The Sino-Indian Border After Galwan

The lightly armed Indian patrol, about a hundred soldiers strong and led by a senior field commander, a colonel, moved cautiously through the Galwan River Valley. They were on a mission to monitor the Line of Actual Control (LAC), as Beijing and New Delhi call their de facto boundary in Ladakh.

Two months earlier, in April 2020, thousands of Chinese soldiers from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) had intruded across the LAC at Galwan and five other places. In early June, attempting to reduce the risk of escalation, senior military commanders from both China and India negotiated a disengagement agreement that required troops on both sides to withdraw a few hundred meters, creating a buffer zone between them.

Now the Indian Army patrol was in Galwan to verify if the PLA had withdrawn, as agreed.

According to unofficial Indian versions of what transpired next (no official version has been put out) the patrol found a Chinese tent still standing on Indian-claimed territory, in violation of the mutual pull-back agreement. Believing that the PLA had left the tent behind, the Indian patrol set it on fire. But it was a trap. A large number of PLA soldiers who were hiding in the Galwan River Valley emerged and set upon the Indian soldiers.

In the barbaric fight that ensued, soldiers from two nuclear powers battled it out with spears, staves, and crude wooden clubs wrapped in barbed wire. Indians who tried to escape by climbing the steep cliffs along the Galwan River ran into Chinese ambushes. Some of the outnumbered Indians were thrown off the cliffs to their deaths, others were seriously injured. The Indian government announced that 20 Indian soldiers died in the clash, many more were wounded, and 10 were taken prisoner by the PLA. They were repatriated after a few days with serious injuries from torture and beatings at the hands of their Chinese captors. The Chinese side, more than six months later, said that only four of its soldiers had died in the clash – a number disputed by the Indian side in its reports.

Occasional clashes are not unprecedented on the LAC, where border guards and soldiers from both sides robustly patrol the areas they claim. Yet, lethal violence has been avoided by a litany of confidence building measures (CBMs) and agreements that lay out restrictions on the conduct of soldiers involved in patrol confrontations. For the most part, this has managed to keep the peace.

But in 2020, India and China found themselves dealing with the most perilous border crisis since the Nathu La incident – a 1967 skirmish on the border between India’s Sikkim and China’s Tibet that caused the deaths of several hundred soldiers from both sides.

In a different Sino-Indian confrontation that occurred in 1975, Chinese border guards in the Tawang area in Arunachal Pradesh ambushed an Indian patrol from the paramilitary Assam Rifles, shooting dead four Indian troopers. Both the 1967 and 1975 incidents were defused by border talks and de-escalation, returning the LAC to a fragile peace.

Today, however, three years after the Galwan River Valley clash, Chinese and Indian troops remain heavily deployed in disputed areas – a tinderbox ready to explode.

The current disruption on the Sino-Indian border began in April 2020 when Indian intelligence operatives and Indo-Tibet Border Police (ITBP) reported heavy Chinese troop build-ups at several places across the LAC. Instead of rapidly deploying a countervailing force, the Indian Army remained in its barracks, passing the incursions off as a Chinese springtime exercise – a routine annual event on both sides that heralds the onset of spring. India miscalculated that the worldwide restrictions forced by the COVID-19 pandemic would hold back the Chinese military.

But this was a classic case of perception bias: The Indian Army had called off its own spring exercise because of COVID-19. As a result, there were few troops on hand to counter what came next.

The PLA took advantage of the Indian Army’s preoccupation with the pandemic and the Indian side was taken by surprise in late April, when large numbers of Chinese troops crossed the LAC into the Galwan and Pangong Tso areas.

Verbal confrontations, along with physical jostling between Indian and PLA patrols, are not uncommon at this time of the year. However, there were early indications that should have made it clear to the Indian commanders in Ladakh that the situation in spring 2020 was a departure from the norm.

First, the PLA had encroached into areas such as the Galwan River Valley that had remained peaceful since the Sino-Indian war of 1962. Second, the PLA entered Indian territory in numbers that were in the thousands. Finally, Chinese soldiers dug their own field defenses, prepared bunkers, and deployed artillery guns to the rear (albeit in their own territory) to support the intrusion, suggesting that the PLA was clearly looking to do more than temporarily occupy disputed territory, as they did in Depsang in 2013, or in Chumar in 2014. Nor did the PLA intrusions appear to be a localized event. The Chinese were spread across a frontage of 2,000 kilometers, incorporating the area of responsibility of many different PLA brigades and divisions. That suggests centralized coordination at the higher military and political levels.

