India accuses its neighbour to the north-east of sending troops some 19km past a line of actual control (LAC), in the Despang area of Ladakh, a part of Jammu & Kashmir state that is wedged between Tibet proper and the vale of Kashmir. They have reportedly been there for more than two weeks. Now a small number of Indian soldiers have set up camp within a stone’s throw of their Chinese counterparts. Though there is no sign yet of escalation—and would seem to be little prospect of it—nor have the sides found a way to walk back.
The confrontation is taking place in an unpopulated district, but one that matters symbolically. Some 4,000km of the boundary between China and India remains unsettled, so tests in any particular spot along its course carry immense significance. Speculative reports suggest the area may also be rich in uranium. It is also, from the Chinese perspective, close to the Tibetan Autonomous Region and so significant for the government in Beijing as it tries to assert full political and military control over a troubled patch of its sovereign territory.
Inside India the predominant explanation for the stand-off—among bloggers, retired generals, the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), television commentators and newspaper columnists—is that China is entirely to blame. The incursion is seen simply as China putting pressure on militarily weaker India, presumably to extract concessions such as a freeze on the number of troops it deploys along the border, or some block on India’s development of bunkers, roads or other structures on its own side of the frontier. Any such freeze would leave Chinese forces, which are established on a plateau, in a much stronger position. They already enjoy the benefit of all-weather roads, railway lines and other structures that connect them to the rest of China.
Some in this predominant Indian camp speculate that the cross-border incursion could have been led initially by an adventurous, lowish-ranking member of the People’s Liberation Army, to which China’s new political leadership subsequently acquiesced. Others in the commentariat prefer to emphasise that Indian weakness, including the feebleness of its road and military infrastructure in the Himalayas, practically invite regular Chinese assertiveness.
It has been widely noted that leaks about the incursion came from India’s defence forces, while its diplomats appeared to try to hush it all up. One reliably hawkish Indian commentator, Brahma Chellaney, lashes out at India’s mild-mannered leaders as being unable to speak up themselves with any strength. Hawks, by and large, want India to retaliate by making remarks about China’s behaviour inside Tibet, essentially raising questions about the legitimacy of Chinese rule there. By contrast the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, and his foreign minister, Salman Khurshid, are playing down the dispute in Ladakh (and stay entirely mum on Tibet). Mr Khurshid has compared the Chinese incursion to a pimple on an otherwise unblemished face.
A related but subtler response sees the current confrontation as being only partly about India’s relative weakness and partly as a Chinese reaction to India’s trying (even if in a limited way) to assert itself. One military analyst, Ajai Shukla, sees China behaving just as it did during two previous episodes of tension on the border, when India pushed forward. First in the 1950s, then again in the 1980s, India attempted to increase its military capacity along the disputed border. China reacted the first time by invading, which resulted in a brief border war in 1962 and the humiliation of India, as well as the destruction of what had been cordial relations. That war also cost China: marking it out as an aggressive power on the rise. The second time, in the 1980s, a confrontation on the border led eventually to a visit to China by Rajiv Gandhi, then India’s prime minister—and an improvement in ties.
This time around, says Mr Shukla,
China has clearly signalled its discomfort with India’s troop build-up, submitting a draft proposal for a freeze on troop levels that will solidify and make permanent India’s disadvantage along the LAC.He argues that India should respond by offering to keep talking; refusing such a freeze; and getting on meanwhile with building roads and other military infrastructure, as fast as it can.
It is hard, in fact, to see what China actually hopes to achieve with the incursion. Its foreign-ministry spokesmen continue to deny any wrongdoing. They deny, too, accusations that Chinese helicopters crossed into Indian-controlled airspace in an attempt to resupply their soldiers. A series of proposed diplomatic meetings are set to go ahead, with Mr Khurshid due in China and China’s prime minister, Li Keqiang, in India, both next month. (Though India’s opposition parties are growing increasingly vocal against these trips.)
Just what is going on is far from clear. China has so many other difficulties elsewhere around its perimeter—relations with Japan and the Philippines souring, for example; violent tension in its far-western province of Xinjing—it seems odd timing to choose to add another clash. Nor is it obvious that China could welcome the most likely domestic outcome in India: a stronger call for more spending on military capacity along the border. India’s reliance on a nuclear deterrent may now look insufficient: there are already calls for it to spend more on conventional forces, too, and they are likely to grow louder.
Last, worsening bilateral relations would be at odds with broader gains between the countries in other fields. The value of bilateral trade, skewed heavily in China’s favour, has grown from just $2.9 billion a year at the start of the millennium to some $66 billion annually. China and India appear to co-operate as members of the BRICS group of countries, for example sharing a proposal to establish a new global development bank. And even along the disputed border, the two countries have established limited mechanisms for managing their disagreements peacefully. It looks unlikely that China’s new leaders wish to jeopardise all this. Thus its soldiers and tents will presumably be withdrawn before too long. The stakes, if they should not, look as high and dangerous as Himalayan peaks.
(Picture credit: Wikimedia Commons)
the economist.com