COMMENTARY Global Politics

China-India Border Crisis

Jun 21, 2021 1 min read

COMMENTARY BY

Jeff M. Smith @Cold_Peace_

Director, Asian Studies Center

Jeff Smith is Director of The Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center.

It remains to be seen whether China will double down on its more aggressive border tactics or reassess and readjust. abzee/Getty Images

Key Takeaways

The crisis that began at the disputed China–India border in early 2020 was not the first standoff at the Line of Actual Control (LAC).

China has long enjoyed an infrastructure advantage near the LAC in Ladakh and in recent years India has accelerated belated attempts to narrow that gap.

China has long expressed displeasure with India for its hosting the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan Government in Exile, and a large population of Tibetan exiles.

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India and China compromise over a third of the world’s population. Both maintain operable nuclear triads in addition to being the planet’s second and third highest spenders on conventional military arms. When the two countries’ militaries came to blows in May-June of last year, then, it is no surprise that the whole world took notice. Dozens of slain Indian and Chinese soldiers was a tragedy. A wider conflagration between the two nuclear powers could easily have become a catastrophe.

Read the full report here.

This piece originally appeared in the Journal of Indo-Pacific Affairs, run by the U.S. Air Force