China-India border row: two years on, what progress has been made in the conflict?

Two years after a string of skirmishes sparked a deadly military stand-off between two of the largest armies in the world, the lines between China and India are hardening.

The stand-off remains unresolved, with Chinese and Indian soldiers still locked in a confrontation, just metres away from each other, at friction points along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in the Indian Himalayan region of Ladakh.

Beyond the border, new friction points are emerging.

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Last week, the Chinese nationalist tabloid, Global Times asked India to stop a "regulatory assault" on Chinese companies in India, after a news report claimed that Xiaomi, the Chinese smartphone maker, alleged its officials faced threats of "physical violence" when they were questioned by Indian officials investigating potential tax fraud by the company.

On Monday, the new Indian Army chief General Manoj Pande blamed Beijing for the stand-off remaining unresolved, insisting it was China's "intent ... to keep the boundary issue alive". Last week, Pande said Indian troops "will not permit any change in [the] status quo or loss of territory". On Monday, he said Indian troops had been instructed to be "firm and resolute".

Last week, Chinese vice foreign minister Le Yucheng warned that the US' Indo-Pacific strategy, of creating exclusive groups against China, an oblique reference to the Quad military formation that India is a part of, would "bring horrible consequences and push Asia-Pacific over the edge of an abyss".

All this, observers said, points to a hardening of battle lines between the countries and does not bode well for an end to the stand-off.

"I think both sides have accepted that not much will change on the LAC," said Deepak Sinha, a retired brigadier in the Indian Army who headed India's only rapid deployment force, the 50th (independent) parachute brigade.

Sinha pointed to Indian foreign minister S. Jaishankar's repeated assertions over the last few weeks blaming Beijing for the stand-off. That stood in contrast to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's statement in June 2020 when he denied Chinese incursions in Ladakh. "India's stance has grown progressively harder with time, as the stand-off continues," said Sinha.

The stand-off resulted in a brutal clash between Chinese and Indian soldiers in June 2020 at the Galwan Valley in the Indian region of Ladakh, adjoining the Chinese-administered Aksai Chin area. At least 20 Indian soldiers and an unknown number of Chinese troops died in the clashes.

Since then, there have been 15 rounds of talks between regional military commanders from both sides. The talks have had limited success - but they did reach agreements to disengage along the Pangong Tso's northern and southern banks as well as at the Gogra post. Soldiers continue to be posted at multiple other points - at Hot Springs, at the Depsang Plains as well as at Demchok.

Instead, the two sides have only sought to make their presence on the border permanent - both have constructed military infrastructure, from airstrips to garrisons to permanent, all-weather roads. This, analysts believe, is a sign the LAC's militarisation is here to stay.

In March, Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi made an unannounced visit to New Delhi, the first by any high-ranking Chinese official since the stand-off. However, while the visit did not yield an end to the stand-off, it raised hopes of an imminent resolution through the border talks.

But dashing any expectations, there has been no progress in talks. In fact, the sides have not held any dialogue since the last round on March 11.

Sinha, the retired Brigadier, said that Wang's visit had worsened ties between the neighbours.

"India has traditionally been prickly about being hyphenated with other neighbours," said Sinha, "and Wang clubbed his visit to New Delhi, with a visit to rival Pakistan and a much-smaller nation Nepal".

This, he said, would have not gone down well with New Delhi. "In fact, ever since his visit, Jaishankar has adopted a more hard-line stance on the issue than before," Sinha added.

One key reason behind the stalemate, analysts believe, is the divergent approaches that China and India have taken.

"In the last two years the Chinese side has made multiple attempts to convince India that it should delink the border issue from the rest of the relationship," said Antara Ghosal Singh, a fellow at the Strategic Studies Programme of the Observer Research Foundation think tank in New Delhi.

Singh, a graduate from Tsinghua University in Beijing, recently wrote a paper for the Stimson Center about the strategic discourse within China after the 2020 stand-off.

Such attempts, Singh said, were a result of a realisation within the country that China would need Indian cooperation to achieve its many strategic and regional goals - like dealing with Washington's Indo-Pacific strategy, advancing its Belt and Road Initiative as well as maintaining stability in its sensitive Tibet and Xinjiang regions.

But herein lies the problem, Singh said. "Such a proposition suits Chinese interests very well, as it can seek India's cooperation on various fronts without having to pay any significant strategic cost for it," she said. "But as we know India has so far not agreed to such a proposition and it should not in the future."

New Delhi, on the other hand, has repeatedly put the boundary issue and the military stand-off at the forefront of the relationship. After his meeting with Wang in March, India's Jaishankar said ties were "disturbed" and were likely to remain so, till the issue was resolved.

"It cannot be normal if the situation in the border areas is abnormal," Jaishankar said. "India wants a stable and predictable relationship but restoration of normalcy will require a restoration of peace and tranquillity."

These two divergent approaches to the issue have meant the countries are still searching for common ground, analysts believe. But this is unlikely to emerge, going ahead.

At two years, the Ladakh stand-off is already one of the longest military impasses between the two countries. In 1986, the two armies faced-off in Sumdorong Chu valley in the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh. That deadlock lasted seven years, before it was resolved and both sides withdrew troops.

Analysts believe a similar long-haul impasse could be unfolding.

Sinha, the retired Brigadier, said both countries are unlikely to take any drastic steps to resolve the stand-off by force.

"The ongoing Ukraine-Russia war has also forced both, New Delhi and Beijing, to rework their calculations in terms of the effectiveness in using force to obtain territorial and strategic gains," Sinha said. "The war has also shown that it isn't necessary that a conflict like this gets over swiftly; it can drag on for years," he added.

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

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