Is China turning up heat on India through Pakistan flank amid Doklam standoff?
Pakistani army would like to leverage the face-off near Bhutan to settle old scores with India, but Beijing has its own calculations. Then there is the US
Despite the Chinese state media’s calls for the government to militarily humiliate India in a multiple-front war, China has made no attempt to link the two flanks by publicly taking sides with Pakistan over the intensified clashes along the Kashmir border, known as the Line of Control.
Why China is caught in India-Pakistan crossfire
“China’s approach to the Kashmir dispute is a function of its own domestic challenges, as well as the fact that it is also a party (to the disputed territory), so even if the geopolitical fault lines in the region harden, the Chinese position won’t solely be driven by a greater tilt towards Pakistan and against India,” said Andrew Small, a fellow at the German Marshall Fund and author of The China-Pakistan Axis.
Clashes along the Kashmir border have spiked since a terror attack that killed 18 Indian soldiers at a military camp near the Line of Control in September. Indian forces responded by conducting what they called “surgical strikes” against targets on the Pakistan-administered territory, sparking unceasing fighting there ever since.
China, India border dispute bubbles over once more, but no one is quite sure why
“We should not read too much into the timing of the China-India border standoff and the surge in the Line of Control violence. That said, let’s be clear: China and India are at each other’s throats at the moment and there’s good reason to think that the India-Pakistan rivalry could get dragged into this,” said Michael Kugelman, deputy director of the Asian programme at the Woodrow Wilson Centre in Washington.