Border fight between India and China. Whose kung fu is cooler?
The first border clash between Chinese and Indian troops since 1975, with deaths and injuries, occurred on July 15. According to press reports, 250 soldiers from both sides got involved in a massive fight over one of the disputed areas in Tibet, 100 were injured. There were fatal casualties on the Indian side - a border guard colonel and two soldiers. Other sources claim twenty dead.
Judging by reports, there are up to 40 dead among the Chinese military, but Beijing is in no hurry to share information about the losses with the world.
Over the past 45 years, hand-to-hand fights between Indian and Chinese border guards have occurred more than once, but it still hasn’t come to the point of corpses appearing.
Observers believe the Indian officer died trying to break up the fighting. According to the official position of the Indian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, it was the actions of the Chinese border guards that led to the mass dump. China, in turn, shifts responsibility for the incident to the Indian side.
It is possible that the incident was the fault of both parties. Suffice it to recall how the Chinese Red Guards provoked Soviet border guards into a fight on disputed sections of the Far Eastern border in the second half of the 1960s. As for India, this country has repeatedly demonstrated the use of hard power in external and internal conflicts with the most peaceful rhetoric possible.
Currently, China and India are busy preventing the escalation of the conflict through military and diplomatic channels. The danger lies in the fact that both states have concentrated large army formations along the disputed sections of the border in Tibet and neither side intends to
take them deeper into their territory. Thus, hand-to-hand clashes between border guards can lead to clashes involving army units and heavy weapons.
It should also be remembered that both countries have nuclear weapons with a wide range of means of delivery.
There are reports that negotiations to normalize the situation on the border are accompanied by a build-up of army units along the border on both sides, which clearly contradicts the goals and objectives of the negotiations.
What caused the border Indian-Chinese kung fu?
The roots of the conflict lie in the colonial past of British India and Tibet. After the colonialists left, it was as if the borders were deliberately cut for future conflicts. It is known, for example, that two parts
once a single whole - India and Pakistan - have been conflicting for many decades over disputed territories inhabited by Muslims, and the intensity of passions at one time reached such a degree that one day a nuclear war almost broke out between the two newly formed independent states due to an explosion in the sky a stray meteorite exactly over one of the disputed territories. Everyone thought that their neighbor was the first to launch a nuclear missile attack.
As you know, China's annexation of Tibet is considered illegal by many states on the planet. Including India. There remains a bone of contention between India and China - the divided region of Kashmir, the northeastern part of which went to China and is called Aksai Chin.
The PRC paved the way through Aksai Chin to increase connectivity with Tibet, which did not escape the attention of the Indian authorities.
Back in the early 1960s, Beijing offered Delhi to resolve the issue of disputed territories peacefully and was even ready to cede the disputed eastern section of Aksai Chin to India, but in return wanted recognition of its sovereignty over its western section.
Then the chaos began with the flight of the Dalai Lama from Tibet to India and the granting of political asylum to him, and the parties never resolved the territorial dispute.
In July 1960, fighting began between China and India involving army units, first in the eastern zone of Aksai Chin, and then in the western. The fighting reached its peak in October–November 1962, to the point where two towns in the Walong sector of the Ladakh region of the Himalayas came under heavy siege, resulting in the defeat of the Indian 4th Infantry Division by the Chinese.
At the end of 1962, the conflict began to become international. Mao Zedong requested support from the USSR, but our country chose not to get involved in the showdown and declared neutrality, while Great Britain and the USA approved the supply of weapons to India.
The balance of power began to turn against Beijing, and Mao announced a unilateral ceasefire.
Fierce battles like those that took place in the fall of 1962 did not recur, but hand-to-hand border clashes that escalated into firefights with dead and wounded on both sides continued until mid-1975. Then the parties no longer used firearms and sorted things out within the framework of “whose kung fu is stronger.”
On June 15, 2020, the conflict in Ladakh again reached deadly levels.
China believes the deadly border clashes were due to the “arrogance and insanity of the Indian elite”, allegedly buying into the US Indo-Pacific strategy aimed at rapprochement with the world’s second largest country.
In fact, observers believe, one of the reasons for the aggravation of the situation on the border of the disputed territory is the construction by the Indians of a network of roads near the Galwan River valley in order to create transport parity with a more developed road infrastructure on the Chinese side, which, in turn, is opposed by Beijing.
Experts agree that a hot conflict is not beneficial to either side of the border dispute and it all ultimately comes down to the wisdom of the Indian leadership, which the American Varangians can tempt with all sorts of goodies.
As for Russia, China and India are its strategic partners and it is in the interests of our country to normalize relations between the two conflicting parties.
English version :: Read in English: Border brawl between India and China. Whose kung fu is better?