Having been frustrated by the persistent stone-walling by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) negotiators in the talks to defuse tensions in eastern Ladakh, India seems to have decided on a strategy that involves a dash of tit-for-tat. This is evident from the narratives that have come in on the incident that took place on the night of last Saturday, 29 August 2020.
Theofficial statement issued by the Ministry of Defencesays that Indian forces “pre-empted” PLA activity to change the status quo in the southern bank of the Pangong Tso lake. Whatever the statement may say about “violation of consensus” and “provocative military movements”, the term “pre-emptive” has a clear-cut meaning.
Simply put, Indian forces occupied certain areas near the South Bank of the lake before, what they said, was a Chinese move to do the same.
All this has happenedafterfive rounds of talks between senior army officers of the two countries since the tensions bubbled up in April-May 2020, ironically enough at a place proximate to where the 29 August action took place.
And here we have a bit of a debate.Analysts like Ajai Shuklahave argued in Tuesday’sBusiness Standardthat on the night of 29/30 August, the PLA intruded the Indian side of the Line of Actual Control (LAC) and occupied two features – Helmet Top and Black Top – overlooking Indian military positions in the Chushul area.
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India and China Clash Again in Ladakh: Everything You Need to Know
Snapshot
Simply put, Indian forces occupied certain areas near the South Bank of the lake before, what they said, was a Chinese move to do the same.
All this has happened after five rounds of talks between senior army officers of the two countries since the tensions bubbled up in April-May 2020.
What is revealing is that in a TOI report, Rajat Pandit notes that commandos from the Special Frontier Force (SFF) were involved in the operations on 29/30 August night.
The SFF comprising of, among others, Tibetan exiles, is not an army unit.
Such a force is not used for normal military operations, but covert action.
You can be sure that what occurred on Sunday night was a carefully planned and executed counter-occupation.
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Use Of The Special Frontier Force: A Dead ‘Giveaway’
But reporting in The Times of India, Rajat Pandit says that India “thwarted an attempt by Chinese troops to occupy some heights near the southern bank of Pangong Tso lake.” Citing a senior officer, he says that “the pre-emptive action” from troops in nearby Thakung and other posts prevented a repeat of the early May incident when PLA forces occupied areas in Finger 4 in the north bank of the lake.
He cites the officer to say that our forces “completed their deployment in adequate numbers, with all the requisite equipment, to occupy the previously unoccupied dominating heights within our perception of the LAC by Sunday morning.”
If this statement isn’t a giveaway, what is revealing is that in the report, Pandit notes that commandos from the Special Frontier Force (SFF) were involved in the operations.
The SFF comprising of, among others, Tibetan exiles, is not an army unit. It belongs to India’s external intelligence agency, the Research & Analysis Wing (R&AW), and while its headquarters are in Sarsawa, near Saharanpur, it has a strong unit located in Leh. Such a force is not used for normal military operations, but covert action.
You can be sure that what occurred on Sunday night was a carefully planned and executed counter-occupation. This is evident too, from the noises emerging from China.
This Time, Chinese Anger Is Palpable
Now, in our experience, official statements, especially those emanating from China, must always be taken with a pinch of salt. Figuring out how much is not easy, but this is where instinct is important.
In the case of the 29/30 August incident, the Chinese anger is palpable. “Indian troops have violated the consensus reached at multi-level talks between India and China, and again crossed the Line of Actual Control at the border on Monday and purposely launched provocations,” said the spokesman of the Western Theater Command Senior Colonel Zhang Shuili on Monday. The Chinese “solemnly requested the Indian side to “abide by its commitments, and avoid further escalation of the situation.”
Earlier, the official spokesman of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Zhao Lijian, said in response to a question at his regular press conference that “Chinese troops have been strictly observing the Line of Actual Control and never crossed the Line”. In its editorial, the Communist Party tabloid Global Times fumed, but also hit the nail on the head: “India is trying to turn it (the South Bank area) into a new disputed area as a bargaining chip in negotiations.”
It warned New Delhi that China was “several times stronger than India, and India is no match for China.”
Why India Cannot Afford Military Conflict, Despite ‘Temptation’
Curiously, while in the North Bank the Chinese have moved five kms west of their 1960 official claim, in this case, they are caught some 1.5 kms short of it. According to the coordinates they gave in the talks between officials of the two sides in 1960, they said their LAC crossed the South Bank of the Pangong Tso at 78°43’E, 33°40’N – which is in fact about 1.5 kms west of Thakung.