Beyond Galwan

While the bloody clash in Galwan River Valley made that area the most famous flashpoint in this round of tensions, China’s April 2020 incursion took place at several different points: Chumar and Demchok in the “southern sector” of Ladakh; Chushul and Pangong Tso lake in the “central sector” and Galwan and Depsang in the “northern sector.”

As noted above, India’s initial, flawed assessment downplayed the severity of the situation. That things were amiss became evident when Chinese artillery guns appeared opposite the Gogra Heights in the Galwan River Valley and then at Pangong Tso. Then Chinese tanks, armored carriers, and artillery guns were spotted in the Depsang Plains, India’s northern tip that ends in the Karakoram Pass.

On May 5, thousands of PLA soldiers crossed the LAC into the Galwan River Valley, scuffling violently with Indian troops as they forced their way five kilometers along the valley to the Galwan’s junction with the Shyok River. From there, the PLA dominated the Darbuk-Shyok-Daulat Beg Oldi (DSDBO) road, a newly built 255-km artery to northern Ladakh. Simultaneously, PLA troops also crossed the LAC at two other points, including a 3-5 kilometer ingress at Gogra, near Hot Springs.

A second PLA ingress occurred on May 9, some 2,000 kilometers away, at Naku La pass in Sikkim. Here, PLA troops crossed a formal international border – Sikkim is the site of the only settled boundary between India and China. With the Indian army having blocked the PLA about 2 kilometers inside India, hundreds of soldiers from both sides remained in a tense face-off into 2021.

A third PLA intrusion happened on May 17-18 at Pangong Tso lake, where Chinese troops and heavy vehicles crossed the LAC and seized traditionally unoccupied territory along the lake’s northern bank. Indian border patrols, which traditionally went up to a mountain spur called Finger 8, were now blocked by the PLA at Finger 4, 8 km inside the Indian-claimed LAC. Simultaneously, the Chinese occupied the Finger Heights – a mountaintop that dominates the lake all the way up to Finger 4. This area has been connected backward with a road to the LAC.

At all six ingress points – three in the Galwan River Valley, one at Pangong Tso, and one further south at Chushul – the Chinese fortified their positions with clear intentions to stay. At the sixth point at Naku La, in Sikkim, no military fortifications were built by the PLA, indicating perhaps that the incursion into this sector was a feint.

In June 2020, PLA troops also crossed the LAC at a seventh point, ingressing several kilometers into the Depsang Plains near Daulat Beg Oldi. Here, they began building two roads on the Indian side of the LAC.

A Shift Along the LAC

To fully comprehend the significance of these events, it is essential to understand the nature of the Sino-Indian frontier, which does not follow an agreed border. The LAC, which is the de facto border based on actual control of territory, has been neither delineated (settled on a map) nor demarcated (marked on the ground). Both India and China have different interpretations of where it runs. Since there is practically no human habitation in these areas and consequently no village records, Chinese and Indian border forces assert their territorial claims by patrolling up to their claimed boundary line. In areas where there are conflicting claims, Indian and Chinese patrols sometimes cross each other while going up to their respective claim lines.

Despite the potential for clashes, five major Sino-Indian agreements have largely kept the peace – until 2020.

The Border Peace and Tranquillity Agreement (BPTA), signed in September 1993, is termed the “mother agreement.” It was supplemented in 1996 with an agreement on confidence-building measures; a 2005 agreement on standard operating procedures for patrols that come into contact; a 2012 agreement that sets out processes for consultation and cooperation; and, most recently, the Border Defense Cooperation Agreement of 2013.

Both Beijing and New Delhi realize that a mutually delineated LAC would end the uncertainty that causes troop clashes. The 1996 agreement explicitly notes the need for a “common understanding of the alignment of the line of actual control in the India-China border areas.” It states that the two sides “agree to exchange maps indicating their respective perceptions of the entire alignment of the line of actual control as soon as possible.”

