Commentators have pounced on just one point in the joint press release of the sixth round of the Indian and Chinese senior commanders meeting at Moldo, near Chushul, on 21 September. That is, the commitment to “stop sending more troops to the frontline”.

What this essentially says is that both sides are keen to stabilise the situation, but this does not mean that we are anywhere near achieving the status quo ante of April 2020 in eastern Ladakh.

The rest of the statement is what the Americans call ‘motherhood and apple pie’ — in other words, platitudes, such as, there was agreement “to earnestly implement the important consensus reached by the leaders of the two countries, strengthen communications on the ground… avoid taking action that may complicate the situation.”

You can be sure that local commanders can and will act to adopt tactically superior positions – but for the present, both sides have already done what they needed to do.

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Is India-China Agreement To Stop Sending More Troops A Good Sign?

India & China want things to stabilise, but we aren’t close to achieving status quo ante of April in eastern Ladakh.

MANOJ JOSHI

Published: 23 Sep 2020, 6:27 PM IST

OPINION

6 min read

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Commentators have pounced on just one point in the joint press release of the sixth round of the Indian and Chinese senior commanders meeting at Moldo, near Chushul, on 21 September. That is, the commitment to “stop sending more troops to the frontline”.

What this essentially says is that both sides are keen to stabilise the situation, but this does not mean that we are anywhere near achieving the status quo ante of April 2020 in eastern Ladakh.

The rest of the statement is what the Americans call ‘motherhood and apple pie’ — in other words, platitudes, such as, there was agreement “to earnestly implement the important consensus reached by the leaders of the two countries, strengthen communications on the ground… avoid taking action that may complicate the situation.”

You can be sure that local commanders can and will act to adopt tactically superior positions – but for the present, both sides have already done what they needed to do.

Also Read

India-China Latest Negotiations & What They Imply

The Chinese negotiating strategy is to wear the other side down by introducing new issues, as soon as old ones are resolved. Currently, we are seeing a variant of this where the Chinese now say that the key issue is the need for India to vacate the dominating heights it occupied on 29/30 August on the south bank of the Pangong Tso. Only after that will they discuss the original issue, which is that of China occupying Finger 4 and adjacent areas on the north bank.

The difference is that, at least according to the Ministry of Defence, the Indian side is occupying heights on its side of the Line of Actual Control (LAC), while the Chinese occupied Finger 4 which was in a grey zone which fell within the claims of both sides, and which was patrolled by them till that point in time.

The negotiations between the two sides went on for more than 13 hours.

The Indian delegation was headed by the commander of 14 (Leh) Corps Lt Gen Harinder Singh, as well as his successor Lt Gen PGK Menon. Accompanying them for the first time was the senior-most external affairs ministry official dealing with China, Naveen Srivastava, who is Joint Secretary (East Asia). The Chinese side was headed by Major General Liu Lin, Commander of the South Xinjiang Military District.

‘Indication’ That The Chinese Have ‘No Plans’ For A Local War?

The two sides also announced an agreement to hold a seventh round of the military-commander type meeting “as soon as possible”. All this sounds nice, but the successive rounds of meetings could well be aimed at showing the world that the Chinese side are being ‘reasonable’ in the face of Indian intransigence. It could be yet another variant of the Chinese negotiating strategy.

Even so, we must welcome the decision of the two sides to stop sending more forces to the frontline. Given the fact that China has just two divisions in the area indicates that the Chinese have no plans for a local war in the area. 

India has also put in matching numbers, and if the two sides refrain from a further build-up, it is possible to – at least – ensure that there is some kind of a stabilisation, even though one in which India is, for the present, the loser.