But that is perhaps no longer the issue since China has chosen to pick and choose where it wants the LAC to be.
All efforts made in the last thirty years to stabilise the LAC and move to a border settlement are now up in the air. With its actions, it has made not just eastern Ladakh, but the entire LAC ‘alive’ to military moves and counter-moves. And because this border is not recognised by either side and is manned by the military, it has the potential for instability.
This is not a good time for India to get into a military conflict with anyone.
There may be a temptation amongst the political class to divert attention from the COVID spread and the sharp economic downturn. But, not only is the quality of our politico-military leadership wanting, but the state of the military is not particularly good – having faced five successive years of underfunding.
In a remarkable coincidence, India and China, neighbours and adversaries, who began their journey as nation-states together in 1950, have begun talking about self-reliance at the same time. ‘Self-reliance’ means different things in Beijing and New Delhi, but just as analysts struggle to understand what Modi’s atmanirbharta means, so are they grappling with Xi’s concept of ‘dual circulation system’ or DCS, aimed at promoting atmanirbharta in China.
We know that Modi’s call on May 12 was triggered by Covid, even if we are not sure as to exactly what he is advocating. But the DCS announced at the politburo standing committee (PBSC) meeting two days later on May 14, has a longer history. The PBSC statement spoke of the need to deepen the supply side structural reform to give full play to the country’s super large market, and push domestic demand. It sought ‘a new development pattern in which domestic and international double cycles promote each other.’
How is this atmanirbharta,you may ask? In essence, DCS is an economic strategy that calls on China to continue to expand domestic production for exports (international cycle), even while shifting the economic momentum towards production for domestic consumption (internal cycle). China hopes to grow the domestic market and consumption, even while nudging the role of foreign markets and technology to a supporting role.
Beijing seems to have come to the same conclusion as many of its trade partners — that they are too vulnerable to the vagaries of the global trading system and need to hedge.
So, DCS is being promoted as a means of enhancing the resilience of its economy in a hostile global environment. Globalisation is in retreat and Covid has brought on a recession disrupting global trade, and at the same time, China’s supply chains face disordering in the face of US hostility. So, China is looking at ‘hedged integration’ where it takes advantage of global finance and technology where it can, but boosts domestic capabilities, and self-consciously, to reduce reliance on the global economy.
The new concept was explicated by The Economic Daily’s editorial board on August 19: In the economic cycle, “production is the starting point, consumption is the end point and circulation and distribution are the ‘bridges’ connecting the middle…we should focus on getting through the various links of domestic production, distribution, circulation and consumption and take satisfying domestic demand as the starting point and the landing point.” Giving ‘full play’ to the mega-market that is China is at the heart of the new strategy.
After Xi came to power, there was an increased emphasis on supply side structural reform through which China sharply reduced its capacity in several industries. Alongside, it undertook an aggressive campaign of financial de-risking and reducing its zooming debt. Like the supply side structural reforms, the DCS is seen as being driven by XI’s principal economic adviser, Vice Premier Liu He.
Politically, China has been emphasising the need to move the economy from the high growth to the high-quality path. This is linked to the importance of improving the quality of life of its people. At the 19th Congress in 2017, Xi Jinping had declared that the principal contradiction facing the Chinese people is the “contradiction between unbalanced and inadequate development and the people’s ever growing needs for a better life.” This principal contradiction, to use Chinese jargon, is driving current policies.
Self-sufficiency has been an intrinsic part of Chinese planning since the time the country began to flex its manufacturing muscles. The December 2005 national medium and long term science and technology development plan envisaged the country moving from an ability to copy foreign products to where it could do some value addition in the form of ‘indigenous innovation’ through R&D. Successive five-year plans have promoted this National Indigenous Innovation Capability (NIIC). Wherever possible, foreign technology has been replaced by a domestically developed one as a matter of policy.
The most successful and well-known instance of ‘indigenous innovation’ has been in the Internet. China simply blocked off foreign technology — Google, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter — and developed its own Baidu, WeChat, Alibaba and Weibo. In some areas, Chinese products turned out to be better than their western counterparts, the primary examples being Huawei’s 5G and TikTok.
