The mainstream media is abuzz with reports of how tensions between India and Pakistan have been intensifying following the recent Pakistan-sponsored terror attack in the Indian town of Pahalgam. What seems to be getting less traction, though, is the major role played by China in the flare up of these tensions, which is important to understand for anyone who wants to gauge the strategic fallout of this terror attack on April 22nd, 2025, which killed 26 and injured more than 20 others.
The brutal killing of over two dozen tourists by five members of Pakistan-linked terror organization, The Resistance Front (TRF), in the Pahalgam region of India’s Union Territory (UT) of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) has created a serious crisis in the region, one that seems to be headed toward a military showdown between India and Pakistan.
Many in India are calling for a strong response entailing some type of an offensive action, similar to the Surgical Strikes carried out in response to the terror attack against an Indian Army brigade headquarters near the town of Uri in 2016 and the Balakot air strikes in 2019 carried out in response to the attack on a convoy of vehicles carrying Indian armed forces personnel along a highway in the Pulwama district in the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir.
The aforesaid Indian military actions were unprecedented, marking the adoption of a more assertive approach by India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration toward upholding the country’s territorial integrity and ensuring the safety of its citizens against state-sponsored terrorism.
In essence, these military actions were aimed at establishing a deterrence vis-à-vis Pakistan – the state that is the sponsor of terrorism against India –, however, they also created what experts describe as the ‘commitment trap’ wherein the Indian government now must carry out a similar kinetic action in response to the terror attack in Pahalgam, and be prepared to escalate further if Pakistan decides to respond to it militarily, otherwise the impact of any such Indian military action will be minimal.
For instance, when India refrained from responding to Pakistan’s Operation Swift Retort following India’s Balakot air strikes in 2019, the deterrence it sought to establish through its air strikes was somewhat undermined, as Pakistan did manage to demonstrate its will to strike back, though not as a means to escalate further, because it was simply not in any condition to go to war with India, as was revealed by two senior Pakistani journalists four years down the line.
These journalists – Hamid Mir and Naseem Zehra – said in an interview with the UK-based Pakistani media ‘UK44’ that the Pakistan Army Chief at the time, General Qamar Bajwa had told them that Pakistan did not have sufficient ammunition and economic strength to sustain a war effort against India.
Citing General Bajwa, Mir said that during a conference of commanders, Bajwa acknowledged that the “Pakistan Army is no match for the Indian Army.”
“After the incident, he asked Faiz to at least inform Foreign Office about it, however, Bajwa came and lectured them – the same lecture given to us—do you remember – tanks are not in condition to work, there is no diesel for the movements of cannons,” Mir further said.
The circumstances for Pakistan have not improved much since then. The country continues to face its worst economic crisis. So, what then has changed in the past six years that the Pakistani establishment felt confident enough to indulge in an adventurism like the one it did on April 22nd in Pahalgam.
The answer to that is perhaps China’s silent encouragement and assistance to the Pakistani establishment to undertake measures against India in the J&K region, and if that is the case, then this attack on Pahalgam could very well be a trap laid out by Beijing for India to be drawn in its proxy war – with Pakistan being its Proxy – so as to arrest India’s growth trajectory.
This is the subject that this article is going to explore in detail and based on that try and gauge how things could develop ahead.
The Chinese Hand In The Terror Strikes Inside India’s J&K Region
As the author had previously pointed out using primary Chinese-language references, China’s increasing aggression at the Line of Actual Control – the de-facto border between India and China – in recent years is to some extent, motivated by India’s rising stature at the international level, which it sees as a competition to its own rise or as a hindrance to the fulfilment of its own interests at the global level.
India definitely has the potential to surpass China as a contender for the position of global superpower by virtue of its growing economy, high population, and large labour force. Therefore, Beijing seems to consider maintaining a contentious front with India as a way to arrest its rise as a ‘geopolitical competitor’ and for that, occasional flare ups along the border are necessary.
However, in October 2024, India and China reached an agreement on patrolling arrangements along the LAC leading to disengagement, which at the time was hailed by both countries as a major diplomatic breakthrough in the process of resolution of tensions between the two countries that began in April 2020 and heightened significantly in the aftermath of the Galwan Valley clash of June 2020.
