By Group Captain Praveer Purohit (retd)

In the last three months, there has been an uptick in moves towards improving the state of India-China relations. In October last year, the Indian External Affairs Minister (EAM) announced that as on October 21, the two sides completed the ‘disengagement’ at the friction points in Depsang and Demchok in East Ladakh. This paved the way for a meeting between the Indian PM and Chinese President on October 23 on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit in Kazan. The G20 summit held in November in Brazil was utilised by the Indian EAM to hold discussions with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. The Indian defence minister met his Chinese counterpart Dong Jun at the ASEAN Defence Ministers (ADMM+) meeting in Vientiane on November 20, 2024. On 26 and 27 January this year, the Indian Foreign Secretary visited Beijing and met the Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Sun Weidong. According to the official statement by the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), they “reviewed the state of India-China bilateral relations comprehensively and agreed to take certain people-centric steps to stabilize and rebuild ties.” As steps towards this the two sides agreed on the resumption of the Kailash Mansarovar Yatra in the summer of 2025, initiate measures to encourage and enable people-to-people exchanges, including media and think-tank interactions, as well as discuss the provision of hydrological data. ‘In-principle’, it was also agreed to resume direct air connectivity between India and China.

On the face of it, these developments appear to give an impression of the relationship inching towards normalcy. However, just a few days prior to the Foreign Secretary’s visit to Beijing, the Indian Army Chief in his customary pre-Army Day interaction with the media stated that “a certain degree of standoff” persisted in East Ladakh. It is pertinent to note that the Chinese military deployment in Tibet/Aksai Chin area bordering Ladakh has not reduced. It has created a “string of heliports” opposite East Ladakh giving them the capability to rapidly induct troops and warfighting equipment. Additionally, China continues its hectic pace of improving and adding to the road connectivity in areas bordering India. An analyst whose X (formerly Twitter) handle is @NatureDesai has painstakingly analysed satellite imagery indicating Chinese developments.

Way back in 1963, Pakistan illegally ceded 5180 square km of Indian territory in the Shaksgam Valley to China. In September last year, China successfully completed building a new road into the Shaksgam valley from the East. Located close to the Siachen Glacier and the Depsang plains, the road is just 48 km from the northern part of the Siachen Glacier. The implications of this road are many. It can potentially connect the G219 highway in China-occupied Aksai Chin to Pak-occupied Gilgit-Baltistan as an alternative to the Kashgar-Khunjerab-Gilgit road. The road’s proximity to Siachen can create an additional pressure point for India. By constructing three major roads in the Shaksgam valley, China has strengthened its claims, notwithstanding Indian protests.

Opposite Arunachal Pradesh, too, the Chinese have been constructing roads and the so-called “well-off villages” or Xiaokang. These villages are part of China’s strategic infrastructure development initiative along the LAC with India to reinforce their sovereignty in areas where India does not necessarily agree with Chinese territorial claims. The xiaokangs also serve as dual-purpose villages and house Chinese army troops. China has now established road connectivity to upper Namka-Chu (the scene of a violent battle in the 1962 war) via the Le-Thagla- Namka-Chu Road. Chinese military movement on this road avoids coming under Indian observation from Khinzemane and Hatungla. The new road also enables rapid military build-up to threaten Indian defences in the Tawang sector.

In late December 2024, China formed two new counties, namely He’an County and Hekang County, within Hotan prefecture. Hongliu town, the administrative capital of He’an, is located barely five kilometres from the Indian claim line in Aksai Chin and has turned into a Lithium mining hub. The Chinese act of creating a county whose jurisdiction encompasses Indian territory is an attempt to solidify its territorial claims and rile India.

Released in July last year, the Finance Ministry’s Economic Survey 2023-24, favoured inviting Chinese capital and integrating into Chinese-led international value chains. The report and subsequent diplomatic interactions including at the head-of-govt level have led some Chinese scholars to believe that it is India’s weakness that has forced it to adopt a conciliatory stand. In an attempt to create a wedge between India and the US, the Chinese have also been peddling the fake narrative that India finds the US “unreliable”.

So even as Chinese officials talk about moving India-China relations along a “sound and stable track”, China’s actions do not inspire confidence. China has either ignored or treated with disdain our protests on the creation of counties in India-claimed territory and renaming of places in Arunachal Pradesh. The statements by both MEA and Chinese Foreign Ministry are silent on the issue of stapled visas, indicating the Chinese are unrelenting. Having suffered multiple times by ‘trusting’ China, there is neither a need nor any justification to trust it. The disengagement in East Ladakh could be a tactical pause for the Chinese. Meanwhile, our guardrails against China have to be strengthened further. The Chinese AI app DeepSeek R1 stores user data on servers located in China, as per its privacy policy. The US Navy has alerted its personnel against using it. The app is unavailable in Italy due to data security concerns. It is, therefore, surprising that India has still not banned it despite being a victim of Chinese cyber espionage for a long time. Undoubtedly, DeepSake R1 is one of the many weapons in China’s cognitive warfare against countries like India. We must, therefore, act before it’s too late. India needs to remain firm and unyielding on core strategic issues (including economic), while on other peripheral ones, it should be based on equal reciprocity. The mantra should be ‘Talk, do not trust, constantly verify and build strength’.

The author is a former IAF officer who writes on defence matters, international relations and geopolitics, with a focus on China.

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