November 27, 2024
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China and India Are Still Rivals
A recent peace deal does nothing to resolve the issues that drive their competition.
By: Geopolitical Futures
By Andrew Davidson
In late October, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping met on the sidelines of the BRICS assembly in Kazan, Russia, and spoke of deescalating a disputed part of their countries’ shared border. They were able to reach an agreement that has since been highlighted as an important step toward peace. And in some ways, it is. It calls for a return to the pre-2020 Line of Actual Control, the deconstruction of military buildings along portions of the LAC built after 2020, and each nation to conduct its own regular patrols in its respective areas. Yet the deal covers only about 350 miles (560 kilometers) of the 2,167-mile border, leaving a majority of the disputed area up in the air. Essentially, it relocates the focus of the dispute to more central and eastern sections.
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Most tellingly, the agreement fails to address the factors that undergird the India-China competition – factors that led to conflicts such as the Sino-Indian War in 1962, the Doklam standoff in 2017 and the Ladakh confrontation in 2020. Much of China’s western border with India abuts Tibet province, a strategically vulnerable area that serves as a buffer zone for Beijing against restive minority populations and a source of natural resources, including water. Not coincidentally, it is also the main source of water for India’s biggest rivers – the Brahmaputra, Ganges, Sutlej and Indus – all of which start near the LAC. Controlling these watershed areas, then, is not just a matter of economy but a matter of national security. This explains why both countries station troops there, and why they have used neighboring countries to apply additional pressure against each other.
Another important source of friction between India and China – one that indirectly affects their border – is the Indian Ocean. China’s economy depends overwhelmingly on exports, so it’s in Beijing’s interest to diversify its export routes so that no single avenue is overly vulnerable to logistical bottlenecks or enemy attacks. This explains China's construction of what it calls its "string of pearls" through the Indian Ocean, a network of friendly ports, airfields and other facilities that establish lines of communication from the Horn of Africa to Pakistan, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Bangladesh and other strategic maritime centers on an oceanic rim that basically encircles India. India needs autonomy in its namesake ocean to pursue its energy, trade, security and military interests. China’s activity here makes India uncomfortable because Chinese influence will necessarily be at the expense of Indian influence. And New Delhi will never be able to become the main naval power in the region, let alone project power as far as it intends to, if China has encircled it.
The bottom line is that India’s objectives in South Asia are in direct opposition to China’s. China’s influence in Pakistan, for example, undermines India’s interest in securing the region of Kashmir, which it wants for historical and religious reasons and for what it offers as a trade route to Central Asia and the Arabian Sea. (A little more than $1.2 billion passes through the line of control here every year on routes that link up to China’s Belt and Road Initiative in the west and to the TAPI pipeline corridor.) Elsewhere, India’s "Act East" policy, which means to cultivate relationships in Southeast Asia, encroaches on China’s traditional sphere of influence.
This is all to say that though the peace deal reached in October is a victory for diplomacy, it isn’t the reconciliation some of its proponents claim it to be. It simply reflects a declined importance of a certain area in a much larger competition. Future talks are in the works, but neither country is standing down. Over the past few years, China has reformatted its Western Theater Command into Combined Arms Brigades to be able to quickly react to threats. There are 200,000 to 230,000 ground troops stationed within China’s Western Theater Command, of which 110,000 are stationed within range of the shared border with India. India, for its part, has about twice that many troops. And it, too, is revamping its military formations into Integrated Battle Groups that can act more quickly and decisively. India’s 17th Mountain Strike Corps has returned recently to its home station in West Bengal following a deployment in Ladakh along the western sector border and will now focus on the nearby Siliguri Corridor to counter border threats and threats to vulnerable areas.
Outside the areas covered by the peace agreement, India and China continue to show signs of confrontation. In Nepal, summer elections marked a shift in influence away from India and toward China. Nepal and China will probably never be stalwart allies, but any inroads Beijing can make there is a potential threat to India, which has an extremely diverse population and is thus highly sensitive to activity in border areas.
Meanwhile, at the 14th Expert Group Meeting over border issues in August, China and Bhutan discussed the Doklam plateau, a strategically important area that overlooks India’s Siliguri corridor. At its narrowest, the corridor is 12 miles wide and connects India’s northeastern states to the rest of the nation. Put simply, Doklam gives a potential enemy the high ground in a fight. News reports suggest that the China-Bhutan talks were fruitful. China has constructed border towns in Bhutan in an apparent land-swap deal.
To the east, Myanmar and Bangladesh, which are crucial for Chinese and Indian maritime access and power projection, are in flux. An open conflict in Myanmar has resulted in instability, which could spill over into both India and China. China has hedged its bets by supporting both sides of the battle – and has deployed a joint private security company to secure the border regions – but India has invited the ruling party’s opponents to a meeting of the Indian Council of World Affairs think-tank in a move that could erase Chinese gains. In Bangladesh, India has historically been a reliable ally, having supported its war of liberation in the 1970s and the Ganges Water Sharing Treaty of 1996 and positioned itself as the country’s largest trading partner. India also supported Bangladeshi leader Sheikh Hasina until her recent ouster. But here, too, China is making up ground, including by financing the port of Pekua, which was completed last year.
Then there is Pakistan. India has been at odds with Pakistan for years, and new developments there could derail future border talks between India and China. Following attacks by militants against Chinese workers, Beijing plans to deploy troops to protect workers in northern Pakistan. China places great value on Pakistan – both as a cog in its Belt and Road Initiative and as a foil against India – and though Pakistan’s political and economic crises make it a much lesser threat to India than it once was, its instability makes it vulnerable to Chinese influence. Islamabad has asked China (again) for $1.6 billion in continued financial assistance, and if Beijing accedes, it will gain even more economic leverage that could, in time, be used against India.
For China and India, political and economic pressure is often brought to bear against the other – sometimes directly, sometimes through third countries – in a competition not just for influence in their immediate surroundings but for the ability to project power on a global scale. The peace deal reached last month doesn’t change that. In fairness, it didn’t try to. But when all signs point to defensive postures, it’s hard to be optimistic for regional security, especially if you consider that what happens here will have global ramifications.
Andrew Davidson is currently an intern at GPF and completing a master’s degree in international relations. Prior to joining GPF, he served in the U.S. Army for 11 years.
