High up in the Himalayan mountains.
This is where two major
countries meet: China and India.
Between them: The longest
disputed land border in the world.
A border that has even
seen violent clashes.
We’ll track their relationship from these snowy peaks to the vast
Indian Ocean — to unravel where these two giants are heading, what
that means for the region, and what this holiday island paradise has
to do with it.
China and India are two powerhouses in Asia.
One: A democracy.
The other: An authoritarian state.
They have the second and fifth biggest economies in the world.
Both possess nuclear arsenals.
Combined, almost three billion people live in these two countries.
That’s more than a third of the world’s entire population.
So how these two nations perceive each other is pretty important.
Lately, it’s more about rivalry than cooperation.
I would even say that the India and China relationship in the recent
years has gone from bad to even worse.
Economic ties remain, trade ties remain, but the diplomatic ties
have cooled down and the military ties, security ties have become
very tense and very vexed between India and China.
But that wasn’t always the case.
In the past, they actually sought close ties.
After the communist government took control in China in 1949, and India
became independent from British colonial rule in 1947, initially
the ties were very strong.
Sushant Singh is an expert on Indian national security.
He is a lecturer at Yale University in the U.S. and a senior fellow at
the Centre for Policy Research in India.
Both the countries thought that they could work together and
would become, you know, this new axis around which Asia could emerge
as a powerful entity in global relations.
But that didn't happen.
So what went wrong?
One answer can be found here:
High up in the Himalayan mountains.
This is a hostile environment,
a cold desert dominated by
rock and ice.
Let's go to the Galwan Valley.
This is where Indian and Chinese
soldiers guard a disputed border.
In 2020, they clashed right here
at a bend of the icy Galwan River.
Reports say at least 20 Indian
and four Chinese soldiers died
in hand-to-hand combat.
Many more could have been killed that day had the two sides not
agreed years ago on a weapon-free zone, which remains in place
around the border.
There’s never been a real explanation for what happened.
Since then, both sides have deployed massive amounts of troops.
And after more than 20 rounds of talks, there’s still
no real resolution.
The stalemate continues, even four years later.
Here’s the national spokesperson for India’s ruling party at
the Munich Security Conference in Germany in early 2024.
Despite all the mischievous activities at the border, or
attempts at intrusion of the border, India remains strong,
and India knows how to be fully capable to deal with the dragon.
And while China's top diplomat didn't mention the tensions with
India directly, he reinforced
China's official line on this kind of issue:
With a vast territory and over a dozen neighboring countries,
China faces complex disputes left from history.
On that, China has stayed committed to managing differences through
consultation and resolving disputes through dialogue.
The problem: the two countries
can't agree on where exactly
the border runs.
There are three main disputed
areas: The first one is part of
Kashmir, a region contested
by China, India and Pakistan.
This area is called Aksai Chin.
It’s controlled by
China, but claimed by India.
Then there is the Indian state
of Arunachal Pradesh — which China
claims in its entirety,
calling it South Tibet.
And, in the middle, there are
other, smaller, flashpoints too.
So mapping this area is difficult — and sensitive.
Last year, China published a new ‘standard map' showing
these territories as its own, sparking fury in India and
again turning the conflict up a notch.
The nationalistic emotion has
become stronger and stronger, and
both governments cannot
afford to show weakness in terms
of border disputes.
This is Shitao Li, head of DW’s Chinese service based
in Bonn, Germany.
He has covered India-China relations for many years.
And he says the border conflict is at the heart of the rivalry.
No government will say that,
OK, wait, let's make a compromise,
let's give some
land to the other side.
Let's make peace.
It will not happen, and that’s more
and more less likely I would say.
So, there's an unsolvable
problem and the only thing is both
governments try to
keep the status quo.
Part of the problem can be traced back to colonial times.
British maps from the 19th and early 20th century show different
versions of where the border runs.
Or no clear border at all — like this British map from 1947,
the year India became independent.
Tibet plays a role here too.
Back then, Tibet was a buffer separating India from China.
It was de facto independent — as shown in many maps from the first
half of the 20th century.
But that changed after China took full control of Tibet in the 1950s.
In 1959, the Tibetan uprising started. It was quickly crushed
by Chinese soldiers.
And Tibet's spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, fled to India,
angering China.
Shortly after that, skirmishes started to erupt between
India and China.
All that made the prospect of agreeing on a common border more
difficult — and since then, it’s never become a reality.
So what is shown on most maps today is in many areas just a loose
demarcation line called the Line of
Actual Control, or LAC for short.
The two sides can’t agree on where
exactly this boundary runs, or how
long it is.
Hotspots along the disputed border are guarded by tens of thousands of
troops on each side.
That’s why the two countries have been busy building roads, bridges
and tunnels along the LAC.
Infrastructure is key to getting soldiers into
the mountains quickly.
One recent example here at the Sela Pass.
India has just inaugurated a major tunnel here.
This will enable the Indian army to move its troops to the LAC faster
no matter the weather.
On the Chinese side, flatter terrain makes
building roads easier.
And therefore, India is only playing a catch-up with China.
And the Indian infrastructure, even today, remains much lesser than
that of China.
That's the case on many levels.
They are not equal in any way.
