The 2,400-kilometer-long Himalayas
include the highest peaks, beautiful landscapes
and some of the most contentious areas in the world.
The mountainous region separates two rising superpowers
that contain over a third of the planet's population.
And there's a big problem.
It's not well-demarcated.
There are not signposts everywhere.
It's not even very well-populated.
Very few people live up there.
It's very tricky to have a sense of who's controlling
what bits of that very long border.
And it's very easy for accidents to happen.
Boundary disagreements
led to a deadly military clash
between the two sides for the first time since 1975.
Adding to the border disputes
is China's Belt and Road Initiative,
a massive infrastructure project aimed
at spreading Beijing's influence all over the globe,
including countries which are at odds with India.
We know that Pakistan is a big part
of China's Belt and Road Initiative.
We know that China has been investing in ports.
They've been investing in roads in Pakistan.
And India and Pakistan
do share a very contentious relationship also.
In response to all of this,
India has increased military on the border,
banned Chinese apps
and improved ties with strategic partners
to try and prevent the spread of Chinese influence.
India believes that China wants a unipolar Asia
that is dominated by China,
where China sets the rules of the road
and where countries acquiesce to Chinese needs and wants.
While a war may be unlikely,
China has made it known it aims
to take back what it sees as its territory.
Xi Jinping has made it his goal to put China
at what he says is the center stage of the world.
And he's also said
he wants China to stand tall in the world.
I think with that sort of rhetoric,
it leaves very little room for China to be able
to maneuver and give concessions.
The late 1940s saw China's Communists overthrow
the ruling government to form what it is today,
the People's Republic of China.
The hero of the revolution was Mao Zedong.
That same decade, India gained independence
from Great Britain
to create their current democratic government.
India was one of the first countries
to recognize the People's Republic of China.
And they did have the first few years where India
and China really did partner with each other
and saw each other as countries
that could move forward together.
There was a little bit of an Asia for Asians, or India-China
brothers' kind of atmosphere or at least friends.
But that didn't last long.
Shortly after establishing the People's Republic of China,
the government exerted its control over Tibet.
During the revolution in which the Chinese Communist Party
took control of the country,
in the late '50s, they then sent troops into Tibet
to take control of that region,
which had been semi-autonomous,
semi-independent up until that point.
As a result of that, the Dalai Lama in 1959
fled to India,
took refuge in India.
The Dalai Lama declared
that his escape would not have been possible
without the loyal support of his people.
Although they'd signed an agreement
meant for both sides
to respect each other's territorial integrity,
India and China began to confront each other on the border.
China became convinced then that not only
was India at fault for accepting the Dalai Lama
and these refugees,
but also accused India of actually colluding with the U.S.
and the U.K. to engineer his escape.
And so by the early '60s,
you really saw a relationship
where there was very little trust and a sense
that the agreement had essentially kind of broken down,
or as far as India was concerned,
was not being respected by Beijing.
The first skirmishes took place
when India discovered China had been building roads
through what it viewed as its territory.
And just a few years later,
the most significant border conflict occurred.
The point at which India and China sort of disputes
really reached their climax was in 1962
when the two sides fought a war over the same territory
that they're fighting over now up in the Himalayas.
Thousands died on both sides,
with China reaching its goal of retaining a large area
of land near northwestern India called Aksai Chin.
Since then, there have been numerous conflicts
along what's now the longest disputed border on the planet.
The areas of contention: the northwestern Himalayan region
known as Ladakh;
the Doklam plateau, a territory
that intersects China, Bhutan and India;
and Arunachal Pradesh,
the eastern territory in India that China claims
is part of southern Tibet.
There have been borders drawn up
by various British cartographers in the past.
There's the Ardagh-Johnson Line marking the border
in Ladakh;
the Macartney-MacDonald Line,
another proposed marking in Ladakh;
and McMahon Line, which marks the border
of Arunachal Pradesh.
We have a definite cartographic vision
about our boundaries based
on what the British has thought about.
It's based on a little bit of geography,
a little bit of ethnicity,
a little bit of history.
So it's very well-defined boundaries,
which has not been recognized by China.
Although some British-drawn lines were agreed upon
by past governments in Tibet,
they were never formally accepted by Beijing.
And this is precisely where the clash is
because there is no second line at the moment
where both agree,
especially in these disputed areas in the north
and the east where the actual border lies.