China’s strength has been its ability to concentrate its resources in identified areas and in the past 30 years, it has defied naysayers and pulled economic rabbits out of the hat. Today, it confronts a veritable storm led by the world’s foremost economic and military power, whose principal aim is to deny China technology and trade that has powered its rise so far. Over the past two years, the US has carried out a global campaign to block the most advanced Chinese technology— that of 5G. It has placed broad restrictions on the import of US technology by Chinese companies and individuals, and it has imposed an array of tariffs on goods from China.
If the DCS succeeds, it will have a major impact on the world economy. Jude Blanchette and Andrew Polk have argued that even a small shift in China’s model will have a major impact on world trade. A more fuller shift towards what is called the German model, of high-end manufacturing with low input costs, could pose a challenge to the developed world as well. But, mind you, the DCS is not a turn away from the world economy. Indeed, it is aimed at deepening the linkages, but fixing China’s vulnerabilities.
WRITING in the Communist Party’s theoretical journal Qiushi last Saturday, Chinese President Xi Jinping rejected suggestions that China’s Marxist political economy was outdated. He insisted that it gave primacy to markets in the allocation of resources, but at the same time, enhanced the role of the government. Notwithstanding the important role of the private sector, he declared, “The leading role of the state-owned economy cannot be shaken.”
Last week, the influential weekly, The Economist, examined the subject from its liberal point of view arguing that that Xi Jinping’s China is reinventing state capitalism and that it would be a mistake to underestimate its endeavour.
As the US-China quarrel escalates, many analysts say China with its mix of authoritarianism, technology and dynamism, is too big to stop. There does seem to be a general tendency to underestimate the sheer scale of the Chinese economy, or how it has used IP theft, R&D investments, and STEM education to create important equities in technology industries. Squeezing Iran or North Korea through sanctions is one thing, but taking on China is quite another.
The Economist argues that China has been less harmed by the tariff war than was expected, and it has been remarkably resistant to the Covid-19 pandemic. It is the only economy in the IMF’s World Economic Outlook update of June 2020 that is likely to have a positive growth rate of 1 per cent in 2020. Everyone else is in negative territory. The US will be down -8 per cent, Euro area -10.2, and India -4.5.
This has probably reinforced Xi’s belief that a strong one-party state is better able to handle the challenges of our times. Xi may have stopped liberalisation of the economy and enhanced party control over private firms, but he has also pushed state-owned enterprises to follow market rules, thus strengthening the new hybrid state capitalism.
All this come at a time when China is locked in a struggle with the US on a range of issues — from trade, technology and human rights to the origins of the Covid-19 virus. US leaders like Mike Pompeo are leading the charge, blaming the ruling Communist Party of China for a host of ills. Both countries are involved in a cycle of retaliatory actions, pugnacious official statements and sanctions that appear to be intensifying.
Providing the two countries do not get into a hot war, the real battle will really play itself out in the arena of technology, and the answer to the question as to whether innovation can flourish in an authoritarian China with its techno-centric planned system, or the diffused decision-making and open system of democracies.
Around the world, especially in countries like India, there is concern over Chinese behaviour. Many think it could be a result of some Covid opportunism or to distract attention from the fallout of the pandemic at home. Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, says this could well be simply that China has transitioned into a new era and reflects its strengths and ambitions.
Trump Administration hawks, wary of a Biden victory in November, now want financial decoupling, meaning denying Chinese banks and companies access to the US dollars for financial settlements. Some even call for seizing the part of the US debt that is held by China. While both the options would inflict severe harm on the US and the world economy as well, the Chinese are planning for the worst. They are renewing efforts to internationalise the yuan and their central bank has reported a 36.7 per cent growth of cross-border settlement in the currency over the past year. Several proposals are doing the rounds, ranging from pricing some exports in renminbi, to creating a digital yuan for cross-border transactions.
India and the world have to decide just what do they want of China. Do they want regime change, the blocking of the economic and geopolitical rise of China, or merely a halt to its unfair trade and business practices and IP theft?
The former would involve an all-out Cold War, while the latter would suggest a coalition of countries to systematically confront China. Having so far taken on China on its own, it is doubtful whether the US could now get a coalition for a new containment policy on China, especially its more extreme versions. China is not about to keel over, but could actually emerge more resilient by being forced to adjust its economy to US pressure.
Further, countries like Vietnam, Australia and South Korea, and even Japan are heavily dependent on the Chinese economy. Recently, Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne told the visiting Mike Pompeo that Australia had its own China policy “and we have no intention of injuring it”, spelling out the fact that the Australians made their “own decisions, own judgements in the Australian national interest.”
