Tawang fisticuffs is PLA retaliation for QUAD
The fisticuffs between responding Indian Army soldiers and intruding People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops in the Tawang sector in Arunachal Pradesh on December 9, and additional force deployment and military activity across the Line of Actual Control (LAC) are clear indications that the Xi Jinping regime will continue to put pressure on both contested sectors of the borders and has little interest in normalising relations with India.
The other sector, of course, is the Ladakh one, where a stand-off continues for the 20th month.
The Chinese belligerence on the border came soon after the PLA inducted three additional combined armed brigades of 4,500 troops each with integrated mechanised and armour support across the LAC in Arunachal Pradesh including one across Tawang and another brigade across LAC in the sensitive Sikkim sector a month before the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in mid-October; the brigades are still to move back to their bases. Just as China wants to impose the 1959 cartographic line on the 1,597 km East Ladakh LAC (India has consistently rejected this definition), it covets all of Arunachal Pradesh, which it terms South Tibet, and contests the 1,126 km LAC in the eastern sector. China and India have only exchanged boundary maps in the middle sector and defined each other’s positions.
China has also renewed military activity in the India-China-Bhutan tri-junction area near the Doklam plateau—the site of the 2017 military face-off— and is putting pressure on Bhutan to yield to boundary talks.
The December 9 PLA aggression in the Tawang sector involving at least 300 Chinese soldiers (some estimates say the number could be as high as 600) was unprovoked and perhaps an effort to test the response of the Indian Army, which will have to factor the incident into its winter posture. The PLA is fully deployed in occupied Aksai Chin and across the Karakoram Pass in Tashkurgan area, and is engaged in frenetic military activity, including the upgradation of supporting infrastructure across the LAC in Arunachal Pradesh.
The December 9 skirmish in Tawang also indicates China’s double-speak. It was as recent as November 30, that Beijing asked India to adhere to the 1993-1996 border agreements in the context of the Indo-United States (US) joint military exercises in Auli in Uttarakhand, 100 km from the LAC. Not only did China oppose the joint battalion-level infantry exercises, it also asked India to jointly uphold peace and tranquillity on LAC. India and US, on their part, rejected the Chinese opposition to the joint exercises. It is worth noting that these are the same agreements that were deliberately and wilfully ignored by China when the PLA transgressed into Galwan (patrolling point 14), Kugrang Nullah (patrolling point 15), and on the north banks of Pangong Tso in May 2020. The idea then, was to gain territorial and tactical advantage along a contested border, even as India was preoccupied with fighting the first wave of Covid-19.
That the Tawang sector incident comes just a week after the verbal altercation over the Auli exercises indicates that Beijing wants to teach India a lesson for getting too close to the US bilaterally and multilaterally as part of Quad. But there is another reason. Historically, Beijing has used military friction with adversaries to divert the attention of its population from domestic issues. After being re-elected as president for the third time, Xi Jinping has faced unprecedented resistance from citizens over the country’s irrational and unscientific zero-Covid policy. The Chinese economy also faces economic headwinds over repeated disruptions on account of Covid, a concerted effort by many western nations to look for alternatives to China which touts itself as a factory to the world, a once in a lifetime drought this summer, and a collapse in the real estate sector which has exposed the vulnerabilities of the country’s banking system. The government has actually had to give in and roll back some of the more restrictive aspects of its zero-Covid policy.
While Beijing is trying to forge new alliances in the far Pacific and West Asia to rival the US as an alternative pole, it will continue to put military pressure on the borders with India to remind New Delhi about the fragility of the military situation and force it to rethink its relations with the US and Quad. It wants to send a message that the Narendra Modi government should only concentrate on its neighbourhood rather than playing in the global arena. There is a school of thought that New Delhi may have pushed Beijing too far with its growing closeness to Washington, and the energy with which it has embarked on its G20 presidency. This argument underestimates China’s play — the country, well on its way to becoming a superpower to rival the US next decade, is in a rush to ensure its military objectives in the western and eastern sectors are achieved before that. In this context, it makes sense for India to continue to focus on what it needs to do without worrying about Beijing’s reaction.
The undefined border, continued military pressure along the LAC, and the use of client-State Pakistan as a force multiplier are all part of the Chinese design to destabilise India and prevent it from achieving its ambitious goals this decade. Opposed to India extending its footprint beyond South Asia, it is possible that Beijing will arm Pakistan with long-range submarines to check India’s growing reach beyond the Indian Ocean.