China-India Military Confrontation: 21St Century Perspectives

By DR SUBHASH KAPILA

The China- India military confrontation in the High Himalayas as a consequence of Chinas military occupation of Tibet in 1950 and the unprovoked Chinese invasion of India in end-1962 has in 2015 graduated from a boundary dispute to an intense geopolitical tussle in Asias geopolitical rivalries.
Tibet in realistic terms better and more precisely described as China Occupied Tibet has emerged as Chinas Core Issue and drives Chinas intractability in resolution of the China-inflicted boundary dispute and territorial grab of large tracts of Indian Territory. Though officially unstated, but equally true, Tibet is also a Core Issue for India, strategically.
Tibet is civilisationally, culturally and spiritually more closely linked to India than China.
The dimensions of China-India military confrontation stand radically transformed in the 21st Century with the insertion of the nuclear and maritime dimensions diluting Chinas coercive capabilities against India.
The 21st Century is likely to witness an intense Cold War between China and India which most likely could be subsumed in the evolving Cold War II between China and the United States. Contextually, the United States can no longer afford to continue as passive spectator of the China-India military confrontation in the 21st Century.
Evolving geopolitical compulsions and imperatives would ultimately force the United States to dispense with its strategic ambiguities on China and Pakistan and push the United States to stand-by India in the intensifying China-India military confrontation. Such a game-changer would ensure that the United States not only stands on the right side of history but also ensures the continued strategic embedment in Indo Pacific Asia of the United States, with Indias strategic support.
Dr Subhash Kapila

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing India
• Release date: Dec 30, 2015
• ISBN: 9781482858570

DR SUBHASH KAPILA

Dr Subhash Kapila combines a rich and varied professional experience of Indian Army Brigadier (Veteran) , diplomatic assignments in United States, Japan, South Korea, and Bhutan. Served in India’s Cabinet Secretariat also. He is a Graduate of Royal British Army Staff College, U.K.; MSc, Defence Studies from Madras University; and a Doctorate in Strategic Studies from Allahabad University. Papers stand presented by him in International Seminars in Japan, Turkey, Russia and Vietnam besides National Security Seminars in India. Credited to him are nearly a thousand Papers on strategic issues and foreign policies of China, Japan, USA, India and Indo Pacific Asia. Author of book: India’s Defence Policies & Strategic Thought: A Comparative Analysis.

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Contents

Book Earlier Authored By Dr Subhash Kapila

Dedications

Acknowledgements

Preface

Disclaimer

List Of Maps

Main Theme Of The Book

Part I

Chapter 1 China-India Military Confrontation In The 21St Century: Overview

Chapter 2 Tibet Is The Core Issue In China-India Military Confrontation

Chapter 3 China Imposes Boundary Dispute On India Nearly Ten Years After Military Occupation Of Tibet

Chapter 4 China’s 1962 Military Invasion Of India: Politico-Strategic Reflections

Chapter 5 China-India Military Confrontation: Strategic And Military Assessment 2015

Chapter 6 China-India Military Confrontation: The Nuclear Dimensions

Chapter 7 The Maritime Dimensions Of The China-India Military Confrontation In The 21St Century

Chapter 8 Pakistan: China’s Force Multiplier In The China-India Military Confrontation.

Chapter 9 United States And India’s 21St Century Strategic Choices In The Context Of China-India Military Confrontation

Chapter 10 The ‘China Threat’ To India In 21St Century Geopolitically Examined

Chapter 11 China-India Military Confrontation In The Asian Politico-Strategic Dynamics In The 21St Century

Chapter 12 China-India Military Confrontation In 21St Century Global Politico Strategic Dynamics & Impact On Global Balance Of Power

Chapter 13 China’s ‘Giant Leap’ For Superpower Status In 21St Century: Geopolitical Implications

Chapter 14 Concluding Perspectives On China-India Military Confrontation In The 21St Century

Part II

Significant Selected Contextual Papers On China By Dr Subhash Kapila Published On South Asia Analysis Group, India, Website During Period 2001-2015

Annexure I China Strategically Cornered Globally: India’s Strategic Window Of Opportunity

Annexure II China-India Military Confrontation: Strategic Reality Check

Annexure III China’s Credentials In Indian Subcontinent Anti-Indian: A Strategic Audit

Annexure IV India’s Strategic Dilemmas In Restructuring Its Relations With Chna

Annexure V China Generates Strategic Polarisation In Asia Pacific

Annexure VI China’s India-Policy: Deciphering China’s Long Range Intentions

Annexure VII Pakistan’s Switch From ‘United States Frontline State’ To ‘China’s Front Line State’

Annexure VIII China Unlikely To Give Up ‘Pakistan Card’ In Its Outreach To India

Annexure IX China-India Strategic Alliance Should Not Be Unthinkable, (Paper No.1375 Dated 13.05.2005) A Mid-2014 Review

Annexure X China-India Strategic Partnership In 2015 Neither Strategic Nor A Partnership

Annexure XI Is China Generating A Second Cold War? Policy Choices For Usa.

