selvan33
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Chinas land grab in India : Japanese Media
Stoking tensions with Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines over islands in the South and East China seas has not prevented an increasingly assertive China from opening yet another front by staging a military incursion across the disputed, forbidding Himalayan frontier.
On the night of April 15, a Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) platoon stealthily intruded near the China-India-Pakistan tri-junction, established a camp 19 kilometers inside Indian-controlled territory, and presented Indias government with the potential loss of a strategically vital, 750-square-km, high-altitude plateau.
A stunned India, already reeling under a crippling domestic political crisis, has groped for an effective response to Chinas land grab the largest and most strategic real estate China has seized since it began pursuing a more muscular policy toward its neighbors. Whether China intends to stay put by building permanent structures for its troops on the plateaus icy heights, or plans to withdraw after having extracted humiliating military concessions from India, remains an open and in some ways a moot question.
The fact is that, with its peaceful rise giving way to an increasingly sharp-elbowed approach to its neighbors, China has broadened its core interests which brook no compromise and territorial claims, while showing a growing readiness to take risks to achieve its goals.
For example, China has not only escalated its challenge to Japans decades-old control of the Senkaku (Diaoyu) Islands, but is also facing off against the Philippines since taking effective control of Scarborough Shoal last year.
What makes the Himalayan incursion a powerful symbol of Chinas aggressive new stance in Asia is that its intruding troops have set up camp in an area that extends beyond the line of actual control (LAC) that China itself unilaterally drew when it defeated India in the 1962 Chinese-initiated border war. While Chinas navy and a part of its air force focus on supporting revanchist territorial and maritime claims in the South and East China seas, its army has been active in the mountainous borderlands with India, trying to alter the LAC bit by bit.
One of the novel methods that the PLA has employed is to bring ethnic Han pastoralists to the valleys along the LAC and give them cover to range across it, in the process driving Indian herdsmen from their traditional pasturelands.
But the latest crisis was sparked by Chinas use of direct military means in a strategic border area close to Karakoram Pass, which links China to India.
Because the LAC has not been mutually clarified China reneged on a 2001 promise to exchange maps with India China claims that PLA troops are merely camping on Chinese land. Yet, in a replay of its old strategy of furtively encroaching on disputed land and then presenting itself as the conciliator, China now counsels patience and negotiations to help resolve the latest issue.
China is clearly seeking to exploit Indias political disarray to alter the reality on the ground. A paralyzed and rudderless Indian government initially blacked out reporting on the incursion, lest it come under public pressure to mount a robust response. Its first public statement came only after China issued a bland denial of the intrusion in response to Indian media reports quoting army sources.
To add to Indias woes, Salman Khurshid, the countrys bungling foreign minister, initially made light of the deepest Chinese incursion in more than a quarter-century. The garrulous minister called the intrusion just one little spot of acne on the otherwise beautiful face of the bilateral relationship a mere blemish that could be treated with an ointment.
Those inept comments fatally undercut the governments summoning of the Chinese ambassador to demand a return to the status quo ante.
With Prime Minister Manmohan Singhs corruption-tainted government tottering on the brink of collapse, there has been no official explanation of how India was caught napping in a militarily critical area where, in the recent past, China had made repeated attempts to encroach on Indian land. In fact, the government inexplicably replaced regular army troops with border police in 2010 to patrol the mountain-ringed plateau into which the PLA has now intruded.
Known as Depsang, the plateau lies astride an ancient silk route connecting Yarkand in Xinjiang to Indias Ladakh region through the Karakoram Pass.
India, with a military staging post and airstrip just south of the Karakoram Pass, has the capacity to cut off the highway linking China with its all-weather ally, Pakistan.
The PLA intrusion, by threatening that Indian base, may have been intended to foreclose Indias ability to choke off supplies to Chinese troops and workers in Pakistans Gilgit-Baltistan region, where China has expanded its military footprint and strategic projects. To guard those projects, several thousand Chinese troops reportedly have been deployed in the rebellious, predominantly Shiite region, which is closed to the outside world.
For India, the Chinese incursion also threatens its access to the 6,300-meter-high Siachen Glacier, to the west of Depsang. Pakistan claims the Indian-controlled glacier, which, strategically wedged between the Pakistani- and Chinese-held parts of Kashmir, served as the worlds highest and coldest battleground (and one of the bloodiest) from the mid-1980s until a cease-fire took effect in 2003.
Indias nonmilitary options to force a Chinese withdrawal from Depsang range from diplomatic (suspension of all official visits or reconsideration of its recognition of Tibet as part of China) to economic (an informal boycott of Chinese goods, just as China has hurt Japan through a nonofficial boycott of Japanese-made products).
A possible military response could involve the Indian army establishing a camp of its own on Chinese territory elsewhere that Chinas leaders regard as highly strategic.
Before it can exercise any option credibly, India needs a stable government. Until then, China will continue to press its claims by whatever means fair or foul it deems advantageous.