How Doklam Issue Compelled Chinese Leadership To Focus On Sino-Indian Border

In the wake of the Doklam crisis in January 2018, Senior Colonel Zhu Bo, a well-connected People's Liberation Army (PLA) officer, wrote a commentary in the South China Morning Post. Zhu, a familiar sight in international conferences like the Shangri-La Dialogue, warned that India would have to pay a heavy price for its stand in Doklam. “For years, the disputed border has not really been on China’s strategic radar,” he wrote, “in part because of its emphatic victory against India in the 1962 border war, and in part because of China’s major strategic concerns lie elsewhere.”

But, the Doklam issue had compelled the Chinese leadership to focus on the Sino-Indian border.

“As a result, China will most probably enhance infrastructure construction along the border. India may follow suit, but it will in no way be comparable in either speed or scale.”

The words have turned out to be prophetic. In the past three years, the Indian Army has also been reporting a sharp uptick in infrastructure construction, as well as the establishment of newer cantonments closer to the border to station Chinese troops forward, in the manner India does. As for Doklam, the Chinese have established a permanent presence over most of it.

Chinese Military & Air Defence Reinforcements: Why India Should Be ‘Worried’

Last week, the geopolitical intelligence website Stratfor issued a report which said that China’s intensified development of military infrastructure suggests a shift in Beijing’s approach to the Sino-Indian border. The report said that China had more than doubled its total number of air bases, air defence positions and heliports in the last three years.

The one area that the PLA is focusing on is its air defence capabilities in the Tibetan plateau.

It is well-known that the Indian Air Force has an edge in terms of the capabilities of its fighters and their geographic location. Proximate to the LAC they have the ability to ‘pop up’ onto the Tibetan plateau, while Chinese fighters have to pay a weight penalty because of the altitudes their bases are located in. Further, they are easily tracked the moment they take off.

But, the PLA has a formidable integrated air defence system based on surface-to-air missiles already in place in Tibet.

To this it will add a significant component of fighter aircraft. For this purpose, it is now building regular air bases with underground shelters, as well as blast pens on the surface. They are also enhancing their radar cover.

Reports that they may locate two regiments of S-400s in the plateau could be a major challenge for the Indian Air Force (IAF).

What Are The Two Possible Outcomes Of The Sino-India Border Conflict?

Since the mid-2000s, Indian defence planners have been talking up a two-front and even sometimes a two-and-a-half front war scenario.

Suffice to say, with steadily declining defence budgets, we are not even ready for a one-front war.

Now China is confronted with a similar dilemma. M Taylor Fravel has pointed out that for long, the Sino-Indian border constituted a “secondary strategic direction” for China. Its principal interest lay in the direction of Taiwan and the western Pacific. This secondary challenge had to be managed in a way that China always retained the initiative.

After Doklam, Beijing seems to have realised that things have changed, and that India too cannot be managed easily, especially since New Delhi seemed inclined to get involved with the US in the western Pacific as well.

But unlike India, China does not lack resources – and it has been exponentially enhancing the quality of its military in the last decade and more.

In these circumstances, the Sino-Indian situation can end up in two outcomes:

• war – with China seeking to establish its primacy
• a permanent border settlement that will remove the LAC from becoming the PLA’s soft under-belly.
• The Quint September 23, 2020
•  https://www.thequint.com/voices/opinion/india-china-border-conflict-senior-commanders-meeting-latest-agreement?#read-more
• 
  

India-China Tensions: Betting on a Quick Return to Status Quo Ante Would Be Hazardous

There should be no surprise at the insipid Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) statement on the India-China border issue. It tells us what we already know 1) a meeting was held between the Corps Commanders of India and China on June 6 and 2) the two sides were maintaining their military and diplomatic engagement to peacefully resolve the situation.

There is no word on whether there has been any kind of disengagement, or even a commitment towards one in all, or any one of the problem areas—Galwan, Gogra or Pangong Tso. We may, in the coming months, be able to persuade the Chinese to thin their deployments near the Line of Actual Control (LAC), but betting on a quick return to the status quo ante would be hazardous.

