What Is Behind China’s Unreasonable Demands At The LAC?

In what could be interpreted as a sign of potential deterioration of Sino-Indian relations in coming months, the Chinese have reportedly made some ‘unreasonable’ demands in their discussions with India for the “early resolution of the outstanding issues” in their ongoing stand-off along the Line of Actual Control (LAC).

The Tribune, an Indian English-language daily newspaper, published a report on September 28, citing unnamed sources in the Indian government, which said that the Chinese are demanding that their troops be allowed to patrol two spots in Arunachal Pradesh.

These two spots, one of which is in the Yangtse area north-east of Tawang, where Indian and Chinese troops had clashed in December 2022, and the other one in central Arunachal along the Subansiri river valley, have been firmly under Indian control for decades.

The recent Chinese demand is said to have come in response to the 21 rounds of talks that have been held between India and China over the past four years, to discuss the existing dispute on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh, where the Chinese troops deployed well inside the Indian territory along the LAC are blocking the Indian Army’s access to Patrolling Points (also known in military jargon as PP) 10, 11, 12, 12A, and 13 in Depsang.

Apparently, the Chinese side with the demand to allow its troops to patrol the aforesaid two spots in Arunachal Pradesh, was trying to suggest a “quid pro quo”. However, such a quid pro quo does not make sense, as both the spots have been in Indian control for decades, while the access to the PP areas for Indian troops in Eastern Ladakh has been blocked by the Chinese troops after their incursions in April 2020.

The unnamed Indian officials cited by The Tribune said that Chinese demands were “unreasonable” and “devoid of logic”. If true, this latest Chinese demand flies in the face of op-eds and news articles in the mainstream media in the past few months that were indicating a potential thaw between India and China.

On the contrary, the aforesaid Chinese demand would be quite in line with the author’s assessment in early August that the relations between two countries are poised to deteriorate further with high likelihood of a major Chinese aggression occurring at the LAC in the next 6-12 months.

This is because, as author had pointed out previously, there have been reports of China trying to pressure India into accepting the new normal in Eastern Ladakh, and to that effect, the Chinese side had been going so far as to claim that the disengagement of troops from the Patrolling Point 15 (Gogra-Hotsprings area) in September 2022 marked the restoration of normalcy along the LAC in the eastern Ladakh sector.

Additionally, after the Galwan Valley incident of June 2020, when the Indian and Chinese troops clashed again in December 2022 in Yangtse area of Tawang Sector in Arunachal Pradesh, the Indian Defense Minister Rajnath Singh while briefing the Indian Parliament about this incident said that the Chinese troops intended to “unilaterally change the status quo.”

Singh had used those words with a good reason, as Yangtse area in the Taiwan sector is of enormous strategic value due to its elevation which offers a commanding view of the region, and therefore Chinese incursion attempts in this area happen almost every year, usually in September-October, however, the incursion attempt on the morning of December 9, 2022 was different, particularly due to the huge number of PLA (People’s Liberation Army) soldiers involved in it.

Over 200 PLA soldiers armed with monkey fists, taser guns and spiked clubs with nails fitted on them tried to cross over the LAC in Yangtse on that day. They were reportedly acting based on the assessment that the Indian post they were going to target had only around 40-50 personnel, so it would be easy to overwhelm them but they had it wrong. The small group of Indian soldiers stationed at the post did not budge, and instead formed a human chain to stop the Chinese incursion, which led to a lot of pushing and shoving.

Also, the Chinese were unaware of the fact that the Indian Army had a second layer of troops stationed near the LAC for defense, as part of the new deployment plans that were introduced in the aftermath of tensions in eastern Ladakh in 2020. These troops arrived at the scene within less than 30 minutes, which took the Chinese troops by surprise.

The Chinese troops then started pelting stones at the Indian soldiers, which turned this confrontation into a melee. More than 20 Indian soldiers were injured, per the media reports citing unnamed Indian government sources, and the number of injured on the Chinese side were said to be even more with some of them being medically helped by Indian Army troops later.

So, clearly, the Chinese objective was to force the small number of Indian troops at the forward post along the LAC in Yangtse to withdraw, and realise a change of status quo there, just like they had done at the aforesaid PP areas in the eastern Ladakh sector in April 2020, where the access to Indian troops for patrolling still remains blocked. “The last Indian Army patrol to the PP areas was in January 2020,” said an anonymous source cited by The Telegraph.

So, why is it that Chinese troops transgress every year in this Yangtse region, and what is behind the recent uptick in the number of Chinese soldiers partaking in such transgressions, or why exactly are the Chinese demanding access for patrolling in this area? Basically, why is it so important for China to change the status quo in this region?

This is because, from Beijing’s perspective, the successful realisation of China’s core geopolitical interests not just in the Indian Subcontinent but the entire Indo-Pacific, hinges largely upon establishing control over the Yangtse area in the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, as will be demonstrated in the subsequent sections.

China’s Core Geopolitical Interests 

In the eastern sector of the LAC, the dispute is in Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh. China’s claim over ‘Arunachal Pradesh’ is said to be an extension of its claim to Tibet, as it refers to this region as ‘Zangnan’ or ‘South Tibet. The basis for this claim is an important pilgrimage center for Tibetan Buddhists, the Tawang Monastery – the world’s second largest Tibetan monastery – which is located in the Tawang district of Arunachal Pradesh. Moreover, Tawang is also the birthplace of the sixth Dalai Lama, Tsangyang Gyatso.

The Indian position is that the ‘McMahon Line’, as agreed between the erstwhile Tibetan government and British India in the 1914 Simla Convention, is the boundary between China and India. However, China disagrees with India, referring to McMahon Line as an “imperialist legacy” that is “illegal” and “unacceptable”. This position was conveyed by Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai in his letter to Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru on September 8, 1959:

“The so-called McMahon Line was a product of the British policy of aggression against the Tibet region of China and has never been recognized by any Chinese Central Government and is therefore decidedly illegal. As to the Simla Treaty, it was not formally signed by the representative of the then Chinese Central Government […] Regarding the eastern section of the Sino-Indian boundary, […] the Chinese Government absolutely does not recognize the so-called McMahon Line.”

However, the aforesaid Chinese position on the McMahon Line has not been consistent, as was observed in 1960, when Beijing accepted the McMahon Line as the basis for resolution of its border dispute with Myanmar.

Also, China’s initial claims were said to be limited only to the Tawang region of what was known as the North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA) until 1972. On January 20th, 1972, the NEFA became a Union Territory and was renamed as Arunachal Pradesh, which eventually gained statehood in 1987, and it is in response to this development that Beijing is believed to have expanded its claims to the entire state of Arunachal Pradesh. 

An instance of this was observed in 2006, when Sun Yuxi, who was the Chinese Ambassador to India at the time, in an interview with an Indian English-language news television channel, stated that “in our position, the whole of what you call the state of Arunachal Pradesh is Chinese territory and Tawang (district) is only one place in it and we are claiming all of that – that’s our position.”

So, what is behind this variance in China’s position on the McMahon Line, and the gradual expansion of its claims from Tawang to the entire state of Arunachal Pradesh? Clearly there is something larger at play here, and China’s claim over ‘Arunachal Pradesh’ is not as simple as being an extension of its occupation of Tibet.