That still leaves India for whom Chinese economic ties are not too significant, but important geopolitical differences are. Joining US hawks in the pursuit of extreme options would be self-destructive. On the other hand, coordinating a pushback with like-minded middle powers in the region, the EU and, maybe, a better led US, would be useful. Presidential candidate Joe Biden’s support to counter border threats with China is a good beginning since this is the first time a top US leader has come out in categorical support of India in relation to Ladakh. We may not get to humiliate China, as many Indians want to, but we could create the space that would enable us to win in the longer run.
As a country we need to be cautious in our dealings with China. It is a powerful neighbour who we should not casually handle. Yet, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pusillanimity in dealing with China does seem to be somewhat over-the-top.
In his Independence Day speech today, he did not mention China by name, and instead took recourse to rhetoric to comment on the issue.
In recent years Modi has avoided taking up foreign policy issues in his I-Day speech. The last time he did so was in 2016.
This is viewed as an occasion to lay out national priorities and list the achievements of the government of the day. But it is also meant to be a day of reflection and taking stock.
And who will deny that the one issue in which the ledger is very much in the red is that of China, and the issue is not just of foreign policy, but the country’s security ?
But all that Modi had to say was: “From LoC to LAC, whenever India has been challenged, our soldiers have given a fitting response in a language they understand.” They, of course, means Pakistan and China.
A Bitter Reality
This rhetorical flourish cannot conceal the fact that 20 of our soldiers died and 10 were taken prisoner in eastern Ladakh two months ago. Whether or not there were Chinese casualties is a matter of speculation.
But the reality is that even today, Chinese forces are sitting on Indian territory refusing to go back in areas of Depsang and Pangong Tso.
This is not a minor development, especially since China has also massed its forces along the LAC.
Instead, its ambassador has the cheek to suggest that it was India which is responsible for the events of this summer because it transgressed into Chinese territory.
In his statement and tone, Modi seems to be doubling down on his 19 June remarks that sought to deliberately fudge the issue of Chinese incursions.
“Neither is anyone inside our territory nor is any of our post captured,” he had said after the 15 June incident.
But we have the authority of the Ministry of Defence which in a note posted in its website that was hastily withdrawn in early August, categorically acknowledging that the Chinese “transgressed” in Kugrang Nala, Gogra, and north bank of Pangong Tso in mid-May, and that “the situation in Eastern Ladakh arising from unilateral aggression by China continues to be sensitive…”
No Official Acknowledgement
In all this, there has been no official acknowledgement or comment of what is arguably the bigger problem—an 18 km Chinese incursion that is preventing Indian patrols from accessing an area hundreds of square metres in size. Moreover, in the process, the Chinese have come dangerously closer to India’s northern-most position of Daulat Beg Oldi and the advanced landing ground there.
The government’s mendacity is evident, too, from the fact that none of those who died or were injured in the 15 June clash, or the two similar incidents in Pangong Tso in May, have figured in the Independence Day awards list. The ITBP claims that it has recommended 21 personnel for gallantry awards relating to the LAC skirmishes. It is unlikely that the Army would not have recommended its personnel for awards too.
A Deliberate Waffle?
The whole of the government approach seems to be a deliberate waffle. All that President Kovind had to say in his Independence Day eve speech was that India was “also capable of giving a befitting response to any attempt of aggression. “
Note the careful qualification, it is not aggression, but an attempt only. As for Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, the man who has made “befitting response” (Mooh-torh jawab) a trademark of his own, he issued a warning on the eve of I-Day, “if the enemy attacks us, we will give a befitting reply.” Well the enemy has, and the country waits and watches.
Clearly, the government wants to turn the page on the China chapter as quickly as possible. That is for the good. But it cannot ignore or look away from the situation on the ground. We have the PLA sitting on territory that India claims and is refusing to permit Indian troops from patrolling to the limit of the Indian claim as was the convention earlier.
The Facts of the Matter?
To New Delhi’s credit, it is making strenuous efforts to get the Chinese to restore status quo ante as of April this year.
As part of this, India’s ambassador to China Vikram Msri has met officials of the Central Mililtary Commission (CMC) of the Communist Party of China. This is no doubt a part of the understanding is that when it comes to the Sino-Indian border, it is the PLA that makes policy, not the Chinese foreign ministry. In recent years, the PLA has wanted this message to be heard loud and clear.
The sad part, however, is the persistence with which the government is seeking to pull the wool over the eyes of the people.