Annexure XII China’s Infrastructure Development In The Western Regions: Strategic Implications

Annexure XIII China Outmanoeuvres Indian Foreign Policy In South Asia

Annexure XIV Tibet Independence Flames Burn Agonisingly Bright

Annexure XV Tibet In Flames-A Blot On The Global Conscience

Book earlier authored by

Dr Subhash Kapila

INDIA’S DEFENCE POLICIES & STRATEGIC THOUGHT: A Comparative Analysis

Dedications

Dedicated to the Indian Army and in solemn homage to the hundreds of Officers, JCOs and Soldiers who died defending India’s honour and India’s territorial integrity, with limited military means and ill-equipped to combat China’s perfidious invasion of India in 1962. They died because India’s political leaders and policy makers had no time to grasp the essentials of war, strategy, national power and national security and ignored India’s war preparedness against the China Threat which they should have responsibly anticipated.

II

Dedicated to the memory and in homage to the countless brave people of Tibet who have sacrificed their lives for the cause of Tibetan independence from Chinese military occupation. Hundreds of Tibetans continue with self-immolations in the 21st Century in the cause of Tibetan independence

III

Dedicated to the memory of two noble Indians for whom standing upright and never faltering to uphold the truth were their prime mission in life: my late parents Shiv Ram Kapila and Ram Pyari Kapila

IV

Dedicated to the memory of my father-in-law, Late Colonel Kuldeep Singh Sidhu S.M.(The Bihar Regiment) awarded the Sena Medal, for his outstanding services in Ladakh in establishing new military posts as part of India’s ‘Forward Policy’ against Chinese aggression. The Citation reading Awarded for exceptional leadership and devotion to duty or courage displayed in moving his J&K Militia Battalion from Leh to the Indus and Chang Chenmo Sectors over difficult passes and establishing Indian Forward Posts in Ladakh against China, during the difficult years of 1959-1961 when relations between China and India were very strained with no logistics support, before arrival of the first Indian Brigade. The Citation further adds that New posts were quietly established at Zarala and Dumchela and confidence was restored in other sectors spread over two hundred miles.

Acknowledgements

The main encouragement to me to write on this challenging subject has been provided by my wife, Minna, who in her indomitable spirit, a trait she inherited from her iconic and legendary ancestor General Sham Singh of Attari who died fighting leading the Sikh Army in the Anglo-Sikh Wars against the British at the Battle of Sobhraon, 10TH February 1846, pushed me ahead.

My daughter Simrit and my son Sidharth were also sources of active encouragement in the completion of this Book, as always in my intellectual endeavours.

Not to be forgotten is Dr S Chandrasekharan, Founder Director of the Indian think-tank South Asia Analysis Group who over the last fifteen years not only tolerated and suffered publication of my outspoken Papers on foreign policy and strategic issues, especially the numerous ones on China, but also sustained me by remunerations from South Asia Analysis Group.

Lastly, but not the least, the Indian Army, which gave me a many splendored life in uniform and vast exposures on India’s borders with China Occupied Tibet extending from Ladakh, Sikkim, and Arunachal Pradesh and also in Bhutan on deputation.

Preface

China-India military confrontation is a subject that should receive the attention of all Indians as India’s national security is deeply impacted by the China Threat emanating from China’s military occupation of Tibet. The China Threat was a ‘Live Threat ‘in the 20th Century and continues to be a more potent ‘Live Threat’ to Indian security in the 21st Century also.

India all along since 1950 has underplayed or de-emphasised the China Threat for political reasons. So much so that at times it seemed that India’s apex leadership was following ‘China Appeasement’ policies in utter disregard of the evolving geopolitical environment. Such underplaying of the China Threat contributed to India’s lack of war preparedness especially in terms of modernisation of the Armed Forces, creation of defence logistics infrastructure in the Himalayan regions bordering China, and above all inducing a mindset of official complacency in India’s civil officialdom of the Ministry of Defence. It also led to distortions in Indian foreign policy eschewing ‘balance-of-power’ politics, so essential in the management of the China Threat.

