China surreptitious moves – a bitter offshoot of the 1962 war

China is at it again. Not long ago, there was news about its encroachment in Demchok in the Western sector and now soon after Xi Jinping’s offer of palliatives on maintaining the sanctity of the LAC, the Chumur region, 300 kms. North of Ladakh, is witnessing hectic movement of the PLA. The dispute over the LAC has raged for years on end, primarily because both in the Eastern and the Western sectors lie regions that have affiliations to India as well as China. Thus, territorial integrity from each others’ perspective is always brought into question.

Looking back over the years, China had begun the construction of a Western highway in the Aksai Chin region as early as 1954, to connect the Xinjiang region with Lhasa, thus providing it the only direct link with Tibet. The point of dispute was that Aksai Chin lay in the North-Eastern corner of the Ladakh region, claimed by India as its own legitimate territory.

Amazingly, even as late as 1959, Nehru willingly acknowledged in the Parliament that China had taken over more than 12,000 square miles of Indian territory in the process of constructing the highway, yet was unwilling to accept that they would ever resort to full-scale war, given India’s warm relations with the USSR and the implicit support of the US that was ready at hand. Ironically, both the US and the USSR were at that stage, engaged in the Cuban missile crisis and even as China was nibbling away at Indian territory, none of the two superpowers appeared upfront in coming immediately to India’s aid.

What began as small scale incursions led to a full fledged conflict in eastern Ladakh, stretching from the Karkoram Pass in the North to Demchok in South East. In the Eastern Sector, where the first firing occurred on 20^th of September, 1962, the reverses were as bad, for China advanced right up to the Namka Chu river across the Thag la ridge, decimated the 7^th brigade and went on to capture Bomdi La in the Kameng Division, the headquarters of the NEFA
Eventually, with the fall of the 48^th brigade on 20^th of November, no organized Indian defence was left either in the NEFA or the disputed territories in the Western sector. Clever as they come, the Chinese announced a cease-fire on 21^st of November, soon after the US and the USSR came to an agreement to resolve the missile crisis, thus rendering their own version of a fait-accompli on India. While China withdrew in the eastern sector, it refused to give up on the 38,000 sq.kms. of disputed Indian territory that it over-ran in and around the Ladakh region. Even as it maintains an eye of avarice over the NEFA, China remains a proverbial predator on the prowl in the Western sector, where the conflict of interest still relates to Aksai Chin, crucial to its continued hegemony over Tibet.

While both sides are sabre-rattling, where China holds an edge is that militarily its forces are far more expedient to patrol the frontier regions that have trills of vast, uninhabited areas. With their forces stationed in Tibet since years, they are physically better attuned to fighting at higher altitudes quite unlike their Indian counterparts. This was as bitter a truth in 1962 as it is today, even as the border stand-off appears all set for a longer haul.