The Dispute Behind India and China's Border Clash

A violent skirmish in June 2020 involving Indian and Chinese patrols in a Himalayan ravine was the first deadly clash along the disputed border in nearly half a century. That same summer also saw rare warning shots ring out on the 2,100-mile line of actual control, over which the two giants fought a bloody war in 1962.

The melee took place in Galwan Valley in India's western Ladakh region, a portion of which is claimed and controlled by China as Aksai Chin, administered by its western regions of Xinjiang and Tibet. As is typical of scuffles along the LAC, the fight in which 20 Indian troops and at least four Chinese soldiers died involved fists, clubs, and stones, rather than guns.

This week, Indian and Chinese officials acknowledged a fresh altercation between border patrols on the opposite end of the LAC in Arunachal Pradesh, a state at India's eastern tip, claimed by China in its entirety as South Tibet.

The face-off on December 9 appeared to be the most serious incident since 2020, but observers say the fisticuffs were simply a continuation of 30 months of heightened activity along the border, much of which goes undisclosed.

India inherited its territorial claims from pre-independence maps drawn up by the British before 1947. The People's Republic of China, founded by the Communist Party in 1949, similarly extended its boundaries from the country's former republican government.

Their differences resulted in flare-ups after China annexed Tibet in 1950, and especially after the Tibetan uprising of 1959 when India began hosting the Dalai Lama, Tibet's highest spiritual leader, who formed a government in exile in the country's north.

China's New Footing

Today, the precise contours of the LAC are still disputed; soldiers from both sides encounter one another on a regular basis as they patrol lines that frequently shift with the seasons.

Yet despite the uneasy dynamic on the border, a number of important agreements have helped keep relative peace between India and China, and dozens of working- and high-level talks have averted a repeat of their armed conflict 60 years ago.

This month's clash, however, in which each side accused the other of trespassing across the LAC, followed a pattern of elevated gray-zone tensions linked to Xi Jinping's 10 years in power.

China's president, the most assertive Chinese leader in a generation, has put his military on a path of rapid expansion and modernization, giving Beijing the means to challenge historical claims along its land and maritime borders. India is far from the only neighbor to feel the growing hard-power footprint of Xi's new era.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's border forces now face more standoffs at more locations, and at a higher intensity, than at any time since he assumed office in 2014.

China's deployment of troops and equipment to forward bases behind the LAC also has necessitated a response in kind from India. The building of military infrastructure behind the border portends more permanent friction, while the patrols, although unarmed, belie the force buildup nearby.

Galwan Valley was a turning point for India, analysts say, one in which the Modi government realized Beijing wasn't seeking a realistic end to their longstanding border dispute, despite rhetorical assurance to the contrary.

"Efforts to resolve the border dispute through negotiation and dialogue had reached quite far, though the movement was slow," said Manoj Joshi, a distinguished fellow at the Observer Research Foundation think tank in New Delhi.

"It was the 2020 crisis which brought down the edifice of confidence-building measures in the 1990s that had reduced tensions and set the stage for the settlement of the border issues," he told Newsweek.

After the clashes that summer, Indian and Chinese commanders held at least 16 rounds of talks to pursue deescalation along the border. This past September, a mutually agreed withdrawal from a hotspot in Ladakh was met with optimism—perhaps too much, subject-matter experts say.

Micro and Macro

The long-running border dispute is partly informed by China's anxiety about political instability in Xinjiang and Tibet, where Beijing has spent over a decade systemically cracking down on religious freedoms and sentiments of self-determination.

The repression, which the United Nations Human Rights Office now says requires rectification, has only worsened with access to digital tools such as facial recognition software, widespread surveillance and vast databases of biometric data.

In the west of the LAC, Galwan Valley and Pangong Lake have hosted flashpoints in recent years. But in the east in Tawang, where the latest scuffle happened, there is much discussion about Buddhist holy sites whose control may have implications for the legitimacy of China's authority over Tibet and its next spiritual leader.

At a macro level, words like sovereignty and territorial integrity are frequent talking points, as are peace and tranquility. Following the fatal hostilities in Ladakh in 2020, Wang Yi, China's foreign minister, argued that aggression and expansionism weren't in Chinese genes.

