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Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, the country’s top diplomat, celebrated India’s friendly relationships with all major powers in an interview Tuesday – markedly omitting China and emphasizing that tension between the two countries is growing because China has repeatedly violated India’s border.
“India’s relationship with major powers is good. China is an exception,” Jaishankar told India’s Asian News International (ANI), “because it violated agreements that we’ve had and has a posture at the border and, as a result, we have a counter posture.”
India and China are engaging in growing competition over international manufacturing, particularly in technology and pharmaceuticals, and are vying for the support of critical allies, most prominently Russia. Caretaking of their mutual border, however, has become the most inflammatory facet of the countries’ relationship, however, in the past three years as China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) increased the frequency of illicit appearances on Indian land.
Disagreements over where the border, which India calls the “Line of Actual Control” (LAC), actually is have led to deadly military engagements, the worst of them being the June 2020 battle in the Galwan Valley, in the Ladakh region of India. The Galwan Valley melee resulted in at least 20 Indian soldier deaths and, according to Indian officials, over twice as many dead Chinese soldiers. China insists to this day that it only lost four troops.
The most recent similar event occurred in Arunachal Pradesh, India, in December, when Indian border patrol spotted Chinese soldiers in the wrong country. The incident did not result in any deaths, but dozens of injuries, and involved hundreds of troops beating each other with sticks, rocks, and other rudimentary weapons.
Indian officials have increased the military presence on the border in the past year to what they claim to be “unprecedented” levels and dismissed the PLA as a “prehistoric” band of “hooligans” for attacking with clubs and other blunt objects.
