The Galwan clash of June 15-16, 2020 marked a watershed in India-China ties, which were already tense after the Chinese in April intruded into several places in Eastern Ladakh that are claimed by India. The deaths of 20 soldiers in Galwan was the first time Indian Army personnel were killed on the Line of Actual Control after October 1975, when four Assam Rifles men died in a Chinese ambush at Tulung La in Arunachal Pradesh. The Galwan clash The People's Liberation Army had pitched tents and an observation post on India's side of the LAC in Galwan. On the night of June 15, a disagreement over the continued presence of the PLA in that area led to the bloody clash. According to reports at the time, Col B Santosh Babu, commander of 16 Bihar (the majority of the troops at Galwan), who walked up to ask the Chinese to leave, was manhandled by the PLA troops. This led to an escalation and almost five hours of combat involving about 600 soldiers from both sides. An agreement between the two sides forbids the use of firearms. The Chinese used clubs that had nails embedded in them. The Indian side had fibreglass batons. Stones were thrown as well. Col Babu died after falling in the ice-cold Galwan river, apparently after being hit. Several other Indian soldiers also died after they fell into the river or were pushed in. According to some reports, the Chinese may have lost more men than India. The PLA acknowledged four deaths on its side, almost a year later in March 2021. In February 2022, Klaxon, an Australian website, said at least 38 PLA soldiers had drowned. Ten Indian soldiers including two Majors, two Captains and six jawans were detained by the Chinese for almost three days before being handed back after several rounds of negotiations. Relations thereafter Three years on, the military tensions continue. India has more than 50,000 troops in Eastern Ladakh, with deployment at forward posts throughout the year. “.We want the relations [with China] to be good. But the relations can only be good until there is peace and tranquility in the border area. And when there is an agreement, it should be followed,” External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar told a press conference this month. But communication between the two sides had not broken down, he said. On the morning after the clash, Jaishankar had spoken to China's then foreign minister Wang Yi. “Since then”, Jaishankar said, “we have engaged, the military commanders have engaged, our embassies have engaged, I have engaged with my counterpart, and I continue to do that. When Foreign Minister Qin Gang was here in Goa, we had a long discussion. The two of us have to find a way of disengaging, because I don't believe that this present impasse serves China's interests either.” Ground situation In April, Jaishankar had said “the China situation is very fragile and.very challenging”, and “there will be no normal ties with China if border agreements are breached”. On the ground, after 18 rounds of military level talks India and China have disengaged at five so-called “friction points”, a term favoured by the government to describe the unilateral changes made by the Chinese to the LAC in April 2020: Galwan, after the violent clash; north and south banks of Pangong Tso in February 2021; at Patrolling Point (PP) 17 in the Gogra-Hot Springs area in August 2021; and PP15 in September 2022. Demilitarised “buffer zones” have been established at these places. The Chinese intrusions that remain at Depsang Plain and Demchok are being described by both sides as “legacy issues”, meaning they predated the standoff that began in April 2020. However, at Depsang Plain, Indian soldiers had been accessing patrolling points beyond Y nallah or Bottleneck junction until the early months of 2020 when PLA units blocked them. South of Demchok, herdsmen taking sheep to areas within the Indian claim line were stopped by Chinese soldiers in an area called Charding-Nilung Nallah. In a paper submitted this January at the annual DGPs' Conference organised by the Intelligence Bureau (IB), Leh Superintendent of Police P D Nitya noted that India had lost access to 26 out of 65 patrolling points in Eastern Ladakh “due to restrictive or no patrolling” by Indian security forces. Also, Nitya said, the creation of demilitarised buffer zones where disengagement has taken place, leads to “a shift in the border under [Indian] control”, which “ultimately leads to loss of control over these areas by India”. The “PLA has taken advantage of the buffer areas in the de-escalation talks by placing their best of cameras on the highest peaks and [are] monitoring the movement of our forces” at Black top, Helmet top mountains in the Kailash range at Chushul, in Demchok, Kakjung, Gogra hills in Hot springs and Depsang plains near Chip Chap river, she pointed out. Serving and retired Army officers and China experts in the Indian strategic community agree that buffer zones are a loss of territory for India. New Delhi must convey to Beijing that these zones are not a resolution of the problem, but a step to prevent unintended consequences, they say. There is no clarity about how much land has been converted into buffer zones over the disengagement process. China is also creating infrastructure in the region, including two bridges on its side of Pangong lake for easier movement from the north bank to the southern bank, and roads and accommodation. India too has been rapidly developing infrastructure on its side — building, as The Indian Express reported in its edition of June 15, roads, bridges, tunnels, helipads, and accommodation for troops. What lies ahead Despite the continued engagement at several levels, there is a yawning gap between the ways the two sides see the problem. With an attempted midnight raid by the PLA on a forward post in Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh last December adding to the tension, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh in a meeting end-April delivered a sternly worded message to his Chinese counterpart Li Shangfu: that all issues at the LAC need to be resolved in accordance with existing bilateral agreements and commitments, and the violation of these agreements has eroded the entire basis of bilateral relations. Li's message was that the two sides “should take a long-term view, place the border issue in an appropriate position in bilateral relations and promote the transition of the border situation to normalised management” — in other words, the issues at the LAC have been resolved, let's move on. Last week, Jaishankar said, “If there is any expectation that somehow we will normalize while the border situation is not normal, that's not a well-founded expectation.” Meanwhile, bilateral trade has continued apace, with Indian imports from China far outstripping exports.