The facts of the matter are that our Intelligence failed to accurately assess the Chinese moves in April. The government, seeking to confuse the public on another issue, the COVID-19 pandemic, got tangled in its own rhetoric.
Army reserve units that usually are routinely moved forward when the Chinese or Pakistani conduct exercises were not moved into Ladakh in time, thus creating a dangerous situation. Fortunately, the Chinese did not contemplate an invasion but merely a bit of salami slicing.
We do not expect a PM’s Independence Day speech to be a mea culpa acknowledging all this, but in that case, he should also avoid using misleading rhetorical claims.
Independence Day is likely to see a renewed call for “Atmanirbhar (Self-reliant) Bharat”. So it is all for the good that RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat has cautioned that “swadeshi” need not imply the boycott of all foreign products. This should be a corrective for his followers, some of who are promoting self-reliance somewhat mindlessly. The issue is not so much self-reliance, but ensuring that domestic products match their imported counterparts in cost and quality. Minus this, we will end up in the same place we were in the 1980s, when 1950s vintage Ambassador and Premier Padmini cars ruled the roads. In a closed shop, Indian businesses were perfectly happy churning them out and the consumers had no choice but to buy them.
A problem may already be looming here in the area of defence. Last week, the MoD issued a note calling for a graduated ban on the import of 101 products. This could well be making virtue of necessity, as the government is flat broke. Or, perhaps it is aimed to lend heft to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call for self-reliance. Looked at in any way, it is wrong headed. Bans are not what is needed, but strategic guidance and leadership to create an industrial ecosystem, within which a defence sub-system can flourish.
This ban is designed to do the opposite. Indian defence industry today makes platforms based on imported sub-assemblies and parts. Many such products will now be banned. But as in the past, imports of their critical sub-systems will go on and we will maintain the fiction of the platform itself being indigenous. The MoD has said, for example, that it will procure 125mm armour piercing tank ammunition that will have 70% indigenous content. More likely than not the 70% relates to material content not financial value. This is likely to be true of several listed products.
Indigenising defence industry is inherently problematic. Take fighter aircraft, you only want 100 of them. Should you then by making a fetish of indigenisation, pump in vast resources to make the thousands of assemblies and sub-assemblies that go into making the aircraft? In any case, you are unlikely to be able to fabricate an engine in the next 30 years, even if you tried. With its imported engine and radar, what’s the embargo on the LCA MK 1A as of December all about?
We can obtain better outcomes by learning from countries like South Korea. Indeed, within the country itself there are lessons to be learnt. In 1980 India built a total of 30,500 or so cars, high cost, low quality and scarce products. Maruti-Suzuki began production in 1983 and 10 years later it had produced its millionth vehicle, a low cost and high quality product. Maruti assembled the vehicle and left the issue of indigenisation to its vendors who it regulated strictly on issues of quality and cost control. Suzuki began as a minority partner in the PSU which was led by babus of the classical mould, who were recast by the experience into world class industrial managers.
The rise of Maruti helped the growth of the other industrial clusters in the country that have made us a global automobile powerhouse. The Maruti-Suzuki experience would suggest, first, that secretary, defence production should be eased out of his role as a nominated director in the boards of the various defence PSUs. Second, the government should strategically divest from the DPSUs and allow the private sector much greater room. Third, understand that scale matters. Defence-grade products must be high quality, but they are not needed in the kind of numbers that private industry can support. Defence industry must be a subset of the larger manufacturing base of the country, not the other way around. Fourth, things don’t happen in one five-year election cycle. It could take two or three of them before we see real results.
In an article in the July issue of the Chinese embassy magazine China-India Review, Chinese ambassador Sun Weidong has squarely blamed India for the events of the past months in eastern Ladakh. But he said China is ready to work with India to uphold peace on the border.
But a hundred days after the first incident on the Sino-Indian border in the finger area of Pangong Tso, the Indian officers negotiating with their Chinese counterparts are finding their attitude anything but cooperative. While three-km buffer zones have been created in the Galwan Valley (Patrolling Point 14) and Hot Springs area (PP15), there has been no change in the situation in Pangong Tso, the Gogra (PP 17 and 17 A) area and, crucially, the Depsang Plains.
It may be recalled that a clash in the Galwan river at PP14 had led to thedeaths of 20 Indian Army personnel, and 10 being taken prisoner but released shortly thereafter. The number of Chinese killed or wounded remains a matter of speculation.
