Trust deficit mars Sino-India relations, as the tense Line of Actual Control poses a big challenge for the leadership
Imagining peace between India and China is impossible without understanding the conflict dynamics between them in retrospect. October 2022 marks 60 years since India and China engaged in their first and only war in the high Himalayan frontiers, which lasted for 31 days, from 20 October to 21 November, 1962. In an unexpected aggression, China inflicted a heavy debacle on India, while the world’s attention was largely fixated on the Cuban Missile Crisis (16–29 October, 1962), which was underway around the same time.
The Chinese are known for choosing their timing perfectly. The two nuclear-armed nations are currently engaged in a tense military stand-off in eastern Ladakh, since late April 2020. With a billion-plus population in the country, the 3,488-km-long Line of Actual Control (LAC) is the world's longest disputed land border. Any future conflict between India and China will have disastrous consequences not only for Asia, but also for the global politico-economic stability.
While an undemarcated Sino-Indian boundary is the legacy of a colonial past, the LAC unraveled itself following the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1950-51. Three years later, in a huge diplomatic faux pas, India recognized China’s sovereignty over Tibet and signed the Panchsheel pact, or the five principles of peaceful coexistence, which China had no intention to honour. Towards the end of that decade, in the run up to the 1962 war, Tibetan rebels began an uprising against Chinese rule in Tibet, and the region’s spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, was forced to flee to India in March 1959.
A few months later, in the same year, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) clashed with Indian troops in Longju in the eastern sector. In the following year, Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai held talks with his Indian counterpart Jawaharlal Nehru, only to break off soon after. India then launched a confrontational and soon-to-be disastrous ‘Forward Policy’ in 1961, wherein New Delhi established new military posts to the north of existing Chinese posts in the disputed areas. This proved to be a fatal miscalculation from the Indian side.
Clashes followed in Nathu La and Cho La in the eastern sector in 1967, wherein India managed to successfully push back Chinese aggression near Sikkim. Two decades later, clashes resurfaced in Sumdorong Chu in Arunachal Pradesh. Standoffs became a recurring phenomenon along the border areas, as in the case of Depsang Plains in 2013, Demchok in 2014, Doklam in 2017. For the first time in 45 years, the 2020 Galwan standoff resulted in a loss of lives on both sides. Ever since the ongoing stand-off began in late April 2020, India and China held 16 rounds of military-level talks, the latest being in July 2022, and high-level diplomatic talks parallelly on the sidelines of various regional and multilateral gatherings.
The two remaining friction points in eastern Ladakh, dates back to 2013-14. Both sides have signed five confidence-building pacts between 1993 and 2012, including the one banning the use of firearms in the border areas. Almost all of them are effectively placed in a state of coma by the ongoing stand-off. Depsang and Demchok continue to remain as legacy friction points with the prospect of a possible disengagement unlikely to happen any time soon, particularly considering the fact that India is now part of plurilateral groupings such as the Quad, which China views as a US-led initiative to “contain” its rise.
Combined with the overlap of perceptions of territoriality, both India and China have been boosting up their military preparedness and infrastructure build-up in the border areas, with China having a higher comprehensive national power. India’s advantage, however, lies in a much experienced armed forces. Unfortunately, though, considering the changing nature of modern warfare, the traditional aspect of soldiers’ battleground valour is poised to play a lesser role in victory in the event of a full-scale war with China, taking the latter’s Artificial Intelligence-backed war machine into account.
While China wants to put the border dispute only at an “appropriate place” in the overall bilateral ties between India and China, India has made it clear that “the state of the border will determine the state of the relationship”. As China continues to invoke revanchist notions to claim territory across its neighbourhood and continues its expansionist posture across the Indian territory in the western and eastern sectors, the challenge for India’s diplomatic and military establishments, are poised to increase with time, particularly as the overall ties are made further complicated by the nuclear angle to the dispute and India’s widening trade deficit and persisting economic dependency on China.
(The author is a Director of Research at the Indo-Pacific Consortium at Raisina House, New Delhi)