Tibet is as much as a ‘Core Issue’ for India as much as China claims exclusively for itself. The China-India military confrontation in the 21st Century is likely to revolve mostly around this Core Issue besides China enlisting Pakistan as a conniving ‘Force Multiplier’ to enhance the China Threat to India.

Dozens of books and analyses stand published both in India and abroad on the China-India dispute, including some authoritative ones drawing detailed military balances as part of the discourse on military lessons and military scenarios of China’s future military moves. I have no such claims to that intellectual military high ground.

This Book that I have written is not a military study book of the China-India military confrontation. This Book is essentially a ‘geopolitical study’ of this vexatious China-India military confrontation which in the 21st Century seems to be heading towards a Cold War between India and China which invariably would be drawn into and subsumed in the wider Cold War II unfolding in Indo Pacific Asia between China and the United States.

This Book is essentially a perceptional study of the major geopolitical issues that will go in a major way to determine the course of the China-India military confrontation and the manifestation of the China Threat to India in the 21st Century. Of course, a dose of history does need to be inserted.

My personal perceptions get drawn from my rich and varied exposures in my professional career spanning nearly four decades. Three decades in the Indian Army rising upto the rank of Brigadier from where I moved on deputation to the Cabinet Secretariat, saw me serving during my Army career in the Himalayan Borders with China Occupied Tibet extending from Ladakh, Sikkim. Bhutan, and finally Arunachal Pradesh. In between my postings as a military diplomat in Japan and South Korea enabled perceptive exposures to China’s geopolitical moves in the Asia Pacific.

My thesis on Asia Pacific Security-2000AD Perspectives from the Allahabad University in early 1990s entailed detailed analysis on China and Asia Pacific powers in the overall Asia Pacific geopolitical context. This added the necessary academic content to the treasury of personal perceptions quoted above.

The many Seminars in which I presented Papers on the South China Sea conflict in Vietnam and also in Russia enabled personal intellectual interactions with leading scholars from all over the world specialising on China. That too was a significant input in my perceptions of China’s not so peaceful rise and the threat perceptions that China has created.

To the above extent this is not a ‘Research Project’ on the China-India military confrontation with detailed academic citations. This Book is a perceptional analysis of the geopolitical dimensions of the China-India military confrontation in the 21st Century as I firmly believe that the China-India confrontation is no longer a military confrontation between Asia’s two mighty nations. India will have to change its strategic blueprint to play a wider geopolitical game involving ‘balance of power’ politics as the China-India military confrontation now gets positioned as one of the major chess-pieces on the global geopolitical chessboard on which China as a ‘revisionist power’ seems determined to challenge United States predominance.

The overall objective in writing this Book was to make the complex China-India military confrontation more geopolitically comprehensible and provide easy reading to an average reader.

Disclaimer

The views expressed in this Book or any policy recommendations emerging in the perceptional analyses do not reflect the views of the Government of India or the Indian Armed Forces. No official documents were examined or accessed during the course of writing this Book nor were any Indian officials, serving or retired consulted. My references to Tibet as ‘China Occupied Tibet’ in this book are my personal perceptions and my convictions of the ground reality that exists in Tibet and such assertion has no Indian official sanction, usage or connotation.

Dr Subhash Kapila

List of Maps

Map 1. Southern Asia.

Map 2. The Indian Subcontinent.

Map 3. China-India Western Border.

Map 4. China-India Border Eastern Sector

Maps Credits:

All the four Maps in this book stand reproduced by written permission and kind Courtesy of the University of Texas Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin.

https://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/middle_east_and_asia/asia_southern_pol_2004.jpg

Map 1. Southern Asia.

Map shows the Indian Subcontinent its Contiguous Regions. Also Highlights India’s Peninsular Abutment into the Indian Ocean Region.

3855.png

Map 2. The Indian Subcontinent.

Indian Territories under Illegal Occupation by China and Pakistan are Illustrated.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/56/China_India_western_border_88.jpg

Map 3. China-India Western Border.

Aksai Chin in Ladakh, India under Illegal Occupation of China Indicated in Red.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8b/China_India_eastern_border_88.jpg

Map 4. China-India Border Eastern Sector

Indicating India’s North Eastern State of Arunachal Pradesh in Red. China has in recent years claimed the whole of the Indian State ofArunachal Pradesh as China’s Southern Tibet.

