New Delhi must go for a massive ramp-up in the infrastructure sector along the LAC to make Beijing realise that territorial integrity is its top priority
China’s new Land Border Law claims to attract coordinated attention to the border regions to achieve socio-economic prosperity and infrastructural boom and to strengthen its border security and territorial sovereignty. This being the projected reality seems to have received wider media coverage. But, knowing China’s habitual double-dealing, it becomes imperative for New Delhi to exercise a greater degree of circumspection in understanding the sub-currents of the law and to act pre-emptively to minimise possible risk to India’s territorial integrity that the law may invite in the long run.
The Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC) approved on 23 October 2021 the Land Border Law which is reported to be enforced on 1 January 2022. The law calls the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as ‘sacred and inviolable’ and clarifies the legal and military concentration on the border regions in terms of intensification of patrolling, infrastructural and deep border survey and surveillance activities.
The Global Times reports that the law ensures cooperation from the citizens and organisations and restricts them not to build permanent structures or fly drones and stipulates the use of weapons against the infiltrators and trespassers. The State Council Information Office of China (SCIOC), as reported in The Global Times, expressed in 2019 the complexity involved in securing its vast land and maritime border comprising more than 22,000 km of border land and a coastline of 18,000 km.
To make this overwhelmingly large and extensive borderline guarded and secured, the law is reported to be a much-needed addition to Beijing’s border-related legal arrangement. This sounds almost well and fine, but what needs to be seen is its bearing on India as there exists ambiguity in India-China border demarcation. China has always demonstrated its bullying behaviour along the LAC (Line of Actual Control) stretching over 3,488 km.
The Doklam crisis, Galwan Valley standoff, and the ongoing Chinese activities along the border areas of Arunachal Pradesh are some of the tendencies that worry India and invite defensive action from its end. On top of it, the new Land Border Law generates urgency for India to seriously rethink expediting its border infrastructure and going headlong into quick structuring of plans to build formidable frontier highways and other defence-related installations in order to stand shoulder to shoulder with China. New Delhi needs to revitalise significantly its geostrategic nodes along the LAC to strengthen its position which will act as a major deterrent to the Dragon’s expansionist proclivities.
This would give Beijing the much-needed message to recoil to its respective territory and refrain from interventionist and intrusive strategy of salami slicing and cabbage cutting (clandestine and incremental occupation of the land of the neighbouring nations’ territory without resorting to the visible and violent methods of annexation) as exercised along LAC, Bhutan, Nepal, South China Sea, Paracel Islands, Senkaku Islands, median line in the Taiwan Strait, Indo-Pacific regions, etc.
These tiny transgressions promise a profitable dividend to China as it gradually claims those territories acquired as its own or declares them disputed if much hue and cry is done. Beijing’s every move, both covert and overt, must be keenly observed; and this move in legislating a law in the pretext of protecting its border needs deep reading.
Knowing its sustained attempt to cause border conflicts along the LAC, this law may have much that needs critical reading than brushing aside as mere domestic legal commitment to ensure border safety. This piece of legislation deals with the international border, and therefore embodies policies that may initiate staggering developments along the border. The critical part of it is that the habitual transgressor complains of transgression and legislates a law to check the acts of transgression! This policy paradox and the development of a complex that its borders require protection and hence the law, sound very ominous.
Doklam standoff
Beijing has never given New Delhi conflict-free LAC. The latter ignored for a long time the former’s malice under the pseudo and synthetic Sino-India friendship. When New Delhi realised the danger from its eastern sector and geared up its infrastructure along the border, it had to face the Doklam standoff. The face-off in the Doklam plateau, Bhutan, began on 16 June 2017 with Beijing starting construction of a motorable road to develop connectivity between Doklam and Chumbi valley in Tibet transgressing the Indo-Bhutan bilateral agreement of 1949 and 2007 and the India-China agreement of 2012. The said agreements then arrived at a consensus of maintaining status quo at the crucial trijunction.
Beijing knows the importance of the Siliguri corridor for India with length and width of 60 and 22 km respectively and the only land link to India’s Northeastern states such as Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim and Tripura. It invests its diplomatic, military and infrastructural might to keep the tension growing in the region and to offer India some form of sustained restlessness. This mindset arranges a series of hurdles for India to distract it from its aspiration towards becoming a major economic and diplomatic force in South Asia.
