Sino-Indian Stand-off: More than a War over Rocks

Analysis by Rhea Haddad, Staff Writer

July 7th, 2020

On June 15, India and China engaged in their first violent confrontation in at least 45 years, resulting in 20 Indian fatalities including that of a commanding officer, and possibly 43 Chinese casualties, bringing the bilateral ties between the two nuclear powers to an all-time low. The skirmish goes back to at least 1914, when Britain and Tibet reached an agreement to establish the McMahon Line, the line-drawing between the two countries. While India recognizes the 1,000-km long frontier as the official one, China has never accepted it. This led to the 1962 Sino-India war after which China redefined the border as the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in its own favor, while India pushed back China during the second Sino-India war of 1967, further blurring the place of the Himalayan boundary. 

Since then, bloodless clashes have occurred with tensions rapidly de-escalating on both sides to avert another confrontation. In 1996, both sides agreed not to use firearms in the area. However, in 2017, tensions rose again after Beijing began building a road into Bhutan, an India region considered to be a buffer zone. In this tense stand-off, Chinese and Indian troops threw rocks at one another, marking a precursor for the current situation. 

As a result of the 1996 agreement, both sides attacked each other with bare fists and medieval-looking clubs spiked with nails and wrapped in barber wire in a recent clash in the Galwan Valley, a region where conditions are arid and inhospitable. The clash came after tensions bubbled up in recent month over a new road India built in Ladakh along the Line of Actual Control. This angered China, which dispatched troops and developed its own infrastructure in contested territories, bringing the two sides’ forces closer and raising the risk of incidents. 

In the absence of a clear motive, can it be assumed that this deadly assault on Indian soldiers is an effort to push India into the negotiation table? But the issue is: negotiation for what and why? 

We can think of several reasons for the Chinese ire towards India. The first is India’s growing closeness to the United States. China deems that India and the U.S. have an alignment of interests in creating an anti-China axis in the Indian-Pacific region. Events such as India becoming part of the “Quad” of the U.S., Australia, and Japan, and the U.S. advocacy that India should be a member of the expanded G7 have reinforced the skepticism over India playing a proxy game for the U.S. Additionally, this rapprochement between India and the U.S. was flagrant in many events like “Howdy Modi” and “Namaste Trump”. 

India's prime minister, Narendra Modi and President Donald Trump walk hand and hand around NRG Stadium after the Howdy Modi event Sunday, Sept. 22, 2019, in Houston. Credits: Houston Chronicles

During Trump’s visit to India in February 2020, Global Times stated that “China should not blithely ignore US overtures to India”. 

The second reason for the rising anger of China is caused by Modi’s government efforts to change the geographical landscape of Jammu and Kashmir. The statement by Home Minister Amit Shah that Aksai Chin is a part of India in the Ladakh seems to have provoked the Chinese leadership as it represents a major abuse of China’s sovereignty. 

Therefore, Chinese troops penetrating Indian territories in areas such as the Galwan Valley are a direct pointer that they have bigger plans and it is up to India to pursue its diplomacy accordingly. No effort by Modi’s government was made to pacify Chinese leaders prior to this deadly clash and the killing of Indian soldiers in the line of duty has fostered a condition that would make his role more difficult. 

One hypothetical question one could ask at this point is whether or not India should be more violent. It is crucial to understand first two important points. China has chosen a strategic time for its intervention, a time when India is under lockdown due to the global pandemic, a time when India is dealing with a poor economy. Although China has struggled too, there are forecasts that it could be the only major economy that would not face a recession. Moreover, in May 2020, the Chinese President Xi Jinping asked the military to “scale up the battle preparedness, visualizing the worst-case scenario.”

Although a direct war is unlikely to happen, tensions are expected to escalate between the two giants and the fight over the frontier would not be easy to resolve as the Himalayan stand-off is more about wider strategic rivalry than disputed borderlands.