The incremental incursions across the LAC and subsequent calls for talks suggest a long-term strategy with no clear endgame. But China has other reasons to keep the border hot.

In a recent paper, Vijay Gokhale, India's former foreign secretary, argued Beijing's policy throughout the Cold War was to detach India from other great powers, first the United States, then the Soviet Union.

It's now once again seeking "to reduce risk to its security by keeping India nonaligned and to reduce India's threat to its periphery," he wrote in the report for Carnegie India, the New Delhi-based center of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think tank.

"China used to think that India was the only country in the South Asian region that could contain China, so it presented a two-front threat to India," said Sana Hashmi, a postdoctoral fellow at the Taiwan-Asia Exchange Foundation think tank in Taipei.

"China has gone for boundary dispute resolutions with countries that were less friendly than India. But with India, it's in its interest to keep the dispute alive," Hashmi told Newsweek.

Resolving the poorly demarcated border was "a matter of intent," she said. "I think this is one realization that has changed India's policy. Now India is definitely sure of the fact that China doesn't want to resolve the dispute."

No Rush

Beijing has used its tactical hesitancy and the rigidity of its territorial assertions to press home its military advantage. China outspends India on defense by about four times, and the numbers show.

For the third successive year, tens of thousands of Indian Army troops, some redeployed from the front with Pakistan, will spend the winter in the Himalayas to match the concentration of People's Liberation Army forces a few miles away.

Gen. Manoj Pande, India's army chief, said in November that there had been no meaningful reduction in China's troops behind the LAC. He described the situation as "stable but unpredictable"—arguably a feature of Beijing's strategy.

In the meantime, China has successfully channeled the current antagonism with India toward sentiments of nationalism at home. When Xi secured an unprecedented third term as leader of the Communist Party in October, Qi Fabao, the PLA commander injured in the Galwan Valley clash, was invited as a delegate to symbolize the sacrosanctity of Chinese territory.

"When India and China began the process of accepting that there was a border problem and getting on with negotiating a settlement, India and China were roughly equal in terms of national power—GDP, trade, military strength, etc.," said Joshi. "Today, China is much more powerful and benchmarks itself with the U.S."

"China has a hierarchical view of the global power system, and here it is number one in Asia," he said. "India is viewed as a subordinate power, but New Delhi has its own dreams and views itself as a great power, or a soon-to-be great power, and is not willing to accept this."

Chinese interlocutors tell their Indian counterparts that Beijing wants to set aside the border issue and resume economic dialogue and other areas of mutually beneficial cooperation. But without a commitment to return to the pre-2020 status quo, New Delhi, and its voters, might find any new arrangement hard to accept.

"I don't think the Indian side, without any genuine assurances, is going to go ahead with the normalization of ties," Hashmi said. "Unless we see a major concession from the Chinese side. Any movement going forward would have to come from China."

"It's not going to be business as usual in times to come, even if the U.S. is going to be proactive towards China, or even if there is a resumption of dialogue between Western countries and China," she argued.

India's Rethink

Each crisis at the border triggers debates about a recalibration in New Delhi, the credibility of Beijing's pledges, India's own preparedness, and the cost of not doing more.

India watchers believe the shifting power balance in China's favor has already moved India's nonalignment needle. Modi's government has been comfortable with India's armed forces associating openly with their American counterparts.

He's also welcomed the revival of the Quad with the U.S., Japan and Australia. The right amount of hedging, the thinking apparently goes, could enable rather than limit India's strategic autonomy.

"India sees itself as an independent country that has its own agency, but China doesn't see that," Hashmi said. "China now sees India as an important component of the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy."

As China settles in for a defining contest with the U.S. to determine the outlook of what has been called the "post-post-Cold War" era, any meaningful alignment between India and the West would likely only reinforce Beijing's view of New Delhi through an ideological and existential great power lens, potentially further reducing the already slim chance of substantive progress on the border.

Do you have a tip on a world news story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about India-China relations? Let us know via worldnews@newsweek.com.