Jabin T Jacob writes: Flare-up at Tawang marks shortcomings of India’s China diplomacy

The following year in September, the Chinese intruded at Chumar, also in Ladakh, in the middle of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s first state visit to India. This was in keeping with a reasonably long tradition of Chinese transgressions during important visits but it was also notable for confronting Indian troops in an area where they enjoyed a degree of military advantage.

In 2017, China provoked India with infrastructure development in a third country — in Bhutan’s Doklam territory. This was a case of China trying to browbeat an Indian treaty ally. Finally, in 2020, the Chinese PLA took advantage of Covid-19 and a lack of Indian military alertness to transgress across multiple locations on the LAC in eastern Ladakh.

Each time, however, and despite the great fount of expertise on China within its four walls, the Indian government has refused to publicly connect the dots between these transgressions and to educate and inform the Indian public about China. Surely, the clashes and casualties of Galwan were only a matter of time given the trajectory of LAC transgressions and clashes over the past decade and more?

There were clues from the diplomatic realm as well. The 2005 Agreement on the Political Parameters and Guiding Principles between the two countries was a landmark treaty on the boundary dispute, which seemed to set explicit bookends and benchmarks for the eventual resolution of the boundary dispute. But the very next year, then Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi declared that the status of Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh was far from settled, explicitly contradicting the principles outlined in the 2005 treaty.

The question arises: What was the purpose of India’s negotiations with China? If negotiations were a strategy for buying time, the question that follows is of what buying time was for exactly.

Clearly, China has only increased the economic gap between itself and India and in the intervening years, not only built up more infrastructure in its border provinces but also tried to integrate these regions much more closely with neighbouring economies such as Pakistan and Nepal through grand projects such as the Belt and Road Initiative and pressuring Thimphu to open formal diplomatic ties with Beijing.

If it is pointed out that India used the interregnum to build up better infrastructure of its own along the LAC, the question can still be asked about what use such buildup was if China was able to surprise Indian planners with the transgressions of 2020. It could be argued further that the subsequent resolution achieved over several rounds of military-to-military talks between the two sides, which appear to institutionalise a system of “buffer zones” — even if these lie across both sides of the LAC — actually undermine the advantages of India’s infrastructure build-up more than they do China’s build-up.

While the Indian action on the Kailash range on the LAC in August 2020 has been interpreted as a case of proactiveness following the Galwan clashes and the Chinese refusal to negotiate withdrawal, the heights captured were vacated as soon as the Chinese agreed to the disengagement at Pangong Tso in February the following year even as other points of friction remained.

It could, therefore, be argued that the Chinese are also setting the pace to a large extent on the resolution of ongoing tensions at the LAC. Also, unsurprising from the political perspective is the fact that the Indian government remains coy about the exact facts of the latest incident.

On the one hand, army sources have claimed to journalists that “injuries on the Chinese side were much higher than on the Indian side” and the BJP’s president of its Arunachal Pradesh unit, Tapir Gao, stated that “six Indian soldiers severely injured [and] flown to Guwahati”. On the other hand, the official readout states that the “face-off led to minor injuries to few personnel from both sides” while Defence Minister Rajnath Singh’s statement in Parliament expressly stated that “no Indian soldier had been killed or had been seriously wounded”.

The Defence Minister’s references to the army’s “great bravery” might be entirely accurate but the gaps and contradictions in the narrative speak to a China policy run on the fly and a desire to keep the public as little informed as possible on a matter of national interest.

Meanwhile, the Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman’s refusal to entertain demands from Members of Parliament for clarifications of the Defence Minister on the ground that the issue is “sensitive” might follow precedent but is precisely the kind of approach that allows the general public to ignore the looming China challenge before the country, the Indian military to escape accountability for Galwan, and India from being seen as a credible challenger to China by other countries.

The writer is Associate Professor at the Department of International Relations and Governance Studies, Shiv Nadar University, Delhi NCR