Local military commanders from the two countries were meeting along the disputed frontier on Monday to resolve the issues, India’s defence ministry said.

The statement said that on Saturday night the People’s Liberation Army had “carried out provocative military movements to change the status quo” and “violated the previous consensus arrived at during military and diplomatic engagements”.

The statement said Indian troops “pre-empted this PLA activity … undertook measures to strengthen our positions and thwart Chinese intentions to unilaterally change facts on ground”.

China’s foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian, however, said Chinese border troops “never cross the Line of Actual Control for any activities”, referring to their long, unmarked border in the remote Himalayas.

China-India border dispute: its origins and impact

He confirmed that border forces were communicating over recent matters but gave no further details.

A spokesman for the PLA Western Theatre Command said Indian troops broke the consensus and crossed the LAC on August 31 in a provocative move to create tensions.

“The move by the Indian side seriously violated China’s territorial sovereignty, seriously sabotaged the peace and stability on the China-India border,” Zhang Shuili said in a statement. “They reneged on their own promise deceitfully.”

Zhang said the Chinese military had taken necessary measures to defend China’s territorial sovereignty and peace and stability on the border.

“We solemnly request the Indian side to immediately withdraw their forces who illegally crossed the LAC and strictly manage and discipline their front-line troops, practically honour their promises, to avoid further escalation of the situation,” he said.

The latest incident came after the Chinese ambassador to India, Sun Weidong, said in an Indian media interview on Friday that the border situation was under control and “there is no fresh stand-off between the two forces”.

“It is highly significant that the latest PLA intrusion attempt happened just hours after Xi set new policy directions to fortify border defences and make Tibet more stable and secure,” said Brahma Chellaney, professor of strategic studies at the New Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research.

Relations between the Asian giants have hit a new low after the violent brawls on the night of June 15 in Galwan Valley of eastern Ladakh, in which 20 Indian troops were killed. China has declined to reveal the number of its casualties.

Both sides have significantly reinforced their troops along the de facto border and sent some of their most advanced weapons and fighter jets to airbases near the frontier region. China has held live-fire drills near the border on the Tibetan Plateau, in a display of the country’s military might.

Chellaney noted the latest skirmishes between rival troops occurred at a time when “China has raised the risks of a Himalayan war by massing growing number of forces along the entire long frontier with India and building an array of new surface-to-air missile border sites”.

“It underscores China’s relentless expansionism under Xi, who has opened multiple fronts simultaneously – from the East and South China Seas and Hong Kong to the Himalayas,” he said.

Lin Minwang, professor and assistant dean at Fudan University’s Institute of International Studies and deputy director of its Institute of South Asia Studies, noted that Pangong Lake remained one of the most disputed locations in the latest border stand-off and was at the forefront of the deadlocked talks in the past two months.

Sun Shihai, director of the China Centre for South Asian Studies at Sichuan University, played down the latest incident, which he said would not get out of control and escalate into another major stand-off because “both sides have learned how to manage it”.

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But Wang Dehua, an expert on India at the Shanghai Municipal Centre for International Studies, challenged Indian allegations about China’s fresh provocations.

“With India surpassing the United States in seeing the world’s biggest, single-day coronavirus cases and mounting economic woes, I suspect Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has every reason to shift the blame to China and win back domestic support, just as Washington has done,” he said.

But he warned it would be dangerous for New Delhi to exploit China’s perceived vulnerabilities in the post-coronavirus period and misjudge Beijing’s strategy in dealing with India.

“China of course wants to de-escalate and restore peace and stability along the border, but it does not mean we could exclude the possibility of a replay of the 1962 border war if India continues to overestimate itself,” Wang said.

He said China was looking to step up the building of key infrastructure, including roads and rail links, in the border areas in Tibet after the national meeting last week.

Additional reporting by Associated Press