A new and nervous era

A lot of the commentary we have seen on the Sino-Indian contretemps on the LAC has been about history, geopolitics and cartography. It could actually be the harbinger of a new and nervous era, a geopolitical side-effect of the terrible COVID-19 pandemic which is racking the world.

Instead of following the rational path of uniting to fight a common public health calamity, as we have done in the case of polio, HIV, small pox and so on, this time, geopolitical nerve points are being deliberately inflamed.

The US seems to be moving from trade war to decoupling and has successfully persuaded its old allies, Australia and the UK, to once again march to its drumbeat. Japan, which was on the verge of an entente with China earlier this year, seems to have drawn back. And China which is never too comfortable with disorderly things, is like a blindfolded person, hitting out in all directions with the belief it is protecting itself.

And then there is India. As usual, after the “masterstroke” that was the lockdown, the Narendra Modi government is trying to cope with its consequences. And as it appears unable to do so, it a) throws the issue back to the states, after having ridden roughshod over them in the first place and b) simply declares victory, even as people are starting to die across the country in ever larger numbers from a pandemic multiplied by the original “masterstroke” without any supporting plan to exploit its advantages.

So what has happened on the border? First and foremost, the LAC is something of a ghost line. It’s not delimited on any map, leave alone marked on the ground by a fence or boundary pillars. Whether this side of a nullah or a ridge is Chinese territory, or that, is a matter of perception and, when push comes to shove, physical possession.

So, whether it is in Galwan or in the Pangong Tso Finger 4-Finger 8 area, the system worked when both sides observed the rules of the game, worked out laboriously through a regime of Confidence Building Measures – the 1993 Border Peace and Tranquility Agreement, the 1996 Military CBM agreement, the 2005 Protocol on CBM implementation along the LAC, and the Border Defence Cooperation Agreement of 2013.

Now, one of the parties seems to be suggesting that new rules be worked out. It is true that China has, for the past decade, trying to get India to freeze its border infrastructure construction. It is also true that India has, instead rightly accelerated the process since it was badly placed in terms of infrastructure along the LAC, as compared to the Chinese. Because of this, curiously, it maintained a stronger forward presence along the LAC than the Chinese did. And some of this is clearly making the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) nervous. Whether it was the COVID-19 outbreak, or something else, it has decided to act nowA warning from 2017

But we should have heeded the warning from 2017 that was contained in an article in the South China Morning Post in the wake of the Doklam crisis, written by Senior Colonel Zhou Bo, a familiar figure in the Chinese information war circuit and an honorary fellow in the PLA Academy of Military Sciences. According to Zhou, India would be the net loser of the crisis because “the disputed border was not on China’s strategic radar” till the Doklam standoff. The PLA had since reconsidered its assessment of the strategic importance of the Sino-Indian border and would begin to upgrade its military capabilities there. And that is what has happened.

Till Doklam, China had a relaxed posture, keeping just five PLA brigades in Tibet with a capacity to reinforce them to 30 divisions. Its Air Force lacked adequate bases, and even where the PLAF operated, the bases lacked bomb-proof shelters for parking combat aircraft. But things have changed in the last three years. The PLA is being equipped with newer weapons and more cantonments have come up to house them permanently. And so have bomb-proof facilities for fighters, at least in the main base at Lhasa’s Gonggar airfield.

All this has, of course, been happening in recent years, but now we are seeing a new nervous tic that COVID-19 may have given to the global body politic. It could be signalling hard times ahead.

The Wire  June 12, 2020 

https://thewire.in/security/india-china-border-tensions-manoj-joshi

The overt Chinese message

How must one deconstruct the ongoing Sino-Indian face-off along the Line of Actual Control (LAC)? Are events in Naku La in Sikkim and Pangong Tso, Hot Springs, Galwan Valley in Ladakh connected? Or do they have independent drivers? As usual, the answers are not clear, though we should be clear that the actions are about signalling, not making war.

