[They were confronted by a Royal Bhutan Army patrol; Indian soldiers pitched tents there two days later. India and Bhutan — a country of just under 800,000 — have long had a special relationship that includes military support and $578 million in aid to Bhutan.]
By Annie Gowen and Simon Denyer
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Indian troops reportedly
clashed with Chinese soldiers on Aug. 15. Tensions have
been rising since Indian
troops were sent to a remote area of the border in
June to block China from
building a road. (Reuters)
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NEW
DELHI — As nuclear posturing
between North Korea and the United States rivets the world, a quieter conflict
between India and China is playing out on a remote Himalayan ridge — with
stakes just as high.
For the past two months, Indian and Chinese
troops have faced off on a plateau in the Himalayas in tense proximity, in a
dispute prompted by moves by the Chinese military to build a road into
territory claimed by India’s close ally, Bhutan.
India has suggested that both sides withdraw,
and its foreign minister said in Parliament that the dispute can be resolved
only by dialogue.
Yet China has vociferously defended the right
it claims to build a road in the Doklam area, territory it also claims.
Since the dispute began, the Chinese Foreign
Ministry has issued an angry stream of almost daily denunciations of India and
its “illegal trespass” and “recklessness,” along with demands that New Delhi
withdraw its troops “if it cherishes peace.”
Incursions and scuffles between the two
countries have long occurred along India and China’s 2,220-mile border — much
of which remains in dispute — although the two militaries have not fired shots
at each other in half a century.
Analysts say that this most recent dispute is
more worrisome because it comes as relations between the two nuclear-armed
powers are declining, with China framing the issue as a direct threat to its
territorial integrity. For the first time, such a conflict involves a third
country — the tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan.
And the potential for dangerous clashes
elsewhere on the rugged mountainous border remains real, analysts say. Indian
and Chinese patrols jostled each other and exchanged blows Tuesday morning by a
lake in the Ladakh region of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, according
to local reports.
“It would be very complacent to rule out
escalation,” said Shashank Joshi, an analyst with the Royal United Services
Institute in London. “It’s the most serious crisis in India-China relations for
30 years.”
The standoff also reflects an expanding
geopolitical contest between Asia’s most populous nations. As China fortifies
islands in the South China Sea and exerts its influence through ambitious
infrastructure projects throughout the continent, its dominance of Asian
affairs is growing, as is its unwillingness to brook rivals. India is seen by
some as the last counterbalance.
“The most significant challenge to India
comes from the rise of China, and there is no doubt in my mind that China will
seek to narrow India’s strategic space by penetrating India’s own neighborhood.
This is what we see happening,” former Indian foreign secretary Shyam Saran
said recently at an event in New Delhi.
The incident began in mid-June, when a crew
from the People’s Liberation Army, the PLA, entered a remote plateau —
populated largely by Bhutanese shepherds — with earth-moving and other
equipment and “attempted to build a road,” India’s Ministry of External Affairs
said in a statement.
They were confronted by a Royal Bhutan Army
patrol; Indian soldiers pitched tents there two days later. India and Bhutan —
a country of just under 800,000 — have long had a special relationship that
includes military support and $578 million in aid to Bhutan.
India says the road would have moved Chinese
troops closer to India’s strategically important Siliguri Corridor, known as
the Chicken’s Neck, the narrow stretch of land that separates India’s northeast
from the rest of the country.
China asserted that more than 270 Indian
border troops, carrying weapons and driving two bulldozers, “flagrantly crossed
the boundary” and advanced about 100 yards into Chinese territory.
The roots of the distrust between the two
nations go back to India’s decision to shelter the Dalai Lama in 1959, when the
spiritual leader fled Tibet during an uprising there, and to China’s invasion
during a brief border war in 1962.
There was a marked deterioration in relations
after India signed a nuclear cooperation agreement with the United States in
2005 and ties deepened between the two large democracies.
In 2014, Narendra Modi came into office as
the most pro-China Indian prime minister since 1962, wanting not only to
emulate China’s economic progress, but also to attract Chinese investment,
analysts say.
But he found Chinese President Xi Jinping to
be an unreliable partner, as China blocked India’s application to join the
Nuclear Suppliers Group and blocked efforts at the United Nations to declare
Pakistani militant Masood Azhar a terrorist.
When China’s sweeping Belt and Road
development initiative added an economic corridor through parts of
Pakistani-administered Kashmir, a region that India claims, the tensions rose
sharply. Modi snubbed a major summit in Beijing that launched the Belt and Road
plan this year.
Meanwhile, India alarmed China by allowing
the Dalai Lama this year to visit an important Buddhist monastery in India’s
northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, a region Beijing claims is part of
Tibet.
“India has tolerated and supported Tibetan
separatists, allowing the Tibetan independence groups to set up an ‘exile
government’ in India,” said Long Xingchun, director of the Center for Indian
Studies at China West Normal University in Nanchong.
Two months in, a few hundred Chinese and
Indian troops remain hunkered down on the plateau — and the threat of violence
looms.
Xu Guangyu, a retired PLA major general, said
China has been preparing to evict Indian troops if New Delhi does not back down
but hoped that China’s objective could be realized without bloodshed.
“We won’t be the first to fire. We are very
clear about this line, and this shows China’s sincerity,” he said. “But it’s
not up to China to decide. Whether there is to be war depends on the Indians.
However, if they fire the first shot, they would lose control and the
initiative.”
In recent days, Chinese media has kept up its
overheated rhetoric, culminating in the release by a state-run news agency of a
bizarre video mocking India as a bad neighbor — with an actor wearing a turban,
fake beard speaking in a put-on Indian accent. Indian netizens immediately
denounced the video as racist. Perhaps more troubling, the Global Times
reported that the government was setting up blood collection centers and moving
its blood supplies closer to the area in Tibet.
India has undertaken a variety of
preparedness measures with its eye on Chinese escalation, Joshi said, including
advancing the operational alert status of several units by two months, which
involves moving two of its mountain divisions toward the region and allowing
troops to begin acclimatizing to higher altitudes.
“Clearly, there are a whole set of measures
they’ve taken as discreetly as possible to shield themselves from snap Chinese
offenses,” Joshi said.
Denyer reported from Beijing. Luna Lin in
Beijing contributed to this report.
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