Military buildups along disputed border stoke fears of escalation between China and India

India has scaled up its troop deployment along its disputed border with China, the country’s foreign minister, S Jaishankar, said yesterday, following the first clash on December 9 between Indian and Chinese troops since the fatal confrontations in the Galwan Valley.

• “Today, you have a deployment of the Indian Army on the China border that we have never had. It’s done to counter Chinese deployments, which were scaled up massively since 2020,” Jaishankar said at India Today’s Indo-Japan Conclave in Delhi.
• India will not let China “unilaterally change” the status quo at the border, he added.

India is also planning to build a road along more than 1,000 miles on its side of the border in Arunachal Pradesh, the northeastern territory where the latest skirmish broke out, within the next five years. Recent reports of PLA encroachment spanning along the Himalayan frontier have fueled concerns that it will spark greater military buildups on either side and escalate tensions between the two countries.

• The proposed two-lane highway will also come as close as about 12.5 miles (20 kilometers) to the poorly demarcated border, also known as the Line of Actual Control (LAC), in a bid to strengthen military resupply routes and allow rapid deployment of its military.
• The news comes after a recent study by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), which analyzed the satellite imagery on the December 9 clash, reported that the PLA has also been rapidly developing new military and transport infrastructure that allows it to get troops quickly into the area.

Meanwhile, the latest clash sparked a backlash in Delhi last week, to a point where opposition parties staged a walkout in both Houses of Parliament after their demands for a discussion on the border situation were denied.

• Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is coming under fire for not condemning China, with some opposition leaders accusing his government of “running away” from the issue over its “close ties” with Beijing.
• Last week, Indian media company NDTV reported on satellite imagery that it said “indicates that Beijing has positioned large numbers of drones and fighter aircraft at major Tibetan airbases, which are ranged against India’s northeast.”

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wāng Wénbīn 汪文斌 said last week that the situation at the border was “generally stable” when asked about the skirmish at a press conference.