China
Stoking tensions with Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines over islands in the South and East China seas has not prevented an increasingly assertive China from opening yet another front by staging a military incursion across the disputed, forbidding Himalayan frontier.
On the night of April 15, a Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) platoon stealthily intruded near the China-India-Pakistan tri-junction, established a camp 19 kilometers inside Indian-controlled territory, and presented Indias government with the potential loss of a strategically vital, 750-square-km, high-altitude plateau.
A stunned India, already reeling under a crippling domestic political crisis, has groped for an effective response to Chinas land grab the largest and most strategic real estate China has seized since it began pursuing a more muscular policy toward its neighbors. Whether China intends to stay put by building permanent structures for its troops on the plateaus icy heights, or plans to withdraw after having extracted humiliating military concessions from India, remains an open and in some ways a moot question.
The fact is that, with its peaceful rise giving way to an increasingly sharp-elbowed approach to its neighbors, China has broadened its core interests which brook no compromise and territorial claims, while showing a growing readiness to take risks to achieve its goals.
For example, China has not only escalated its challenge to Japans decades-old control of the Senkaku (Diaoyu) Islands, but is also facing off against the Philippines since taking effective control of Scarborough Shoal last year.
What makes the Himalayan incursion a powerful symbol of Chinas aggressive new stance in Asia is that its intruding troops have set up camp in an area that extends beyond the line of actual control (LAC) that China itself unilaterally drew when it defeated India in the 1962 Chinese-initiated border war. While Chinas navy and a part of its air force focus on supporting revanchist territorial and maritime claims in the South and East China seas, its army has been active in the mountainous borderlands with India, trying to alter the LAC bit by bit.
One of the novel methods that the PLA has employed is to bring ethnic Han pastoralists to the valleys along the LAC and give them cover to range across it, in the process driving Indian herdsmen from their traditional pasturelands.
But the latest crisis was sparked by Chinas use of direct military means in a strategic border area close to Karakoram Pass, which links China to India.
Because the LAC has not been mutually clarified China reneged on a 2001 promise to exchange maps with India China claims that PLA troops are merely camping on Chinese land. Yet, in a replay of its old strategy of furtively encroaching on disputed land and then presenting itself as the conciliator, China now counsels patience and negotiations to help resolve the latest issue.
China is clearly seeking to exploit Indias political disarray to alter the reality on the ground. A paralyzed and rudderless Indian government initially blacked out reporting on the incursion, lest it come under public pressure to mount a robust response. Its first public statement came only after China issued a bland denial of the intrusion in response to Indian media reports quoting army sources.
To add to Indias woes, Salman Khurshid, the countrys bungling foreign minister, initially made light of the deepest Chinese incursion in more than a quarter-century. The garrulous minister called the intrusion just one little spot of acne on the otherwise beautiful face of the bilateral relationship a mere blemish that could be treated with an ointment.
Those inept comments fatally undercut the governments summoning of the Chinese ambassador to demand a return to the status quo ante.
With Prime Minister Manmohan Singhs corruption-tainted government tottering on the brink of collapse, there has been no official explanation of how India was caught napping in a militarily critical area where, in the recent past, China had made repeated attempts to encroach on Indian land. In fact, the government inexplicably replaced regular army troops with border police in 2010 to patrol the mountain-ringed plateau into which the PLA has now intruded.
Known as Depsang, the plateau lies astride an ancient silk route connecting Yarkand in Xinjiang to Indias Ladakh region through the Karakoram Pass.
India, with a military staging post and airstrip just south of the Karakoram Pass, has the capacity to cut off the highway linking China with its all-weather ally, Pakistan.
The PLA intrusion, by threatening that Indian base, may have been intended to foreclose Indias ability to choke off supplies to Chinese troops and workers in Pakistans Gilgit-Baltistan region, where China has expanded its military footprint and strategic projects. To guard those projects, several thousand Chinese troops reportedly have been deployed in the rebellious, predominantly Shiite region, which is closed to the outside world.
For India, the Chinese incursion also threatens its access to the 6,300-meter-high Siachen Glacier, to the west of Depsang. Pakistan claims the Indian-controlled glacier, which, strategically wedged between the Pakistani- and Chinese-held parts of Kashmir, served as the worlds highest and coldest battleground (and one of the bloodiest) from the mid-1980s until a cease-fire took effect in 2003.
Indias nonmilitary options to force a Chinese withdrawal from Depsang range from diplomatic (suspension of all official visits or reconsideration of its recognition of Tibet as part of China) to economic (an informal boycott of Chinese goods, just as China has hurt Japan through a nonofficial boycott of Japanese-made products).
A possible military response could involve the Indian army establishing a camp of its own on Chinese territory elsewhere that Chinas leaders regard as highly strategic.
Before it can exercise any option credibly, India needs a stable government. Until then, China will continue to press its claims by whatever means fair or foul it deems advantageous.
China