Interestingly, China reached this agreement with India mere weeks before the US Presidential Elections of 2024, which begs to question, whether this was done by Beijing in the anticipation of the incumbent US President Donald Trump’s victory in that election and what could follow after that.
Due to the history of trade war with the US under previous Trump administration, Beijing may have sought to ease tensions with India in order to make way for increased access to Indian market for its export-oriented manufacturing enterprises.
Experts in India have pointed out how in the wake of Trump administration having initiated the tariff war with China, Chinese diplomats in India have been stressing the importance of collaboration between China and India for mutual development and modernization, and they have also been actively encouraging their contacts and business lobbies in India to support these assertions and to advocate for the relaxation of restrictions on Chinese businesses and foreign direct investment (FDI), as well as the resumption of flights.
However, China is yet to undertake any substantive measures to ease the tensions at the border, as disengagement is only the first of the graded three-step process suggested by India to China for resolution of the ongoing standoff which entailed withdrawal of troops within close distance of each other in grey zones along the LAC.
The next two steps — de-escalation and de-induction — which involve withdrawing troops and equipment to the pre-April 2020 levels have not happened yet. Instead, there has been a continuous buildup of infrastructure as well as significant deployment of troops and weaponry from the Chinese side along the LAC, which is only increasing the level of potential military threat to India.
Therefore, reaching an agreement with India on patrolling arrangements along the LAC was perhaps intended by Beijing to shift the contentious front for India from its border with China to its border with Pakistan.
Other than India’s rising stature at the international level, according to Hu Shisheng, probably one of the most authoritative Chinese experts on India, among the reasons behind China’s aggression at the LAC in 2020 was also India’s revocation of Article 370 of its Constitution in August 2019 which allotted a special status to the erstwhile state of Jammu & Kashmir (J&K).
In May 2023, Hu, the director of the Institute for South Asian Studies of the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR), which is one of China’s most influential think tank and is directly under the Ministry of State Security (MoSS) – China’s external intelligence arm –, detailed reasons that led to the Chinese aggression in May 2020, in his post on the Chinese social media website, Weibo.
Per the translation of this post by Aadil Brar, an Indian expert on the PLA and China affairs, Hu in this post said that India, by withdrawing J&K’S special status as well as its statehood and dividing it into two centrally governed Union territories of Ladakh and J&K, unilaterally changed the political status of what is a disputed land between India, Pakistan and China.
This means that India’s moves in 2019 to assert its sovereignty in J&K was the trigger behind the ensuing synergy between the Pakistani and Chinese militaries in both, conventional and irregular warfare domains against India, as will be discussed later in this section of the article only.
According to a Pakistani media report citing Dr. Wang Shida, the Deputy Director of CICIR’s Institute for South Asian Studies, China was forced to enter into the Kashmir dispute because of India’s change to J&K’s status in August 2019.
“India ‘opened up new territory on the map,’ incorporated part of the areas under the local jurisdiction of Xinjiang and Tibet into its Ladakh union territory and placed Pakistani-administered Kashmir within its so-called union territories of Jammu and Kashmir,” Wang was cited by Express Tribune as having written shortly before the violent Indo-China standoff in June 2020.
“This forced China into the Kashmir dispute, stimulated China and Pakistan to take counter-actions, and dramatically increased the difficulty in resolving the border issue between China and India,” Wang further said.
It is in this context that the recent spate of terror attacks in India’s J&K region along the Line of Control (LoC) – de facto border between India and Pakistan – needs to be viewed.
Shortly after this article by Express Tribune citing Wang, specifically in September 2020, an Indian media outlet, NDTV, citing unnamed Indian government sources, reported that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) has been tasked by China to funnel substantial quantities of weapons into India’s J&K region to intensify anti-India activities and unrest amidst its border stand-off with India in Ladakh.
“Due to the strong anti-infiltration grid established by the Indian security forces, Pakistan is unable to infiltrate neither terrorists nor weapons into the valley to increase violence levels in the valley. Pakistan’s ISI has been given an ultimatum to push in maximum infiltrators along with weapons into Kashmir before onset of winters, when the undergrowth or bushes in most infiltration prone areas will die down due to dew and snowfall,” unnamed Indian government sources were cited as saying by NDTV.
“In last two months local recruitment has gone up sizeably but getting weapons were becoming an issue. That’s why Pakistan now has stepped up efforts to send weapons, drones and quad-copters,” a senior official told NDTV.
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