China-India border row: two years on, what progress has been made in the conflict?
- Regional military officials from both sides have held 15 rounds of talks since the border skirmishes 2 years ago, but have not held any dialogue since March 11
- At least 20 Indian soldiers and an unknown number of Chinese troops died in the clashes in June 2020 at the Galwan Valley in the Indian region of Ladakh
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.
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”.
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.
Two years, 15 rounds of 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.
China-India border row: signs of thaw in talks, analyst says
Different approaches
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.
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.
Hardening battle lines at China-India border raise fears of sustained, ‘small-scale conflict’
An uncertain future
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.