China’s Doklam claim is dubiously based on the Anglo-Chinese Convention of 1890. On 14 October 2021 Beijing and Thimphu signed an MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) on Three-Step Roadmap to expedite the boundary talk. The Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs of China, Wu Jianghao, and the Foreign Minister of Bhutan, Lyonpo Tandi Dorji, met virtually in a video conferencing and mutually agreed to cooperate in terms of facilitating border talks. But what remains to be seen is that of the pragmatic aspects of the talk. Will this virtual generosity and claims of cooperation really lead to some form of positive and result-oriented conclusion? Or, is this just showcasing to give the international community the impression of China’s change of heart and positive intent? This comes just before the introduction of the new Land Border Law and may embody China’s cunning.
Ladakh
The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) sets its land-grabbing expedition in the Ladakh region too by intruding into India’s territory and ramping up the defence infrastructure. In June 2020 the face-off between PLA and Indian military led to a violent brawl in the Galwan Valley which killed 20 Indian soldiers. The actual casualty on the Chinese side still remains unknown. This and a host of other successive disputes indicate Beijing’s doggedness towards prolonging border conflict with India and distracting India from its preparedness towards boosting its economy crippled by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Around Pangong Lake, both militaries have agreed to pull back, but in other areas such as Hot Springs, Gogra Post and the Depsang Plains in Ladakh, Beijing indulges in territorial ambiguities in the absence of a well-defined hard boundary and claims its own and desires to leverage on its critical geo-strategic exceptionality. The prime geostrategic Aksai Chin plateau which connects Xinjiang Province with western Tibet still remains in China’s control.
Pakistan has given the Shaksgam Valley or the Trans Karakoram Tract of Hunza-Gilgit region of Pak-occupied Kashmir to China and has given it the total access to operationalise its China-Pakistan economic corridor there. The new Land Border Law may be an addition to Beijing’s armoury of extending conflict with India. If this law expedites Beijing military infrastructural projects along the LAC, it may commit a series of violations as the India-China border has not been respected seriously by it.
Arunachal Pradesh
Chinese intransigence over Arunachal Pradesh is a cause of concern as well. Arunachal Pradesh, being a frontier state of India having significant geostrategic space, shares an international border with Myanmar (520 km), China (1,080 km) and Bhutan (217 km). Its untapped natural resources and geo-economic potentiality attract China and the latter makes weird and unfounded claims to occupy it.
Beijing adopts the salami-slicing method wherever possible to gradually occupy the land as there are many vast stretches along the McMahon Line which remain largely uninhabited. The unoccupied lands are the easy grab for China. Beijing’s new Land Border Law with its vigour for redefining its territory with Arunachal Pradesh may create a fresh set of troubles for India by demanding its claim over it. A frontier highway seems to be the immediate infrastructural need in the region that New Delhi must adopt to tackle effectively the ensuing consequences of the nascent border law. It will facilitate faster movement of troops if China resorts to military confrontation.
China cares least about the fragile ecology in the Himalayan region and intervenes technologically to build infrastructure. India has to undertake competitive infrastructural projects in Arunachal Pradesh, resorting to due restraint wherever possible to safeguard ecology. China has already built road and bullet train infrastructure to Nyingchi, a town that is extremely close to the border of Arunachal Pradesh and is taking a major initiative to develop border infrastructure. The rail connectivity project to Tawang undertaken by India seems to have gone slow owing to various local, logistic, ecological and economic factors. New Delhi must revitalise its infrastructural project to expedite growth in the region and safeguard the territorial sovereignty of India, especially along the LAC, by intensifying security arrangements in order to check Beijing’s arbitrariness and hegemonic character.
The current government at the Centre seems to have shown the right mindset to give a proper counter to China, but what more needs to be done is that of a massive ramp-up in the infrastructure sector along the LAC to make Beijing realise India’s territorial integrity is its top priority. The new Land Border Law may embody surprises for India, but New Delhi must express its preparedness to offer proper opposition to any misadventure resorted to. Moreover, China is an expansionist power. This propensity is well-illustrated in Mao Zedong’s imagination of modern China considering Tibet being its right-hand palm and Ladakh, Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan and NEFA (Arunachal Pradesh) are its five fingers.
These border disputes explain Beijing’s resolve to fulfil Mao’s territorial imagination. The new Land Border Law may never go off track and settle border issues to restore peace along the LAC. It may be very much on track to intensify the border controversy until Mao’s dream is realised.
Dr Jajati K Pattnaik is an Associate Professor in the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi; Dr Chandan K Panda is an Assistant Professor at Rajiv Gandhi University, Itanagar, Arunachal Pradesh. Views expressed are personal.