It’s Not Just Taiwan: China Plots Indian Land Grab
by Mike Watson
So much of Washington’s attention is concentrated on Taiwan that Americans sometimes forget China picks fights with nearly all of its other neighbors too. Beijing’s claims to the South China Sea and various islands owned by our allies garner some attention, but the land grabs to China’s south are less well known.
Beijing wants to seize significant amounts of Indian territory, including the entire northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, and clashes between Indian and Chinese troops along their 2,000-mile-long border are common. The Chinese are putting more pressure on India, and the United States should help New Delhi defend its sovereignty.
The Indo-China dispute seemed to have calmed down after Xi Jinping visited India’s capital last month. The two countries finally restored direct flights, which India had suspended after China killed 20 Indian soldiers during a 2020 standoff in the Galwan Valley. But the head of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police recently acknowledged, “in the past few days, a situation arose where [a] face-off happened at several locations in Arunachal and it still continues.”
China’s encroachment is difficult for India to counter. It is much easier for China to surge troops and equipment from the Tibetan Plateau than it is for India to move up into the Himalayas. Beijing seized the disputed Aksai Chin region during its 1962 invasion, largely thanks to the logistical benefits of building a road nearby a few years before.
The imbalance in infrastructure has grown since. From the time it instituted the Western Development Program nearly three decades ago, Beijing has built nearly 70,000 miles of road in Tibet, along with substantial rail lines and other infrastructure. Over the past decade, it has also constructed nearly 1,000 xiaokang villages on or near Indian territory. Sometimes Chinese encroachments take detours through Bhutan, a small Himalayan kingdom that desperately seeks to avoid drawing either of its neighbors’ ire.
Thanks to this buildout, the Chinese military can push at any point along the lengthy border with relative ease. Once the Indian military got a handle on Galwan, the Chinese shifted elsewhere; the new standoff in Arunachal Pradesh is the first in the area since 1975. Both sides have agreed not to use firearms during border clashes, but as the Galwan battle shows, the fights can still be deadly. Xi encourages aggression as well: The commander of the unit that killed 20 Indians got to be a torchbearer during the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.
China’s Tibetan projects also pose other problems for India. Much of South Asia depends on water from the Himalayas, and Beijing threatens to restrict it by building too many dams on rivers originating in its territory. For example, a 60,000-megawatt dam under construction in Tibet could be three times the size of the Three Gorges Dam.
New Delhi is racing to catch up. During Prime Minister Modi’s tenure, the Indian government has built more infrastructure in border regions. This is not as easy for democratic India as it is for the CCP: In addition to squaring off with China’s military, Indian security forces in Arunachal Pradesh are also dealing with mass protests related to an Indian dam.