Main THEME OF THE BOOK

"China and India are in a state of military confrontation and it is no use for the Indian political leadership and the policy establishment to pretend that it is otherwise. How do you describe relations between China and India when both nations are virtually in a state of eyeball-to eyeball confrontation on the entire length of the India-China Occupied Tibet border on the icy Himalayan heights? How do you describe the China-India security environment when China obsessively perpetuates and refuses to make any efforts to resolve the boundary dispute and on the contrary in recent years is intent on provocative brinkmanship by generating border incidents and confrontations which could due to a slight miscalculation spark a limited border war if not a full blown armed conflict?–––-Dr Subhash Kapila, ‘China-India Military Confrontation: A Strategic Reality Check’ South Asia Analysis Group Paper No. 5806 dated 17 October 2014

PART I

CHAPTER 1

CHINA-INDIA MILITARY CONFRONTATION IN THE 21ST CENTURY: OVERVIEW

Asia in the 21st Century is destined to witness an intense geopolitical power struggle involving the two strategically competing Asian giants China and India on ascendant trajectories to add more power to their Emerged Powers status, and attempting to stake out their spheres of influence on the vast Asian landmass and maritime expanses. Asia will for the first time be witness to the simultaneous rise of two virtually equally matched Asian nations and that promises to make the geopolitical jostling between China and India, that much more intense. However, there is a marked difference between China and India’s approaches in the Asian power-play and the perceptions that they generate on the Asian canvass. Perceptionaly, China’s not so peaceful rise and China’s propensity to use force or political and military coercion in its disputes with its neighbours generates negative and disruptive images of China. Contrastingly, India is perceptionaly viewed as a power on the rise with benign credentials and as a responsible stakeholder in Asian stability and security.

The unfolding China-India geopolitical power rivalry in the 21st Century, notably, is underwritten by and accentuated by the mid-20th Century China-India military confrontation whose seeds were sown in 1950 with the forcible military occupation of Tibet, the independent ‘Spiritual Kingdom’, by China. This military adventurism brought the overbearing new Communist China on India’s pacifist doorsteps in the High Himalayas as India’s military overbearing neighbour. China’s pronounced strategic uncertainties on its hold over China Occupied Tibet led to an over-militarisation of the Tibetan Plateau and China’s intractability to resolve the China-inflicted border dispute and its illegal grab of thousands of square kilometres of Indian Territories. Consequently, in the 21st Century as India capitalises its latent power attributes and reduces its military asymmetry and power differentials with China, the China-India military confrontation becomes more explosively intertwined with the now more dominant narrative of China-India geopolitical power-tussle of the 21st Century.

China-India military confrontation in the 21st Century represented by the confrontationist lines of Chinese and Indian military deployments and fortifications in the High Himalayas, which were the historical boundary between India and Tibet (now under China’s military occupation) is somewhat reminiscent of the congealed lines of NATO-Warsaw Pact confrontation in Central Europe at the height of the Cold War. In both cases the conventional military confrontation was intense and backed by nuclear forces.

The Cold War confrontations in Europe between US-led NATO countries and Soviet Union led Warsaw Pact countries were however a geopolitical tussle laced with an ideological confrontation. The China-India military confrontation comparatively has evolved from a bitter boundary dispute generated by China with its military occupation of Tibet and China’s big territorial grab of Indian Territory in Aksai Chin in Ladakh in mid-20th Century, into Asia’s most prominent geopolitical tussle in the 21st Century. Further China has laid additional claims in the 21st Century to India’s Arunachal Pradesh now being claimed by China as ‘Southern Tibet’. Unlike the Cold War in Europe which was more ideological with no border disputes or territorial grabs, the China-India military confrontation is not ideological. China foisted this military confrontation on India in the furtherance of China’s grandiose ‘Grand Strategy’ which threw up imperatives for China to redraw China’s maps based on ‘Strategic Frontiers’ as opposed to respecting international boundaries long upheld by usage, conventions and historicity.

