A senior Indian official said Tuesday (Sept. 1) that Indian troops have been deployed at four strategically placed high ground sites along the China-India border. This comes after India said that Chinese troops were trying to make incursions into the disputed Himalayan border strip. This latest development shows that tensions continue to rise along the border between the two Asian powers, China and India.
The Indian government says the Chinese PLA on Saturday (Aug. 29) violated earlier agreements to change the status quo on the southern shore of Pangong Tso Lake in the border region of Ladakh, and that Indian troops “pre-emptively” thwarted Chinese attempts to unilaterally change the status quo.
The Indian official briefing the latest incident said last Saturday that large Chinese forces backed by military vehicles advanced to a major mountain pass close enough to engage Indian troops in a verbal altercation, but no clashes broke out, Reuters reported Tuesday. In response, India mobilized troops to deploy to four high ground areas along the border. The official added that the four heights were on the Indian side of the Line of Actual Control (LAC) along the India-China border.
China denied India’s claims. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said on Tuesday that the Indian claim is different from the Chinese one, and that China’s border guards have been strictly adhering to the LAC and have never crossed it.
Chinese embassy spokesman JI Rong said earlier on Tuesday that China has made serious representations to the Indian side, requesting the Indian side to strictly control and restrain the frontline troops, immediately stop all provocations, withdraw the illegal line crossing personnel, and immediately stop any moves that lead to escalation and complication of the situation.
Meanwhile, India and China’s military commanders held a second day of talks on Tuesday, but no details of the negotiations were immediately released.
In June, at least 20 Indian soldiers were killed when Chinese and Indian soldiers clashed in Ladakh near the Himalayan border in the worst bloodshed in the two countries’ 45-year history. China accused the Indians of entering Chinese territory and provoking the conflict; India said the Chinese claim was “a complete lie” and that the Chinese had set up a temporary outpost on the Indian side of the border and attacked Indian soldiers who came to check it out.
China and India have held numerous talks at the military commander level since the June clash, but no breakthroughs have been made.
China and India have competed in recent years to build transport and military infrastructure in the border region, much to the displeasure of the other side. The sparsely populated Ladakh border region, which used to be rarely patrolled by troops, has seen intense military deployments by both countries in recent months.
The June border conflict between India and China sparked a boycott of China in India, with people refusing to buy Chinese-made products and the Indian government banning 59 Chinese applications, including the well-known Chinese social networking apps Shakespeare and WeChat, citing national security concerns.
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