Another Chinese bridge on the Pangong Tso: What next?

Satellite images have now confirmed that China is building a second bridge across the Pangong Tso lake, in the part of southeast Ladakh that China has held since the 1960s. Experts analysing the satellite images claim that its size and dimensions suggest that it would give Chinese forces the added advantage of pushing-in tanks and heavily armoured vehicles in the direction of the positions held by Indian troops in Ladakh. These are certainly not the steps that should give Indian officials room for much optimism, whatever our political and military commanders might say. Moreover, this mocks the claims and assertions made by India’s foreign office that New Delhi doesn’t recognise the so-called illegal occupation by China of the Aksai Chin area, in eastern Ladakh.

While the first Chinese bridge across the Pangong Tso- was reported in January this year- spans about 500 meters (1,640 feet) across the Lake near positions occupied by China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) on the north bank of the lake in Ladakh, this new bridge will help the PLA to cut down travel time from Rutog, a key military base to the eastern end of the lake by a 150 kilometers. This area had been the site of clashes between India and China in 1962, and is still in dispute along the Line of Actual Control in eastern Ladakh that separates Indian-controlled territory from Chinese-controlled territory.

Even though Indian officials have repeatedly expressed hope that diplomacy will finally get back for India what we’ve lost to China, a more realistic understanding of Beijing's territorial agenda will help us prepare better to deal with such military moves by China. In the 1950s Chairman Mao had indicated that Tibet was the palm of a Chinese hand, and its five fingers – Ladakh, Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan and what is now Arunachal Pradesh – all must someday become Chinese territories. And no Chinese leader can easily abandon what is now an article of faith for the Chinese establishment. Thus, even as our negotiators are deluded into believing that we’ll get what territories we claim, China plays the ‘Long Game’, to attain its territorial goals, that are based on its strategic objectives, particularly in Ladakh. These are as follows.

First, is the Chinese long-term strategic aim is of limiting the rise of India and settling its boundary with India to its advantage. To achieve that, they have continued to keep India unsettled by military mobilisation and encroaching on territories wherever they get an opportunity to nibble away territory in the eastern parts of Ladakh, beyond the perceived boundary lines. This is to get as much territory as they can ‘grab’ in this area of Aksai Chin, to give more depth to their important road link (Highway 219) that connects Kashgar in Xinjiang to Lhasa in Tibet. The two border regions to Western China are really their Achilles heel, and both have been at the receiving end of much state sponsored brutality. That apart, the Aksai Chin (in eastern Ladakh) is part of a grand strategic design of the Chinese to extend their reach north of the Galwan river – where they had a military standoff with India, two years in 2020 - to the Karakoram pass, where China has built a major road link to the Shaksgam valley, which China occupied since 1963, when Pakistan give it to them to firm up the China-Pak nexus which has been Pakistan’s major diplomatic life line, now.

Second, China is forever looking for more water resources in the Ladakh region, and the Pangong Tso, a 699 sq km lake is one as also is the Indus river system originates from Tibet and goes via Ladakh to Pakistan’s northern areas that we call POK. The Chinese agenda is to have access to as much water in this region, as China needs an abundance of water to manufacture microchips and silicon wafers that require lots of water (10,000 liters for its 30 cm sq) to produce. Thus the waters of the Indus River system that China wants and in Ladakh and POK held by Pakistan, which are important for its geo-strategic and economic agenda. In 2018, China imported over $ 230 billion worth of Microchips from the US, Japan and Taiwan in 2018. US-led sanctions have led Beijing to want to make all this itself – through the fresh waters of the Indus system and by melting glaciers in the Shakgam valley. China had in fact begun eying Indus' waters from the 1950s, and so it occupied Aksai Chin in 1954. Now the Chinese have agreed to finance five major Dams on the Indus rivers in POK. These will provide the waters not just to produce electricity – more for China’s Xinxiang, than for Pakistan’s northern areas – but also to produce silicon wafers.

Hence these current incursions of grabbing territory in easter Ladakh opens up that possibility further. River valleys (like the Galwan valley where they had moved into in 2020) are normally defended by either side by placing troops on the high grounds around them. But as you can defend them best by firing upon the intruder, and India takes its agreements on not using military ammunition, China takes it for granted that it won't be fired, even as Indian officials have in the past approached such Chinese intrusions on a diplomatic wing and a prayer! But we cannot have this as a standard procedure, when Chinese troops encroach. As we've seen, we have talks and then announce all is back to normal, even as Chinese threaten our positions and more importantly harm our border road workers, who are unarmed, and live and work in very trying conditions.

A reason for the Sino-Indian stand-off in 2020 was the development of roads in border areas by India, which had not developed its border infrastructure for decades on the China front, on the presumption that bad roads on the borders will make a Chinese advance into Indian territory slow, in the event of another 1962 type invasion! A lot has changed since then, and this must be publicized if a national narrative is to be built. For a start, the Indian army is not the same as the one that the Chinese rolled over in 1962, when the Pandit Nehru-Krishna Menon combine refused to allow it to fight even tactical battles. And though the Henderson Brooks report - that looked at only the reasons for military debacle in 1962 (not the political failures) - is India’s best kept public secret (with a copy in South Block) that our Generals have had access to it, and have learnt lessons from it. Hence India's tough stance at Nathu La in Sikkim, in 1967 (that left many Chinese and Indian soldiers dead) and then the swift airlift of troops by General Sundarji in 1987, when the Chinese intruded in Arunachal (Somdorung Chu) could be repeated. In both cases the Chinese withdrew.

Today, as we assume that the Chinese will withdraw back to the accepted LAC (Line of Actual Control) we must be prepared for the long haul. Or adopt a new and bolder approach for a settlement. As China’s leaders cannot lose face, they’ll need to get a deal and announce gains, even as they make concessions to India. Therefore, the need to re-examine the 1959 proposals by Chow (now Zhou) EnLai, Chairman Mao Ze Dong’s premier. The deal he offered – that would’ve had Mao’s approval – for a formal settlement was for India to accept China’s control over Aksai Chin, and in return China for a Chinese acceptance of India’s control over today’s Arunachal Pradesh. This was rejected twice by India. Once by an arrogant Pandit Nehru, who felt India had nothing to give, but only to take! And then by Indian diplomats in South Block who felt that accepting the Chinese proposal would be disloyal to Nehru’s legacy. Thus, it is ironic when the MEA spokesman of the Modi government announces that India would not accept the Chinese claims, he is (perhaps unknowingly) echoing the line of the Nehru administration and his loyalists! It is time that New Delhi’s diplomatic approach of going through the talks as a peace-making model needs to be reviewed. For that we need to create a new mechanism to settle these boundary disputes, since the 22 rounds of Special Representative talks have led us nowhere. If not, then are we willing to have another Kargil-like conflict?