However, China stonewalled the exchange of LAC maps, keeping alive the window for clashes – and opening the opportunity for Beijing to rewrite facts on the ground, shifting the LAC in its favor.

With its incursions in 2020, it appeared China was taking advantage of an Indian patrolling lacuna to push back the LAC. While Chinese border guards have always patrolled right up to their claimed LAC, Indian troops have stayed short of the LAC, walking only up to a line of “patrolling points” (PPs) that are short of the understood LAC. An official who was involved in drawing up the PPs said the aim was to “avoid provoking the Chinese.”

A high-level government body, the China Study Group, drew up the first set of PPs in 1975, soon after Indian satellites completed their first survey and metric maps of the border areas became available. That initial line of PPs was moved closer to the LAC after the BPTA was signed in 1993 and finalized in 1995-96 when the current PPs were laid down. But, in most sectors, there remains a gap of a few kilometers between the PPs and the LAC.

Mapping PLA actions over the spring of 2020, the Chinese game plan appeared to be to usurp this unpatrolled gap, shifting the LAC back to the line of PPs. The PLA intruders constructed roads close to PP14, PP15, and PP17. In Depsang, they advanced up to PP12 and PP13. True, at the Pangong Tso they occupied territory well inside Finger 8, where Indian patrols regularly went. But this could be because Finger 8 is uncomfortably close to the Xinjiang-Tibet Highway, for which the PLA is creating a territorial buffer. Alternatively, it may be the plan to eventually withdraw from the area, tossing India a face-saving gesture while retaining the tactically crucial heights overlooking the DSDBO road.

The Situation Since 2020 

With the government of India downplaying border incidents, China’s transgressions continue. In December 2022, Indian Defense Minister Rajnath Singh informed Parliament that Chinese and Indian soldiers had scuffled physically in an attempt by the PLA to occupy a border post in Yangtse, near Tawang. Although the PLA was pushed back to its side of the LAC, low-grade violence such as this disrupts the atmospherics within which New Delhi and Beijing are attempting to mend fences.

In recent years, and especially since the 2020 stand-off in eastern Ladakh, the Indian Army has significantly upgraded firepower along the LAC in Arunachal Pradesh, while also ramping up infrastructure in forward areas in the region, particularly the Tawang sector. Meanwhile massive infrastructure upgrades are currently under way in eastern Arunachal.

Notwithstanding the fraught atmosphere, diplomacy continues. China’s new defense minister, General Li Shangfu, is likely to visit India in May for a Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Defense Ministers meeting. Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang will be visiting India, too, for the SCO Foreign Ministers’ meeting in May.

In February 2023, India and China held the 26th meeting of the Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination on the India-China Border Affairs (WMCC), to discuss ways of resolving the remaining two friction areas along the LAC. Since the stand-off began in April 2020, China and India’s attempts at diplomacy have followed a pattern: the WMCC meets first to attempt to resolve specific issues, followed by a personal meeting between senior military commanders at Maldo or Chushul border points.

The February 2023 WMCC was the first in-person meeting since July 2019. As of this writing, disengagement has been achieved (leading to the creation of buffer zones) at the Galwan River Valley, north and south of the Pangong Tso, PP17A in Gogra, and PP15 at Hot Springs.

However, the stand-off continues at two points – the Depsang Plain near the Karakoram Pass and Charding Ninglung Nullah (south of Demchok). Both these disputes pre-date the Pangong Tso intrusions of 2020. In the Depsang area, the PLA has blocked the Indian Army’s access to its patrolling points 10 to 13 in the Depsang Bulge, while in the Demchok area, the Indian Army can no longer access the Charding Ninglung Nullah track junction.

In the latest, 17th, round of corps-commander level border meetings, the Indian side stuck to demanding the restoration of patrolling rights in the Depsang Plains and Charding Ninglung Nullah area. The Chinese side, however, stuck to its position that the situation was normal.

Xi Jinping’s Broader Border Policy

China’s recent military incursions along the LAC are just one facet of a more assertive border policy under Xi Jinping.