China is a much bigger economy, much bigger military power, much
bigger technological power.
India is heavily import dependent on China.
There is another reason why India is afraid of
Chinese dominance: water.
The rivers originating in the Himalayas supply freshwater to
around 1.3 billion people.
Water scarcity is already a great concern in South Asia.
And climate change will only make this problem worse.
China has built several dams in the region, transforming the
landscape.
The potential for hydropower is immense.
Chinese engineers have even proposed building the world's
largest hydropower plant at this river bend.
Plans like these leave many Indians fearing China could end up in
control of the flow of its vital rivers.
So, this is a conflict over land, over resources, over influence.
Let's move from the mountains to another region where this conflict
is palpable: The Indian Ocean.
It’s a vast area, stretching for more than 10,000 kilometers from
the tip of Africa to Australia.
Economically, militarily, strategically, this is one of
the most important regions in the world.
It’s a crucial trade route for China, the world’s number one
exporter of goods.
That's the primary reason the Indian Ocean is extremely
important to China.
The second reason the Indian Ocean is important to China is because it
wants to project power.
China’s interest in the region goes back well over a decade and it
has substantially increased its investments there.
China has stakes in over 20 ports in the Indian Ocean Region.
Some of them even have the potential for naval use.
Let’s take the port of Djibouti for example.
This is what it looked like in May 2015.
And after huge Chinese investment, here’s how it looks today.
China now has not only a port situated on one of the busiest
shipping lanes in the world, but also a military base here.
And by the way: all that only a couple of miles away from the
U.S. base also located in the country.
Now if you take this port in Djibouti along with other ports
that have a strong Chinese presence, like these ones in Sri Lanka,
Myanmar and Pakistan — India starts to look surrounded.
This is part of what some analysts call China’s ‘String of Pearls’
strategy — and it has India worried.
Let me first say, pearls look benign unless you ask the oysters.
From an Indian point of view, I would say it is very reasonable for
us to actually prepare
for a far
greater Chinese presence than we
have seen before.
That’s why in recent years, India has started building up
its capacities in the Indian Ocean.
Although the country is still far behind other big players, India is
investing: its naval defense budget is increasing every year.
India is focusing on some key
areas: the Malacca, Lombok, and
Sunda Straits in the Indian Ocean.
These are the bottlenecks
connecting the South China Sea and
the Indian Ocean.
Chinese warships have to pass through these straits to enter
the Indian Ocean — and India wants to make sure it can, at least,
monitor these passages.
For example here — India has a naval air station at the southern
end of the Nicobar Islands, just 450 km from the Malacca Strait.
Speaking of islands, this is where the Maldives come into play.
Their position in the middle of the Indian Ocean makes
these small islands quite important strategically.
They are not only a dream destination for wealthy tourists.
They’re also a hub for trade and infrastructure — and for security.
For a long time, the leaders of the Maldives were
sympathetic towards India.
But more recently, loyalties have shifted.
In last year’s election, pro-China candidate Mohamad Muizzu won after
campaigning with the slogan ‘India out.’ This year, he's already
visited Chinese President Xi Jinping — and ordered Indian troops
to leave the Maldives.
There's a narrative that India should be
more, you know, more dominant in the Indian Ocean region,
more aggressive in the Indian Ocean region.
I think India is constrained by a lack of resources and what it can
do within the Indian Ocean region.
And India’s up against China, which has the biggest navy in the world,
even surpassing the US.
One of India’s strategies: Forming alliances with powerful partners.
India is a member of the so-called Quad, a diplomatic,
security-focused partnership with the U.S., Australia and Japan.
And India’s deepening relationship with the U.S. has angered China.
The last thing Beijing would
like to see is India become 100%
United States aligned.
That would be for China the worst
case because if you look around
China, there are already many
United States allies around it like
South Korea, Japan, Philippines and now even Vietnam also goes a little
bit in that direction.
So if India goes completely to the Western side, that will be for
China very, very bad.
But India is also careful to maintain links with China
despite tensions.
The two countries are members of the same groups aimed at countering
Western dominance — the BRICS and the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization.
That strategy — trying to keep up very different alliances — is
a tough balancing act.
But for India, it is a way of keeping its options open,
especially with such a dominant neighbor.
Recently, China’s economy has slowed down — while
India’s is growing.
It’s attracting foreign investment and gaining confidence.
China being China is a reality.
But equal reality: India is a rising power.
Still, India is a long way off catching up with China.
It is generally accepted in the global business community that
the next China is still China.
Back to our hotspots: An unresolved
border dispute and a battle for influence in the Indian Ocean.
Where is this rivalry heading?
In the worst case, this could escalate.
Could there even be potential for war?
I don't see this would happen
because first of all, those two
countries are pretty much
aware that they both have nuclear
weapons, they are nuclear powers.
So, both sides cannot afford to
open a war with some consequence
you cannot calculate.
They both know this problem could
not be solved and they both need
each other in some other
area, economically, politically.
So the stalemate continues.
Neither side wants to risk a bigger escalation and neither
can back down.
If they find a way to settle their differences high up in
the Himalayas and in the Indian Ocean, the neighbors could
be powerful partners.
But for now, China and India look set to continue competing for
influence and status — two giants on thin ice.