If the events are connected, they are being directed at the theatre level and may have a larger purpose. But if not, should they not be seen as a part of the normal summer-time patrol rush? This is now more frenetic because both sides have improved their infrastructure and mount more patrols in areas where there is a difference of perception with regard to the LAC.

There is one problem with this thesis. Galwan, Hot Springs and Naku La have not been on the list of the 16-odd places along the LAC where there have historically been differing perceptions of the LAC and consequent ‘transgressions’. These have been addressed by a range of agreements with standard operating procedures laid down to prevent any escalation of tensions. Reports now suggest that the tension in Pangong and Naku La has died down. But the Galwan situation remains a puzzle.

First, let us enter a caveat. China does not have an independent media but India does. And it is important to always question official accounts. Media personnel have no access to the areas we are talking about—Galwan, Hot Springs, north bank of Pangong. What we know is what we are being told by some agency—maybe the intelligence, the Army, or the ITBP. In the past, their approach has sometimes been mendacious and quirky.

In 2009, there were a spate of articles in the Indian media charging China with violating the LAC. In September, ‘official sources’ said Chinese forces had intruded 1.5 km into the Indian side of the LAC near Chumar, and sprayed the word ‘China’ in red paint on many rocks there. In June, two Chinese helicopters had violated the Indian air space near Chumar. A PTI report reportedly based on confidential defence documents said Chinese helicopters entered the Indian air space in Demchok area and the Trig heights in north Ladakh, and air-dropped canned food, which were past their ‘use by’ date.

As for Galwan, India has wrought a qualitative change in the area by completing the Durbuk-Shyok-Daulat Beg Oldi road in April 2019. This is also known as the Sub Sector North road and has strengthened India’s posture in this strategic area greatly. The current stand-off was apparently triggered by India trying to build a branch of this road up to its own side of the LAC in the Galwan Valley.

Alarmist reports saying the Chinese have actually intruded into the Indian side area are difficult to accept, since the LAC is just about 10 km from the road. In any case, the Chinese already dominate parts of the road from the heights on their side of the LAC.

Forces in Galwan are separated by at least 500 metres, though the PLA movements seem designed to block further construction of the Galwan Valley road. But they are not into fist fights, as in the Pangong area; or face to face, as in Doklam. Perhaps this is a result of jangled nerves in the local Chinese HQ which has long been used to dominating the area, or a longer term calculation relating to defending Tibet in relation to growing Indian capabilities in eastern Ladakh and northern Sikkim.

A large part of the problem arises from the shifting Chinese stand on just where the LAC lies in the western sector, where their claims have always been somewhat murky. The Chinese claim line of 1956, reaffirmed by Premier Zhou Enlai in 1959, showed both Chip Chap and Galwan rivers flowing into the Shyok, outside their claim. In 1960, they expanded their claim and occupied the Chip Chap and Galwan river valleys. A similar move led to the occupation of Siri Jap on the Pangong Tso. Indians set up posts to counter them, but these were not tenable and wiped out in the 1962 War, after which China occupied another 5,000 sq km along the LAC.

There is a possibility that all the events — in Sikkim, Pangong, Galwan — have another driver: Covid tensions between the US and China. Last week, somewhat uncharacteristically, its outgoing top diplomat for the region, Alice Wells, said the tensions were a reminder of the ‘threat’ posed by China. She added that whether it was the South China Sea of the border with India, ‘we continue to see provocations and disturbing behaviour by China’.

Hit by Covid, and the economic disruption, the Chinese are rattled by the increasingly hostile US. In the past couple of months, temperatures in the South China Sea have been rising; now, US actions, triggered by the approaching elections, have pumped anti-China rhetoric to a dangerously high level. So, Beijing could well be doing some signalling, warning New Delhi to stay away from whatever Washington has to offer. The actions across the LAC could well be a signal to suggest that India, too, has many immediate vulnerabilities and getting involved in any US-led venture could be counterproductive.

Tribune May 26, 2020

https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/comment/the-overt-chinese-message-89980