With both China and India beefing up militarily on their Himalayan border, analysts are worrying that it could be just a matter of time before a clash involves more than sticks, clubs and fists.
Indian and Chinese troops skirmished on the border on Dec 9 – which reportedly left several soldiers injured. The clash was on China’s border with Arunachal Pradesh, in the eastern sector of the 3,488km-long border, of which many sections are in dispute.
In the last three years, China has been rapidly constructing barracks and patrol facilities just north of where the skirmish took place, said New Delhi-based Dr Manoj Joshi, author of a new book titled “Understanding the India-China Border: The Enduring Threat of War in High Himalaya”.
The Distinguished Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi was speaking on The Straits Times’ Asian Insider video and podcast on the significance of the latest clash.
“Right along the Line of Actual Control, we are seeing that there’s a build-up on both sides,” he said.
“That is why in my book, I call it the enduring threat of war – because if you have a build-up, and you have a dispute which is bubbling up… the chances of this becoming a shooting dispute are pretty high.”
As in the last major clash of its kind at Galwan in 2020 in the western sector, the skirmish did not involve firearms. The hand-to-hand fights were nonetheless brutal; at Galwan, they left well over 20, and possibly even up to 40 or 50, dead on both sides.
Beijing claims the entire Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh. And Tawang, in particular, is at the intersection of another sensitive issue – Tibet. The nearly 400-year-old Tawang Monastery is one of the most sacred places for Tibetan Buddhism.
“There are those who argue that China would like control over territory where a future (Tibetan spiritual leader) Dalai Lama successor may come about – and so therefore, it would like control over the Tawang region,” said Dr Aparna Pande, director of the Initiative on the Future of India and South Asia at the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC.
Speaking alongside Dr Joshi on Asian Insider, she added that China’s actions on the border are driving India and the United States closer.
“The more aggressive China is on the border or in India’s neighbourhood, the greater likelihood that India is… more aligned to the United States and its partners,” she said.