First, there is the rhetorical element. In 2017, after the confrontation in the Doklam bowl, China’s Ministry of Civil Aviation released a set of “standardized” (sinicized) names for six places in Arunachal Pradesh, the disputed state that Beijing refers to as “Zangnan,” literally “Southern Tibet.” In 2021, amid the heightened tensions along the LAC, Beijing issued a second renamed list of 15 places. And on April 2, 2023, China’s Civil Aviation ministry issued a third list of 11 place names, which include two land areas, two residential areas, five mountain peaks and two rivers.

India has traditionally responded testily to such situations. “Arunachal Pradesh has always been, and will always be an integral part of India. Assigning invented names to places in Arunachal Pradesh does not alter this fact,” India’s External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said in 2021.

Since unilaterally assigning or changing a place name makes little difference to who owns it, New Delhi sees this as a mere pressure tactic, similar to Beijing’s moves in the South China Sea and East China Sea.

Perhaps of more concern, Beijing has instituted a policy of strategic treatment of Tibetan-inhabited areas with the aim of consolidating China’s hold over border areas along the LAC. In 2017, a new border village policy, believed to be masterminded by Xi Jinping himself, was announced with fanfare at the 19th Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Congress.

In an investigative article in May 2021 in Foreign Policy magazine, Tibetologist Robert Barnett described the new policy, which involves setting up Tibetan villages in remote border areas, thereby establishing Beijing’s control over these areas.

Barnett detailed the example of four Tibetan nomads from the remote Beyul Khenpajong region, which is disputed between Bhutan and China. Like other yak graziers in the remote border areas, the four grazed their herds in Beyul, returning to their village before the winter snows began.

But in 1995, when the graziers began driving their herds back from the border, local China Communist Party (CCP) officials told them that Beyul was strategic Chinese territory and that it was the herders’ duty to physically remain in the border pastures through winter.

For the next 20 years, the four graziers wintered alone in Beyul, in the freezing cold, under the most primitive conditions and with no contact with the outside world except through the CCP officials.

In summer, the officials would reassert China’s claims by getting the herders to do small tasks, such as driving Tibetan yak herds over land traditionally grazed by Bhutanese herders; demanding tax payments from the Bhutanese; planting Chinese flags on peaks; and painting the word “China” on rocks throughout the area. In the face of this sustained pressure and without any support from their army or government, the Bhutanese herders moved away, abandoning their traditional grazing grounds.

In April 2020, Wu Yingjie, Tibet’s CCP chief, trekked to the new village to hail the graziers as heroes of China.

Over the years, some 250,000 Tibetans have been resettled thus along disputed sections of the border, repeating this pattern in other areas. As Barnett wrote, CCP officials in Tibet are “transforming complicated local Tibetan histories of cross-border grazing, monastic claims, and family tradition into state-level claims by China.”

In July 2021, Xi Jinping visited Tibet for three days, with his focus on the town of Nyingtri (Nyingchi or Linzhi in Chinese), which is close to the border with India. His presence underlined the push to consolidate control along the border stems from the highest possible level.

India’s Options

What are India’s options, going forward? New Delhi must mount a full court press incorporating all elements of India’s national power – not just military, but also strategic, diplomatic, economic and its growing defense partnerships, especially in the maritime theater of the Indo-Pacific. For now, the Indian Army alone seems to be bearing the brunt of Chinese pressure.

In 1986, after the PLA occupied Indian territory in Sumdorong Chu in Arunachal Pradesh, India not only massed forces at the intrusion point, bottling up the Chinese, but also designated the centrally governed territory of Arunachal Pradesh a full-fledged Indian state. In the same manner, New Delhi must handle the current crisis by reversing years of subservient diplomatic behavior toward China.

Beijing could hardly have missed that since Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping began holding annual summit meetings (the so-called Wuhan summit in 2018 and the Mamallapuram summit in 2019), New Delhi has toned down its criticism of China over Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and the Belt and Road Initiative. Surprisingly, India has not changed that low-key approach even amid China’s incursions along the LAC.

New Delhi rightly upbraided Pakistan’s envoy in June 2020 for detaining two Indian embassy employees in Islamabad. However, even after the barbaric killing of 20 Indian soldiers in May 2020, the Chinese ambassador to New Delhi was not summoned and told off. It is time India stopped treating China with kid gloves.