But there have been many periods
since the 1962 war when there wasn't conflict.
What they did between 1993 and 2012, 2013,
in the two-decade period,
they set up a series of agreements,
which essentially established
that a lot of those territories
that both countries claim
would be both man's land, so to speak.
Neither side would disturb the status quo,
both sides would get to patrol those regions
and both sides would not establish a permanent presence
in the region.
This solution is known
as the Line of Actual Control,
and it's a temporary border
where both sides maintain the status quo.
But even that line's location isn't fully agreed upon.
In 2013, a dispute occurred
in the Demchok valley near Ladakh,
and another in 2015 where Indian soldiers destroyed
a Chinese-built structure
in what they saw as their territory.
Then things really started
to heat up near the Doklam plateau.
There was one boundary crisis in 2017,
where it actually involved the boundary dispute
between China and Bhutan,
which again, it's not quite demarcated,
but there's an understanding about it.
India, as an ally of Bhutan,
got involved to help push China back or get it
to reverse its movement or its unilateral change
of the status quo there.
China brought heavy road-building equipment
into the disputed region and began constructing a road,
one that would give China a direct route
to the Siliguri Corridor, or chicken's neck,
where all land-based military and commercial traffic travel
between India's northeastern provinces and the rest
of the country.
So if there ever is a war
or a major conflict between China and India,
this would be strategically significant land.
Bhutan allowed India's military
to enter their country to stop the construction.
For months the troops faced off,
but no casualties were reported.
After that incident,
India and China appeared
to have put their differences behind them.
China's relationship with India,
that had sort of looked promising.
As recently as 2019, Xi Jinping traveled to India,
had this two-day summit with Modi,
and just before that, Modi came to China
and had a multi-day summit with Xi Jinping here.
The two countries were sort of finding a common ground
where they can work together.
India and China had actually established economic ties
that were perhaps at their greatest point in history.
China had become India's largest trading partner.
But you also saw Chinese investment for the first time
going into India
in a significant way, and China was seeking to enter
in an even bigger way,
particularly in India's telecommunication sector
and the 5G network.
Then in 2020, the pandemic happened.
The breaking news is about the confirmed coronavirus
in Kerala,
where a student studying
in China's Wuhan University has tested positive
with the deadly virus...
Because of China's handling of Covid,
India started becoming concerned about its overdependence
on China in certain sectors,
the lack of transparency of certain Chinese companies,
their links with the state
and whether the Chinese state would use its economic ties
for whether it was coercion or economic influence.
Up until this point,
most of the standoffs had been non-violent
because of agreements between both sides
not to use firearms.
The majority of the confrontations during the 20th century
used loudspeakers to taunt each other from far away.
Chinese troops have set up loudspeakers
that belt out Punjabi numbers at their forward posts.
Let's take a look.
But soon after the pandemic broke out,
the border confrontations turned deadly.
In May 2020, China surprised India by deploying troops
in the disputed region of Ladakh
and Pakistani-occupied Kashmir.
China says India's recent construction of roads,
tunnels and the refurbishment of airfields
in the area along the border changed the status quo
and forced China to respond.
After weeks of skirmishes,
20 Indian soldiers and at least four Chinese soldiers died
in hand-to-hand combat.
And it came at a time when economic relations
between the two countries were at its peak.
This is a question that continues to baffle
a number of experts who focus both on China and India.
Why would Beijing essentially put at stake a relationship
with India that has been growing in importance
and that China has in part pursued
to keep a country like India away
from its main adversary, the U.S.?
Why would China put this at risk?
And the answers that we have had are kind of twofold:
One, they believed
that this was a tactically significant piece of territory,
and that they did not anticipate the backlash from India.
They thought like in other parts of Asia
that they would essentially establish their claims,
then India would accept that
and that they would go back to business as usual.
Although the confrontation ended,
building along the border didn't.
In early 2021,
China completed the construction of a new village high
in the mountains near the Doklam plateau called Pangda,
the latest addition to a handful of villages China has built
to fortify the Tibetan borderlands.
But there's another problem.
Some of these villages are located
inside land claimed by Bhutan.
It's the classic
possession is nine-tenths of the law phenomena.
It is China saying,
we're just going to change facts on the ground,
establish a presence.
And the idea has been that nobody will push back.
Experts refer to their tactic
as salami slicing,
and it reflects the wider strategy
of China's leader Xi Jinping
to assert the country's territorial claims in small steps,
while not addressing it head on.
