India Taking More Aggressive and Reckless Approach To Border Disputes With Neighbours: Chinese Observers

Report By: Nandika Chand | Last Updated June 25, 2020

Following the month-long standoff with China in Ladakh and the June 15 violent face-off in Galwan Valley, Chinese observers have pointed out that India is taking a more aggressive and reckless approach to border disputes with neighbours. They said Beijing is wary of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s nationalist and adventurist foreign policy.

India is also having a border dispute with Nepal, which has gone to next level after Nepal released a new map which claims some parts of Indian land as its own. Nepal claims India has encroached on about 60,000 hectares of land in 23 of the 75 bordering districts, with 71 total areas of dispute. Another disputed area is Kalapani. After the Indo-Sino war of 1962, the Indian Army set up a camp inside this Nepalo-claimed territory (Kalapani) to monitor Chinese activities. However, the Indian troops never left and now claim this area as theirs. Nepal has the maps of 1850 and 1856 to mark its territory but this has also been rejected by India. The India-Nepal Joint Technical Level Boundary Committee has been set up to resolve the dispute with a reasonable solution.

Nepal has also protested over India’s building a new road at the Lipulekh Pass (this connects India’s state of Uttarakhand with China’s Tibet region) which didn’t go down well with New Delhi. India said this protest was at someone else’s behest (China). In response, Nepal accused India of changing the status quo unilaterally in the Nepal-China-India tri-junction.

Wu Qian, a spokesman for China’s defence ministry, has again put the blame on India for the deadly clash on June 15. And foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian urged New Delhi to meet China halfway in restoring peace and stability along their disputed frontier. China is also a claimant in the long-standing, violent border dispute over Kashmir between India and Pakistan. Anaylsts have attributed the latest face-off to the abrogation of Kashmir’s special status, which ‘forced’ China into the Kashmir dispute. This is because China occupies one-fifth of the original Jammu and Kashmir (Aksai Chin) in the Xinjiang region.