[The War Zone] Since the China-India border crisis last erupted, Beijing has secured its territorial claim by installing massive military infrastructure.Two years have passed since the height of the most recent flare-up in the border crisis between China and India that started in May 2020. The event saw lethal melee combat over Aksai Chin, which the Chinese claim as a part of Xinjiang and India claims as a part of Ladakh, Jammu and Kashmir. Both India and China reported casualties as a result of a June 2020 altercation in this region's Galwan Valley. The crisis itself ended through a number of limited withdrawals of frontline positions on both sides. But now, two years later, the overall strategic picture is one of remarkable Chinese military buildup and encroachment.
Being one of the largest disputed areas between India and China, Aksai Chin sits adjacent to the Kashmir region, another turbulent border for India due to its overlapping claim on the region with Pakistan. Sitting at 38,000 square kilometers, Aksai Chin is a cold, arid, and largely uninhabited desert just a little bigger than Maryland. The area has been long disputed between the two with China extending its first military grab over the region after the Sino-Indo war of 1962. Four decades passed with both countries regularly entering into minor scuffles in the region, but 2020 witnessed a complete change in tempo, pushing two nuclear-armed neighbors into a rapid escalation. Some reports have suggested that China’s aggression came as a result of a new road — the Darbuk—Shyok—Daulat Beg Oldi Road, or DSDBO — that India was building in the region. Another possible catalyst linked to the conflict was a move by India to change the status of Jammu & Kashmir, redrawing maps and borders which included the disputed area — a move China has regularly voiced opposition to.
As the crisis dropped from the headlines following the initial de-escalation, no further progress was made in negotiations. Chinese and Indian troops remain just kilometers apart while steadily increasing their military capacity. Through the crisis, China managed to effectively take control of Aksai Chin — in a practical military sense, this is a departure from its previous disputed status — and has heavily militarized the entire region around it.
During the border crisis in 2020, China established improvised positions at key locations along the edges of its own territorial claim in the region. Chinese forces established tent camps in the Galwan Valley, occupied critical patrol points, sent forces to camp atop mountain ranges along high altitude lakes and set up new bases in open plains. Negotiations during the crisis itself led China to abandon a small minority of these improvised frontline positions, but over the next two years, the vast majority of them developed into permanent all-weather military encampments.
The strength that China has rapidly developed along these borders will severely constrain India’s ability to ever recover access to the Aksai Chin region. Despite the public appearance of the crisis being settled in a Chinese withdrawal, this withdrawal has remained negligible compared to the scale of the territory that China has militarized. As such, China has achieved a form of territorial expansion by bringing Aksai Chin from a disputed status to a de facto militarily occupied status.
India has, of course, not been entirely passive throughout the course of the crisis and the two years that have followed. Initially, its stern response to Chinese expansions into the Galwan Valley quite literally pushed back the Chinese efforts to establish new positions, but its risk-averse approach did eventually allow the Chinese military to dig in at Aksai Chin.
Lots more and maps and pretty pictures at the link. It's like I'm four again and at the doctors office waiting room reading Highlights.