beijing. That may change in the future if US–China relations
deteriorate further, or Beijing’s behaviour towards regional neighbours becomes even
more aggressive.”

Interestingly, all these arguments, while being pieces of the larger puzzle, miss out the
elephant in the Buddhist tale about the blind men and the elephant. Each piece (the part
of the elephant) is considered to be the whole. It is not. Let’s get to the elephant then.

From glasses of realists: Intentions and Capabilities

Military and strategic preparedness is a function not just of intentions, but also of
current and evolving capabilities. Equally, when State X sees that State Y is not only
developing its capabilities through alliances and bandwagoning, but is also giving
expression to changing intentions, X would opt for its own action that best suits its
security and other interests.

History, both general and military, shows that the best time to negotiate or change the
ground situation is from a position of strength. Weakness begets a bad deal. It is in this
context that all the pieces come together. DBO, DSDBO, the road’s off-ramps, bridges,
infrastructure, Indo-US partnership etc become meaningful not singly, but in tandem,
and with the expression of new intentions.
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While the Indian media is flagging and flogging specific provisions from the 1993, 1996
and 2013 bilateral arrangements and accusing China of violating those agreements,
they are forgetting two key developments since the current Indian government took
power.

This is where we come to the decision by New Delhi to illegally bifurcate and annex the
occupied territory of Jammu and Kashmir, including Ladakh. Not only that, but the
Indian government brought both Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh under direct rule from
Delhi, by downgrading the status of Jammu and Kashmir — of which Ladakh was a part
— into two separate Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh.

India’s argument that it was an internal matter violates bilateral understandings with
Pakistan (Simla/Lahore), China (1993, 1996, 2013) and UN Resolutions that have
determined the State of Jammu and Kashmir as disputed territory. Additionally, New
Delhi issued official maps that show the liberated areas of Azad Kashmir,
Gilgit-Baltistan and Aksai Chin as part of India. The latter claim was not missed by
Beijing.

For Beijing, this is intention and capabilities (alliances) trying to bridge the differential.
From a military-operational perspective, laying claim to Aksai Chin translates into a
strategic intent to sever Tibet’s link with Xinjiang. China’s response is perfectly in line
with sensible operational strategy because today’s ‘remote’, if left unchecked, can be
tomorrow’s ‘imminent’.

China’s pre-emption of the forward-leaning posture of the Indian Army (and state) has,
therefore, to be seen and appreciated in terms both of capabilities and intentions.
Luckily for China, India showed its hand (intentions and false bravado) before it had
acquired matching capabilities. For China to have waited until the capabilities were
aligned with intentions would have been operational and strategic folly.
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The recent stand-off and analysis must, therefore, move from the tactical (Galwan or
Pangong Tso encounters) to the theatre (multiple pressures on nodal points in eastern
Ladakh) to the politico-strategic. But this is where one must revisit history and the 1962
War.

THE SINO-INDIAN WAR OF 1962

The year 2020 is not 1962. Or, as Mark Twain said, or is supposed to have said, “History
doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” A lot has changed and, yet, we have striking
similarities.

One of the most authoritative accounts of the Sino-Indian War of 1962 is Neville
Maxwell’s India’s China War. Recently, Bertil Lintner, a Swedish journalist, has tried to
critique Maxwell’s book by writing his, reversing the title to China’s India War: Collision
Course on the Roof of the World (published 2018). This is not the space to examine
Lintner’s arguments in detail, though I will refer to them in passing. But let’s get to
Maxwell’s arguments.

Maxwell’s book traces the root of the problem to its history when India was ruled by the
British and both London and its Delhi representatives had two concerns: how to thwart
the likely advance of Russia and what kind of forward policy would be required to ensure
that the British and the Russian empires do not come abutting the same frontier. From
the Durand Line separating today’s Pakistan from Afghanistan to the
Macartney-MacDonald Line in Ladakh to the McMahon Line in today’s eastern front
between India and China, the leitmotif of British policy was to create buffers.

The post-colonial states inherited these, often, undemarcated borders and swore by
them — just like their colonial masters. The first and almost instinctive reaction of every
new government was to hold fast to the territory bequeathed to it.
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The decision [by Nehru] not to submit the McMahon line to renegotiation had closed off
the possibility of formal agreement between India and China on that alignment.

“But at least the McMahon line was a known alignment marked clearly — though not
precisely — on maps, and known to both the Indians and the Chinese. In the western
sector, to which Nehru now applied the same approach, the situation was fundamentally
different. There, there had never been any proposed alignment as clear as the McMahon
line, nor indeed had the area been sufficiently surveyed to make it possible to draw such
a line.”

THEN AND TODAY

While history is not repeating itself, it is rhyming, nonetheless. The 1962 war was laid at
the door of Mao for being in trouble at home because of the failure of the Great Leap
Forward policy. Today, analysts are trotting out the argument that Xi Jinping, the
Chinese president, is making assertive moves on the chessboard (South China Sea,
Taiwan, Hong Kong, eastern Ladakh) because of his poor handling of the Covid-19
crisis. This is delusional at best and self-serving at worst.

