Post-Covid, China has been flexing its muscles. It sank a Vietnamese vessel in the South China Sea and has brought in a harsh law against dissent in Hong Kong

aggressor. On May 21, the ministry of external affairs (MEA) debunked suggestions that Indian troops had undertaken activity across the LAC. “Indian troops are fully familiar with the LAC alignment and abide by it scrupulously,” an MEA spokesperson said.

There are, however, multiple global factors at play. The annual meet of China’s parliament, the National People’s Conference, under way in Beijing, saw Xi Jinping vow support for the PLA with a 6 per cent hike in military spending. Post its relatively unscathed emergence from the COVID-19 pandemic, China has flexed its muscles, especially in territorial disputes. It sank a Vietnamese fishing vessel in the disputed South China Sea in early April. Beijing has brought in a harsh new law suppressing dissent in Hong Kong and has warned Taiwan against secession. Adding to this plethora of events, Indian commentators say, is China’s angst over the bifurcation of Jammu and Kashmir and the abrogation of Article 370 last August.

Lt Gen. D.B. Shekatkar, head of a panel that submitted a report on India’s military reforms, says the flashpoints are ‘neither incidental nor accidental’. “It would have required several months of planning and is in response to our creating a Union territory of Ladakh and reiterating our claim on (Pakistanoccupied) Gilgit-Baltistan and (Chinese-occupied) Aksai Chin,” he says.

According to Claude Arpi, who holds the Field Marshal KM Cariappa Chair of Excellence at the United Services Institution of India, “The Galwan region and Naku La have not been in dispute, and this pattern of incursion indicates that the Chinese seem to be opening up multiple new fronts along the LAC.” The stand-off even evoked a comment from the United States, which rarely speaks on India’s border disputes with China. Alice Wells, the outgoing US principal deputy assistant of state, Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs, remarked that border flare-ups were “a reminder that Chinese aggression is not always rhetorical”. On May 27, US president Donald Trump tweeted: “We have informed both India and China that the US is ready, willing and able to mediate or arbitrate their now raging border dispute.” The tweet may have mortified Beijing, which is wary of close Indo-US ties. Its foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian signalled that a de-escalation seemed to be under way and that the “border area situation is overall stable and controllable”.

New Delhi will no doubt be looking to see what a post-pandemic China looks like in two major bilateral events due later this year—the third informal summit between PM Modi and President Xi and the 23rd edition of boundary talks between the special representatives of India’s national security advisor Ajit Doval and Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi.

For decades following the 1962 war, eastern Ladakh continued to be India’s Achilles’ heel and a military planner’s nightmare. It was remote and isolated, with no road connectivity. Parts of the region were marooned in winters when snow blocked mountain passes. The rapid build-up of infrastructure on the Tibetan plateau in the 1990s, which meant China could swiftly rush its forces in, saw an alarmed Indian government appoint the ‘China Study Group’. In 2003, the group recommended beefing up border infrastructure by building all-weather roads. A burst of construction over the past six years has seen the completion of a majority of the 73 roads recommended by the group.

The immediate point of conflict is one of those roads—the 260 km Darbuk-Shyok-Daulat Beg Oldie road linking Leh with DBO, the army’s northern-most outpost just a few km south of the Karakoram Pass. The all-weather road was completed last year. Supplies can now be driven up to this post. Earlier, it used to be a 10-day-long mule ride or flown in by air force aircraft operating at the edge of their envelope.

In April last year, the army tactfully announced the road’s completion by flagging off a motorcycle expedition as part of the 20th anniversary celebrations of the Kargil War. The message might not have gone unnoticed. In 2019, the number of border transgressions by Chinese troops nearly doubled to 536—most of them in the western sector, in Ladakh.

Some army officials now see Galwan as payback for Doklam. In 2017, the Chinese road led to the vital Jampheri ridge overlooking ‘Chicken’s Neck’, the narrow Siliguri corridor connecting the northeast with India. The new Darbuk-Shyok-DBO road is not very far from China’s strategic highway connecting Xinjiang with Tibet. The border infrastructure building is set to continue and all the roads are set to be completed by 2023. Border deadlocks like Galwan will be minor irritants at best. ■