Apparently the Chinese complain that India has built bunkers. But even they don’t claim this is by intruding Indian troops.
Some guests have unusual ways. They conspire to dig up your garden before they make a planned ceremonial entry. The new Chinese Premier, Li Keqiang, is due to visit this country in a few weeks. But on the eve of this trip, some 40 Chinese soldiers have marched 10 km inside Indian territory in the Depsang valley in eastern Ladakh and erected tents.
This is contrary to the spirit of the agreement between the two to keep their disputed 4,000-km boundary “tranquil”. Two flag meetings between local commanders yielded no results. The ITBP men have had to move up their positions, leading to a “face-to- face” situation, now officially acknowledged by India. This is a first since the Sumdurong Chu episode of June 1986. Diplomatic efforts are on to defuse matters. If these don’t succeed, the Ladakh episode can well cast a shadow on Mr Li’s visit.
It is hard to imagine that the incursion, which looks properly planned (there was a Chinese helicopter ingress as well), is due to confusion over the claims of the two nations on the disputed boundary, and to say the Chinese only moved into what they believe to be uninhabited terrain on their own side. This could at a stretch be said of the few thousand other Chinese incursions that have occurred since 2007. But pitching tents gives the game away. Apparently the Chinese complain that India has built bunkers. But even they don’t claim this is by intruding Indian troops.
Maybe there is something about visiting Chinese Prime Ministers. The pitch was politically queered before the visit of the previous Chinese PM, Wen Jiabao, in December 2010, with the stapled visa issue and sudden Chinese investments in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. Mr Wen made no effort on the trip to address issues of concern to India. The result was that for the first time India refused to insert into the communiqué the standard formulation that India acknowledges Beijing’s “one-China” policy.
It is not clear what Beijing is now signalling. Toward the end of 2009, when Indian media reports of Chinese ingress in the eastern sector — and even firing on the Indian side — filled the air, an expert of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences noted that additional deployments by India in the border regions could give rise to “regional tensions”. The suggestion was that India cease building border infrastructure, including airfields, and bolstering troop strength. The same idea has been suggested in a draft defence agreement submitted to New Delhi about a month ago. This is not a proposition India can countenance.
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