The intense China-India military confrontation would not have been geographically possible as till 1950 China and India had no geographical contiguity. The Chinese borders were thousands of kilometres distant from Indian borders. China’s brutal military occupation of Tibet in 1950 enabled China to menacingly stand militarily on Tibet’s borders with India. To be recorded, notably, is the reality that it was not India that initiated the ongoing intense China-India military confrontation, but it was China which embarked on this military misadventure, commencing with the military occupation of the buffer state of Tibet, disputing India-Tibet borders after nearly ten years of China’s military occupation of Tibet, generating border skirmishes thereafter, and finally China launching the 1962 unprovoked military invasion of India. China’s propensity to use military force to resolve disputed borders has been the notable characteristic of the Communist Chinese regime, ever since its emergence in 1949 and it so persists in the 21st Century, as presently manifesting in its South China Sea disputes with Vietnam and the Philippines

Into the middle of the second decade of the 21st Century, the China – India military confrontation shows no signs of abatement. On the contrary, China is now even more belligerent in provoking border standoffs along the Line of Actual Control, more visibly from 2012 onward. China in a blatant shifting of goal-posts in its border claims stances has in the 21st Century laid claim to the whole of the Indian border State of Arunachal Pradesh at the Eastern extremity of the Himalayan borders. It terms its new territorial claim by labelling the Indian State of Arunachal Pradesh as Southern Tibet. It is a pointer to China’s irredentist territorial claims on India and its expansionist designs. China’s constant shifting of goal-posts on its territorial claims also betrays China’s diabolical intentions to keep the China-India military confrontation alive well into the 21st Century as a strategic pressure point against India.

While in Central Europe the military confrontations of the Cold War between NATO Forces and the Warsaw Pact forces did not witness any direct clash of arms, China engaged India in a limited war with the Chinese military invasion of India in October-November 1962. That has left the legacy of a more reinforced and more intense China-India military confrontation as visible in 2015 and current indicators pointing towards its continuance well into the 21st Century, with no end in sight.

China and India stand poised in the 21st Century as Asia’s two most powerful nations locked not only in a political and strategic struggle for Asian political leadership but also on ascendant and clashing trajectories to emerge as global powers. The China-India geopolitical power struggle is thus likely to dominate the Asian strategic space for the remainder of the 21st Century as both these mighty nations attempt to carve overlapping areas of influence in Asia.

With China adopting what appears as hegemonistic stances in dealing with Asian states, trends already are surfacing which portend that both Asian-indigenous and Asian-externally crafted strategic coalitions may coalesce to offset China’s domineering instincts. Balancing China’s not so peaceful rise and its switch from exercise of ‘Soft Power’ to ‘Hard Power ‘strategies seems to emerge as the main focus not only of the United States, Japan and India but also the concern in Indo Pacific Asia capitals.

Three major Asian powers came into strategic focus with the shift of the centre of gravity of global power to Asia in the last decade, namely China, India and Japan. China presumably does not recognise that the shift of global power to Asia surfaced due to the combined strategic and economic weight of China, India and Japan and it was not an exclusive China-centric phenomenon. China may be the preeminent power in this Asian ‘Strategic Troika’ but then China cannot overlook the strategic reality that this ‘Asian Troika’ has contentious contradictions within it, and is not united. China faces India and Japan as contending Asian and global powers. To complicate the Asian security environment further, China in condescending stances is unwilling to share the Asian strategic space with Japan and India. The stark strategic reality is that India and Japan besides being contending powers with China also have territorial disputes with China. India faced a Chinese military invasion of India in 1962 and in the 21st Century, China is subjecting Japan to intense political and military coercion over the Senkaku Islands. This makes the Asian geopolitics in the 21st Century that much more complicated by China injecting disturbing dynamics in the Asian security environment with its aggressive military brinkmanship, as visible in the South China Sea conflict escalation by China against Vietnam and the Philippines and also against Japan in the East China Sea.

Adding combustible underpinnings to the geopolitical power tussle between China and India is the massive China-India military confrontation that is the defining feature of the over 4,000kilometres long India’s Himalayan borders with Tibet, which since 1950 is under Chinese military occupation. Both China and India are engaged in the modernisation and up-gradation of their Armed Forces and training and equipping them to conduct warfare under informationalised battle conditions. Nuclear warfare, though remote, does however overhang menacingly over this China-India military confrontation. Informed observers opine that it cannot be ruled out completely.

While China and India despite their military confrontation have held relative peace since the China-India War of 1962 and major skirmishes in 1967 and 1987, Chinese border intrusions and military into Indian Territory and military stand-offs are a frequent occurrence in the first two decades of the 21st Century, with China claiming varying and shifting perceptional interpretations of the Line of Actual Control, as an excuse. China provoked a major armed clash in 1967 in Sikkim at Nathu La and Cho La and military face-offs in 1986-87 at Sumdorong Chu in the Tawang Sector in India’s North East. India stood firm on both occasions against Chinese provocations and coercion, signalling that Indian responses in the future will be that much so, if not more stronger.

