Chinese PLA and Indian army have deployed a lot of troops, tanks, artillery and fighter jets along the LAC since the Chinese troops entered into the Indian side of the LAC and started to build defences at various locations.
From May first week the face-off between the PLA and Indian troops started. Since then the situation keeps getting worse in Ladakh. Following the three attacks by the PLA to “intimidate” Indian troops at the Pangong lake area between August 30 and September 9 where even shots were fired for the first time at the LAC in 45 years.
With the rising tensions at LAC Ladakh, the foreign ministers of India and China held various diplomatic talks where they reached on the five-point agreement to defuse the tension at LAC Ladakh.
For the last few months, the Indian Army commuted tanks, heavy weapons, ammunition, fuel, food, etc. Also, the essential winter supplies were transported into various treacherous and high-altitude areas of Ladakh to maintain combat readiness through the harsh winter of around 4 months beginning mid-November.
In an interview with Larry O’Connor, Pompeo said in his meetings with his counterparts from Japan, India and Australia, they began to develop a set of understandings and policies that can jointly take these countries to work to present a true resistance to the threats that the Chinese Communist Party poses to each of these nations.
The bilateral relations between the two countries are getting worse for the last few months when PLA entered ladakh side of PLA.
Both sides have held a series of diplomatic and military talks to resolve the row. However, no breakthrough has been achieved to end the standoff. China unsuccessfully attempted to occupy Indian territory in the southern bank of Pangong lake in the last week of August.
The Indian position, however, runs contradictory to what China has proposed. As per Beijing’s proposed sequence, as articulated at the last meeting, any process must begin with the withdrawal of Indian troops from areas it moved into on the southern bank of the Pangong Tso. This was rejected by the Indian side on the grounds that its Army was only responding to the Chinese provocations.
India, sources said, wanted to press on acceptance of a broader principle that troops must be withdrawn in the same order and sequence as they were deployed. By that logic, China will have to act first because it initiated the aggressive maneuvers in April.
China has “attempted to seize” control of the Line of Actual Control (LAC) with India “by force” as part of its territorial aggression, US’ National Security Adviser has said, underlining that time has come to accept that dialogue and agreements will not persuade Beijing to change.
India and China are locked in a five-month-long tense standoff in eastern Ladakh that has significantly strained relations between New Delhi and Beijing. Both sides have held a series of high-level diplomatic and military talks to resolve the border row. However, no breakthrough has been achieved to end the standoff.
“Chinese Communist Party’s territorial aggression is also apparent on its Indian border where China has attempted to seize control of the Line of Actual Control by force,” US National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien said in a remark on China early this week in Utah.
China’s territorial aggression is also true in the Taiwan Strait where the PLA (People’s Liberation Army) Navy and Air Force continue to conduct threatening military drills, Mr O’Brien said.
“Beijing’s signature international development programme, One Belt One Road (OBOR), involves impoverished companies taking on opaque and unsustainable Chinese loans to pay Chinese firms employing Chinese labourers to build their infrastructure,” he said.
In Ladakh, India considered the border to be along the Johnson Line of 1865, which included Aksai Chin. The Chinese on the other hand, initially agreed to the Macartney-MacDonald (M-M) line of 1899, which was west of the Johnson Line.
Towards 1959, the Chinese began to establish a series of posts west of the M-M Line, usurping large parts of Aksai Chin, as they had constructed the Western Highway from Kashgar to Lhasa through it, and wanted to consolidate the hold on Tibet. In response, India adopted a forward policy by setting up posts opposite the Chinese to check the latter’s expansion.
In 1960, the Chinese came out with a map laying claim to almost the whole of Aksai Chin. The main reason why Mao went for war in 1962 was to capture the claimed territories in eastern Ladakh, as also to teach India a lesson.
During the 1962 war too, DBO, Galwan, and the Pangong Tso-Chushul areas were scenes of major action. By the time the Chinese declared a unilateral ceasefire, the PLA had almost secured the areas up to the 1960 claim line. At the end of the war, the two sides as per mutual understanding withdrew 20 km from the positions last held by the opposing forces.
Subsequently, the Line of Actual Control came to denote the line up to which the troops on the two sides actually exercised control. However, the LAC was neither delineated on the map nor demarcated on the ground. Hence, both India and China have different perceptions on the alignment of LAC.