China's overall strategy for a lot of things,
and I'm extrapolating at this point to include the border,
is to try and push questions that cannot be resolved today
into the future.
And the thought behind that is that any issue
that China has to tackle today,
if it can tackle it in five, 10 years down the road,
China will be in a stronger position at that point.
China's end goal is unknown.
But considering the sparsely populated,
inaccessible areas along the border,
the reasons for claiming new territory seem to be less
about wanting the land for economic
or strategic, military reasons.
There are other explanations,
of which the primary one is that Xi Jinping
and the Communist Party of China,
wants to prove to their own public,
that even though they had made some missteps at home
in terms of handling Covid,
they could help take over these territories
or establish their presence in territories that China claims
on their sovereignty grounds.
And so essentially this was a nationalism argument.
China's obviously become much more assertive
in its territorial claims.
I think a lot of people have talked
about this Wolf Warrior diplomacy
where Chinese diplomats are much more aggressive
in verbally defending, rhetorically defending
China's position.
China's obviously backed that up with more military spending
but you've also seen it reflected in Chinese state media.
They go to greater lengths
to celebrate Chinese military accomplishments.
They go to greater lengths to show
that Chinese territorial claims
are being upheld and defended.
In the South China Sea,
few are willing to fight back China's claims.
But India is different.
The problems in the South China Sea,
including a number of different claimants who are smaller
or perhaps not willing or able to take China on,
those don't relate to the China-India situation
where India has the ability to hold its ground.
Although India lags behind China
in terms of military,
technology and infrastructure,
it may be one of the few countries willing
to contest China in the region.
India has already opposed China's Belt and Road Initiative,
which some estimate involves as much as $8 trillion
aimed at creating economic ties all over the globe.
It was one of the first major countries to announce
that it was going to boycott the first Belt and Road Forum.
And it does not do so because it says
that it does not respect standards
like financial sustainability, environmental sustainability,
transparency and territorial integrity.
That last bit is important for India
and one of the key reasons it does not subscribe
to the Belt and Road Initiative.
India believes that China,
through its China-Pakistan Economic Corridor,
in what India considers disputed territory
between India and Pakistan.
It's likely that India will continue
to boycott the Belt and Road Initiative for the near future.
China's handling of Covid, the border crisis
and the Belt and Road have all led India
to look elsewhere for economic ties,
determined to become less reliant on China.
After the 2020 flareups,
India banned dozens of Chinese apps,
and Prime Minister Modi doubled down on the Quad,
an association of four democracies,
Australia, Japan, India and the U.S.,
committed to preventing the Indo-Pacific
from becoming Beijing's geopolitical domain.
It's cemented a group of strong democracies
that will work together going forward
to secure a free and open Indo-Pacific.
And this is great news for the U.S.
who's looked to increase ties with India for decades.
U.S. policy makers have seen India
as a geopolitical counterbalance
and economic alternative
and a democratic contrast to China.
Even if it's not an ally and the fact
that it does have a rivalry with China,
that China would have to dedicate a certain amount
of its own resources
in defending against India or in tackling India.
And so that in and of itself could help
with the balance of power
in the Indo-Pacific. And therefore they have also talked
about not just approving of India's rise,
but it is in U.S. national security interest
to support India's rise.
If you look at India,
the pace of growth, the size of the population,
it's a huge market.
You have Chinese companies like TikTok, Huawei,
all of which thought they were going to have big businesses
in India, and that's obviously changed in the recent past.
Although India has a history
of non-alignment dating back from the Cold War,
the intense standoff in recent years
may have finally pushed them to choose sides.
The U.S. and India have a lot to gain
if they can hold the line against China,
and much to lose if they can't.
I think the Chinese do see as the greater issue here
India sort of forming this alliance with the U.S.,
joining the Quad.
I think Beijing is calibrating its response
to the border dispute to try and to defend
its territorial claims but also not to do so much
that it pushes India into the American embrace.
We will work together, closer than ever before.
The best case scenario for how this plays out
between India and China is they resolve the border dispute.
They pull their troops back. Trade resumes.
But I think that that is also a very unlikely outcome,
given the recent Indian participation in the Quad,
given how much effort the U.S.
has put into strengthening that relationship
and how poorly the relationship
between China and the U.S. is going.
It does seem unlikely that India and China
are going to have happy days anytime soon.