Chinese intrusions in Indian Territory are aimed by China as a strategy to keep alive the China-India border dispute and also as a bargaining strategic leverage against India. The danger is that this sort of Chinese military brinkmanship against India is inherently dangerous as military miscalculations in such stand-offs could ignite a wider armed conflict in view of the heightened tensions that exist on the borders.

China has resisted for the last five decades any substantive moves for the boundary and territorial dispute resolution despite innumerable Joint Dialogues, Special Representatives meetings and consultations. The lack of positive Chinese responses can be attributed to China’s strategy of ‘keeping alive’ the China-India border dispute as a ‘strategic counter pressure point’ against India playing the ‘Tibet Card’ against China.

Looking into the future and the contours that presently define China-India military relations and confrontation, it can be safely asserted that what will pervade over the China-India military confrontation in the years to come is a state of Cold War or Cold Peace, whichever way one looks at it.

Whether one perceives the China-India military confrontation in the 21st Century as ‘Cold War’ or ‘Cold Peace’, the strategic reality is that Asia’s two mighty countries are locked not only in an intense military confrontation on India’s borders with Tibet, but also, as a consequence, China and India are engaged in an Asian balance-of-power geopolitical rivalry. When the tussle acquires such salience then an arms-race, whatever the military asymmetries be, is bound to ensue.

In this strategic rivalry, China established a head-start over India right from the 1950s onwards. Communist China right from its inception in October 1949 adopted strategic and military ‘realpolitik’ and political realism as the two main anchors of its foreign policy formulations. It were these two factors which impelled Communist China towards forcible military occupation of the peaceful sovereign spiritual kingdom of Tibet and so also China’s military intervention on the Korean Peninsula opposing the United Nations Forces to stem North Korean aggression against South Korea. China could not have timed its military occupation of Tibet better.

The global shift of power to Asia in the last decade has also been marked by an increased focus on the geopolitical power rivalry between China and India. The military confrontation along the over four thousand kilometres long Himalayan border between India and Tibet under Chinese military occupation underwrites the China-India power tussle. No optimistic indicators exist or hover on the horizon that suggests that China is inclined to find a solution acceptable to both sides.

China-India military confrontation has been on-going for the last six decades along the icy heights of the formidable Himalayas. It seems set to be the major defining feature of the Asian security landscape in the 21st Century with significant regional and global strategic implications.

China as a ‘revisionist power’ not only militarily occupied Tibet but also surprisingly after ten years of military occupation of Tibet, embarked on disputing the Tibetan borders with India and more particularly at the Western and Eastern ends of the High Himalayas.

It is only recently that India as a late entrant to power politics has become alive to take the first tentative steps to checkmate China on the chequerboard of Asian power-play. India in the face of China’s obduracy on the border dispute and China’s outsized military buildup in Tibet has taken the first of many tentative steps towards practising ‘balance of power’ strategies in its foreign policy formulations.

‘Strategic Distrust of China and figuring of China as India’s Military Threat Number One" became deeply embedded in Indian public memory after China’s perfidious military invasion of India in 1962. China as India’s foremost military threat is now a constant in India’s military calculations, force planning and force structures and also in military deployments along India’s borders with China Occupied Tibet.

So while the beginnings of the China-India military confrontation may have been rooted in China disputing the India-Tibet boundaries as inherited by India in 1947 on becoming independent, in retrospect, one is led to believe that in China’s military occupation of Tibet, China had played the opening moves of a much larger geopolitical game of achieving the strategic mastery of Asia.

In the 21st Century the China-India military confrontation has transcended and graduated from one of a border demarcation and territorial dispute to that of a wider and higher geopolitical tussle between Asia’s two gigantic nations of China and India. In such a higher geopolitical tussle, this tussle can no longer be confined to the China-India context but gets pushed into the intersection of great power rivalries in Indo Pacific Asia. Such a strategic entanglement generates its own complex dynamics, at times with even unintended consequences.

In the 21st Century, the China-India military confrontation is no longer confined to India’s borders with Tibet, under Chinese military occupation, but has now also acquired maritime dimensions. As an extension of their Himalayan border confrontation, manifestations have emerged wherein China and India are now engaged in a somewhat similar confrontation and counter-moves in the Indian Ocean and