DW – September 9, 2020
Tensions between China and India are running dangerously high, as troops from both sides face off in a remote Himalayan region and accuse each other of firing warning shots along their disputed border.
Over the past few months, Chinese and Indian troops have been engaged in aggressive posturing at multiple locations along the two nations’ de facto border, known as Line of Actual Control, raising tensions between the world’s two most populous countries.
The two nuclear-armed neighbors have accused each other of firing in the air during a fresh flare-up in the Ladakh region on Monday, violating long-standing protocols to avoid using firearms along their undemarcated borders.
“The Sino-Indian border conflict has intensified further over the past few weeks, and I still believe that neither side wants a war, but neither side is willing to back down from it either because of the symbolic and psychological consequences,” Derek Grossman, a senior defense analyst at the RAND Corporation, told DW.
“The situation is tense,” an official in New Delhi told the Reuters news agency on Wednesday, adding that Indian and Chinese troops were squaring off in close proximity in at least four locations south of Lake Pangong Tso that both sides lay claim to.
Srikanth Kondapalli, professor of Chinese studies at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, shares a similar view. “The situation on the ground is tense. Yesterday, the Chinese air force was on the second level of alert and surface-to-air missile batteries were activated to counter any adversary air force movement,” he told DW.
“Although the firing was in the air and not against each other, it’s definitely an escalation,” he added.