China, India often clash in border region - but are those clashes getting worse?

For over two years now, two of the most powerful armies in the world have been locked in a stand-off in the Himalayan region of Ladakh.

But now, the China-India border row might have another key friction point thousands of kilometres away - the Indian Himalayan state of Arunachal Pradesh, administered by India but claimed by China as its own.

The region has been historically disputed by both parties - lying in India's northeast, China has laid its claim over the entire region for decades now and called it a part of China "since ancient times". The area has seen multiple skirmishes and conflicts between both sides' militaries since the 1962 China-India border war.

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But last week came what many military commentators have described as one of the most serious clashes in recent times when troops hit each other with sticks and canes in the early hours of December 9, according to media reports.

Reports in the Indian media, unverified by government authorities in New Delhi, said that as many as 200-300 Chinese soldiers clashed with around 50 Indian troops in the Yangtse area of the Tawang sector, a region India describes as being within its administered zone.

Indian defence minister Rajnath Singh told the Indian Parliament on December 13 that Chinese troops had "tried to transgress the Line of Actual Control (LAC)" in the Tawang area and "unilaterally change the status quo".

Calling it a "scuffle", Singh said the incident had led to injuries to soldiers on both sides. While the Chinese authorities have not released details, Singh said none of the Indian soldiers were seriously hurt.

Indian media reports suggested that anywhere from 20 to 35 Indian troops were injured, of which 7 were said to have received major injuries, with around 40 Chinese soldiers hurt.

India's pro-government media outlet ANI quoted defence sources as saying that fighter jets were scrambled "two-three times in the last few weeks" to counter "airspace violation threats" by Chinese drones flying towards Indian border posts.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin has merely stated that the "border situation was stable overall".

"The two sides maintained unobstructed dialogue on the border issue through diplomatic and military channels," Wang added.

But military experts and commentators in New Delhi think the incident points to a new reality between the two sides, with a permanently militarised "live" border with heightened possibilities of such clashes occurring frequently and the violence threatening to spiral out of control.

The latest clash, more than 3,200km (1988 miles) from Ladakh, where thousands of soldiers have been locked in a stand-off since May 2020, points to the possibility of a wider border conflict, not just a localised one, said experts.

"There are no longer any specific disputed areas between China and India," said retired Lieutenant General JS Bajwa, an Indian army chief of staff in the nation's northeast between August 2010 and February 2012.

"Now, everything is disputed. India would have realised that the Chinese can keep making incursions wherever they want and claim that region to be disputed, even if it never has been disputed before."

Beijing has for decades made repeated claims over Arunachal Pradesh, a state covering around 90,000 square kilometres (56,000 square miles).

In 1959 Chinese forces encircled and opened fire on an Indian post in Longju forcing Indian soldiers there to abandon it. During the 1962 war the area saw fierce fighting between soldiers on both sides, with Chinese soldiers crossing the McMahon line, the de facto border separating the two nations here.

"The conflict in the Yangtse area is not new," said BR Deepak, a professor of Chinese and China Studies at New Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). The region "saw face-offs between the two militaries in 2011, 2016 and 2021", he added.

Bajwa, the retired general, recalled a 1999 incident when soldiers "were one metre apart" from each other in a face-off in the same region.

The region is critical for Chinese interests. Beijing maintains that Arunachal Pradesh is part of southern Tibet, an area separated from China when the frontier between Tibet and colonial India was drawn in 1914, negotiated by British administrator Henry McMahon. It also has critical strategic ties for the Chinese.

"Control over this region, especially in Tawang, is crucial for the Chinese because it gets them closer to the 'Chicken's Nest', posing a threat to India," said retired Brigadier Deepak Sinha, who served in the region and, as a paratrooper, commanded India's only rapid deployment force, the 50th Parachute Brigade.

'Chicken's Nest' refers to the 60km-long, 22km-wide strip of land connecting the bulk of India to its northeast region, also known as the Siliguri corridor.

The Tawang region also has symbolic political and cultural significance for China, with the sixth Dalai Lama born in 17th century Tawang, while the current Dalai Lama fled Tibet after the Chinese invasion in 1959 and entered India through Arunachal Pradesh.

In the past, China has bitterly opposed visits by top-ranking Indian officials to the region and has denied visas to officials from the state.

But this latest clash shows the hardening of stances by Beijing, said Indian commentators.

"At one point in time, when China was a pariah in the international community, it was willing to swap it [Tawang area] for the [so-called] Western Sector," said Deepak, referring to a proposition for a quid-pro-quo understanding between the two neighbours. It involves China giving up its claims on Arunachal Pradesh in exchange for India giving up its claims on the Aksai Chin region, controlled by China.

But that idea seems to have vanished, said Deepak. "Since China believes that the power has shifted in its favour, it has no compulsion to maintain the kind of understanding it had reached with India on the border," he said.

He said that as India tries to catch up with China on logistical development in the region, "China sees it as an opportunity to change the status quo" in areas where it thinks "India will not engage with it", whether on a small scale or in "an all-out conflict".

All this means that skirmishes between the two militaries could become more common, said experts.

Bajwa said last week's clash was "not a one-off" but a calculated political move by Beijing. JNU academic Deepak said such "transgressions along the India-China border" were likely to continue.

Some worry that these kind of incidents may spiral out of control. "It is getting more and more serious now," said Sinha, the retired brigadier, pointing to recent media reports of China sending up to 300 soldiers, nearly a battalion of soldiers. He said previous clashes were "between patrols", with 10-30 soldiers in each.

Such a move, Sinha said, may have shown what China's intentions are. "The Chinese might be narrowing their focus on Arunachal Pradesh now," he said.

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

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