China is a rising challenger. Like all powerful states, Beijing has interests in its
near-abroad and farther. But its Monroe Doctrine is not just about military power, albeit
that is rising and important. It wants connectivity, becoming the hub from where many
spokes emerge. India should know this, given its own behaviour towards smaller
neighbours. It can either be a partner with China or a rival that seeks to develop its
potential for rivalry by joining the US bloc. That is a decision for India to make.

China’s moves are a signal to India. How do you want to play the game? It’s
psychological, the escalation dynamic. China seeks to retain escalation dominance at
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all the three levels: tactical (Galwan/Pangong Tso), at the theatre level (all tactical nodal
points) and at the politico-strategic level (where states collide or cooperate).

As I have written elsewhere, “if India refuses to climb up the escalation ladder, it is
forced to treat the issue as a border-management rather than a military-operational
problem. There, the PLA… has a clear advantage: it holds ground and is not prepared to
cede it. India either has to accept China’s superior strategic orientation or try to change
the reality on the ground.

India is obliged to make a move in its turn, but making that move could become a
serious disadvantage for it.”

WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR PAKISTAN?

The current stand-off is taking place in eastern Ladakh, a territory under India’s illegal
occupation and part of the larger dispute related to Jammu and Kashmir. Some analysts
have suggested that China, by inserting itself into the question of Ladakh’s status, has
turned the issue of Jammu and Kashmir into a three-actor problem.

This is true but not for the reason of Ladakh’s status. Leh used to be part of Tibet at one
time. According to eminent Kashmiri journalist Iftikhar Gilani, China’s official position
during talks so far has been to ask India to give up its claim on Aksai Chin and draw the
LAC clearly into a boundary. Interestingly, as per Chinese maps, the LAC crosses near
Leh.

The three-actor play is more in terms of two triangles: China, India and Pakistan on the
one hand, and China, India and the US on the other. Pakistan also overlaps these
triangles, at which point it becomes more like a four-actor play.
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Many analysts in recent days have said that if China pressures India any further, India
will be pushed into Washington’s camp. This assessment seems to forget that the US
and India are already in a strategic partnership and, while there may be some twist s in
the relationship because of President Donald Trump’s way of handling not just
adversaries but also allies, the Blob — the term that Obama speechwriter Ben Rhodes
coined to characterise the US foreign policy community — remains structurally invested
in relations with India. Another president would be able to straighten those twists
somewhat easily.

Add to that the US’ competition with China and India’s rivalry with the latter, and India
and the US become natural allies. However, India would need a major pressure push
from China to abandon trade and investment relations with Beijing.

Once again, history is a good guide. As Nehru’s letter to Kennedy shows, Nehru had to
swallow his pride and seek US help during the 1962 war. Today’s India, going back
nearly two decades, has been steadily coming closer to the US. It is no more a
non-aligned state.

Again, history is a good guide with reference to Pakistan. At the time Kennedy decided
to get the British onboard and send military supplies to India without informing
President Ayub Khan, Pakistan was termed the most allied ally of the US. As Riedel
recounts in his book (and others like Dennis Kux et al have also noted), the US had
promised Pakistan that it won’t militarily help India against China. Not only did
Washington renege on that promise, it warned Pakistan against opening another front in
an attempt to take back Kashmir and stretch the Indian Army.

Today, while Pakistan and the US remain locked in a transactional relationship in

Afghanistan, the sheen is long gone. Pakistan, always close to China, is even closer
today with Beijing’s CPEC investments. It would be naive to think that Islamabad and
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Beijing are not exchanging notes on what’s unfolding in eastern Ladakh. Yet, it would be
equally simplistic to think that there’s about to be a pincer movement by the two against
India. China has its own reasons for doing what it has embarked upon, and that policy
does not include any free lunches or simplistic scenarios.

Could present Sino-Indian tensions become militarily bigger and involve the US and its
allies on the side of India? Riedel, writing about the 1962 war, thinks the US would have
come out on the side of India if Mao hadn’t declared a unilateral ceasefire. As an
interesting footnote, during those days, India allowed the US to fly U-2 spy planes from
its soil over Tibet and, more importantly, Xinjiang, especially China’s Lop Nur nuclear
test site. That’s how the US got intel on China’s nuclear test preparations.

What could be the US’ possible response in the multi-actor play? In a recent article, As
China and India Clash, JFK’s “Forgotten Crisis” is Back, Riedel rounded off by writing
this:

“There are many differences in the balance of power between 1962 and today, both
regionally and in terms of global power balances… The past haunts the present…Neither
Beijing, New Delhi, nor Islamabad had nuclear weapons in 1962. The risks of escalating
the confrontation are immensely more dangerous today. All the players know that they
have to avoid the worst. It’s too bad that the United States has a president who is
certainly no JFK.”