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Pangong Lake in the Ladakh region in September 2018.
(Manish Swarup/AP)
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China’s ongoing border clash with India may seem remote, but it has
global impact. Reports say thousands of troops moved into the
disputed area 14,000 feet up in the Himalayas after skirmishes
broke out on May 5 near Pangong Lake in Ladakh and then on May 9 in North
Sikkim, leaving more than 100 soldiers injured.
Amid the global coronavirus pandemic, assessing exactly what is
happening in this dispute between the two most populated countries on
Earth is difficult. Much of the border region is closed to the press, so
reporters have to rely on statements and leaks.
Many accounts suggest that aggressive Chinese patrols in the area known as the Line of Actual Control (LAC) were
to blame — or, in what may not necessarily be a contradiction, that
Indian construction in the region had been interpreted as an
aggressive challenge to Beijing’s Belt and Road infrastructure project.
Ultimately, India and China’s border problems are not new — it’s the
circumstances surrounding them that have changed. Both Beijing and Delhi
are led by governments in the thrall of nationalistic ambition. The
pandemic has further pushed many nations into pro- or anti-China
positions, camps that were already forming amid a global trade war that
has lasted years.
The United States, locked in its own squabble with China, has voiced terse support for India’s position and
offered to mediate. Hu Xijin, the outspoken editor of China’s party paper
the Global Times, seized on the conflicting messages, mocking President
Trump and arguing that the United States “seems to be the beneficiary of
China-India border tension."
India and China’s relationship is based on their status as two
giant, wary neighbors. They share a 2,167-mile-long border. Together,
their populations are around 2.7 billion, more than a third of the world.
Both have achieved rapid economic development in recent decades and
increased their territorial ambitions. Both have nuclear weapons.
India was among the first democracies to recognize the People’s
Republic of China in 1950, but border disputes between the two increased
as Beijing took control of Tibet. In 1962, they fought a month-long war
on the Himalayan border, with China inflicting serious casualties on
India before withdrawing to the LAC.
There were skirmishes over the border for years. In 1988, after one
incident in the Sumdorong Chu Valley in Arunachal Pradesh, Indian Prime
Minister Rajiv Gandhi traveled to Beijing to meet his counterpart Deng
Xiaoping. The two nations, both undergoing a wave of economic development
just as the Soviet Union began to collapse, put aside their differences
out of pragmatism.
Now, that pragmatism is being tested. China, whose economic
development has dwarfed India’s, has a gross domestic product of roughly
$14 trillion, compared to India’s less than $2.7 trillion. “While India
has risen as an economy and a global power in the past three decades, its
relative strength to China has in fact greatly declined,” Sumit Ganguly
and Manjeet S. Pardesi wrote in Foreign Policy.
China’s close relationship with Pakistan, an unequal partner in the
Belt and Road project, and lingering disagreement over Tibet have soured
relations with India further. The tension between the two nations spilled
over in 2017 in the Doklam area of the Himalayas after Indian troops
moved in to prevent the Chinese military from building a road into
territory claimed by Bhutan, an ally of India.
Over two months, the two powers flooded the area with military personnel.
The threats, especially those from China, were apoplectic. “India will
suffer worse losses than 1962 if it incites border clash,” the Global Times wrote.
The Doklam dispute ultimately fizzled out. Both sides withdrew
troops in late August of that year and issued vague remarks about a
resolution. Exactly what was decided behind the scenes was unclear,
though reports that China had halted construction of the motorway
suggested that Beijing had backed down.
Some Indian analysts have suggested that the current situation will
end similarly, pointing to a number of conciliatory messages from Chinese
officials. “We should never let differences overshadow our relations. We
should resolve differences through communication,” China’s ambassador to
India, Sun Weidong, said Wednesday.
But another inconclusive end to a standoff will fail to address the
root of the problem. The Indian government has claimed that the Chinese
military crossed
into Indian territory 1,025 times between 2016 and 2018 (the Chinese
government has not released comparable figures).
India and China are both in the throes of aggressive nationalist
movements, each displaying their own brand of “wolf warrior” foreign
policy. Under President Xi Jinping, China has moved from subtle pushes to
strong shoves to bring the city of Hong
Kong under Beijing’s sovereignty, while also applying pressure in the
South China Sea and against
Taiwan.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi entered his second term in power
bent on changing many norms of Indian policy. The long-disputed territory
of Kashmir has been under lockdown
for months, while last year India and Pakistan were drawn into their
most serious military
escalation in decades. Reuters reported this
week that Modi’s plans to build 66 key roads by the Chinese border,
including one to a new air base, had probably drawn Beijing’s anger.
In the past, this might have remained a bilateral dispute. But now,
anything that involves China seems to involve the United States too. The
Hindustan Times reported
Wednesday that Trump’s offer to mediate was “part of [a] growing
anti-China juggernaut.” Under such a juggernaut, ambiguity may not exist. |
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Talking Points
• The U.S.
coronavirus death toll reached 100,000 on Wednesday. In a
chilling meditation on this landmark, my colleague Marc Fisher writes that
the pandemic has exposed the nation’s vulnerabilities and dangerous
divide and that despite being a country with a long history of honoring
its fallen, “there have been few expressions of public grief — no gold
stars in the windows of homes where people died, no outcry for national
unity or memorials, as happened after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist
attacks. In this trauma, the enemy is unseen; there is no one against
whom to mobilize the nation’s energy, anger and frustration.”
• Secretary of
State Mike Pompeo notified Congress on Wednesday that Hong Kong no longer
should be considered autonomous, a declaration that could
have far-reaching ramifications in its trading relationship with the
United States. The Post’s Carol Morello has more
on the latest in rising tensions between the United
States and China, which has taken steps to further cement its power over
Hong Kong: “It will be up to President Trump to decide the next steps,
which could include sanctions on Chinese officials, higher tariffs and
visa restrictions.”
• And European
Union leaders proposed an $825 billion coronavirus rescue plan
that would give Brussels major new tax and spending powers of the sort held by
a federal state. If approved, the E.U. plan could
bind the bloc together at a moment when it seemed at risk of spinning
apart under the pressure of the novel coronavirus pandemic. If the plan
fails — either to win support or to deliver benefits — euroskeptic
politicians could be emboldened, both in rich nations such as Germany and
struggling ones such as Italy. |
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