The seriousness of this event was underscored by the fact that these were the first casualties along the Line of Actual Control since 1975. This was despite the fact that the LAC is not marked on any mutually agreed map, and there are known points of difference along its 4,000 km length. This is because the two sides had built up an elaborate regime of border management through which each patrolled to the limits of its claim of the LAC and dealt with confrontations through elaborate protocolsNow all that has gone up in smoke and what we have is a tense confrontation along the entire length of the LAC. Behind the frontline troops, both sides have built up significant concentrations of war-waging materiel – tanks, artillery guns, missiles, fighter jets and so on.
Ambassador Sun’s article gives us an indication of the Chinese position. It is built on post-facto rationalisation. He maintains the current Chinese official line that the LAC runs along the estuary of the Galwan river, that is, either where the river has a confluence with the Shyok river flowing north to south as the term estuary is commonly understood) or near the ‘Y-bend’ in the Galwan river where the two sides clashed on June 15, as at least one Chinese map suggests. He claims that on June 6, India had agreed they would not cross the estuary of the river and both sides would build observation posts on either side of the mouth of the river. The facts are that the LAC is a good 5-6 kms away from the mouth of the river. Chinese officials had themselves given their Indian counterparts the latitude 78° 13’E, 34° 46’N as the point where it crosses the Galwan river. That is a good 0.5 km from the bend of the river where PP14 is located.
The Patrolling Points we have referred to are not new. They were set up in the late 1970s by the Government of India’s China Study Group. Which means Indian patrols have been going there routinely all these years and the Chinese could not have but known about them. In turn, India is familiar with where the Chinese patrol, and hence claim. And while there is an overlap of claims in Depsang and Pangong Tso, there was none in Gogra, Hotsprings and Galwan river valley. As the Indian spokesman noted on June 25, “Indian troops are fully familiar with the alignment of the LAC in all sectors of the India-China border areas and abide scrupulously by it.”
Ironically, Ambassador Sun has cited Article 1 of the 1993 Border Peace and Tranquility Agreement and Article II of the 1996 Agreement on CBMs and claims that they prohibit either side from overstepping the LAC, which is true. But he ignores the latter part of Article I of the 1993 agreement which says that the two sides will jointly work together to clarify the LAC, wherever “they have different views as to its alignment.” Or Article X of the 1996 agreement that calls on two sides “to sped up, the process of clarification and confirmation of the line of actual control.”
Despite urging by India, especially personally by Prime Minister Modi in 2014 and 2015, that the two sides clarify the LAC to prevent the kind of incidents that have now occurred, the Chinese have ignored these commitments. Even now, they show no inclination to clarify the LAC.
Ambassador Sun’s case is built on the specious argument that the Indian side crossed the LAC and therefore the onus is on India to set things right. But that is simply untrue. For reasons of its own, China has raised temperatures along the LAC, and as we have shown in the case of Galwan they are making a retroactive claim. Perhaps the Chinese want the LAC to be at the estuary, because that will give them a clear view of the Daulat Beg Oldi-Darbuk road. But wanting to be somewhere is not the same as having the right to be there.
As for the Government of India, it continues to waffle because of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ill-considered statement to the all-party meeting on June 19 that “neither is anyone inside our territory nor is any of our posts captured”. On June 28, Modi doubled down on the claim by declaring grandiosely in his Mann Ki Baat broadcast that “those who cast an evil eye on Indian soil in Ladakh have got a befitting response”.
The Ministry of Defence’s now withdrawn note of early August made it very clear that the prime minister was clearly being economical with the truth. According to the note, “Chinese aggression has been increasing along the LAC and more particularly Galwan Valley since 5th May, 2020.” The Chinese side, the note added, “transgressed”, which is the MoD terminology for Chinese incursions, “in the areas of Kugrang Nala (near Hot Springs, Gogra and north bank of Pangong Lake on 17-18 May, 2020”.
As per the note, “the situation in eastern Ladakh arising from unilateral aggression by China continues to be sensitive.” Part (iii) of the note says that despite diplomatic efforts, “the present standoff is likely to be prolonged”.
As winter sets in, two months from now, both the Chinese and the Indian side will be fighting General Winter who dictates his own schedule. Meanwhile diplomacy between the two countries is now in uncharted waters since an element of trust that is always needed in bilateral relations has melted away.
Professional journalist interested in national security affairs, currently Distinguished Fellow with the Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi looking after their national security programme
