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Did China and India Nearly Go to War Last Week?

They had a miniature stand-off high up in the Himalayas.

A Chinese soldier on the disputed border region. (Photo via)

You may not have noticed, but a number of Chinese troops crossed the border into India a few weeks ago. And unless your homepage is Wikipedia's China-India-relations entry (which would be weird), you'd be forgiven for not noticing. Because, for whatever reason, the world's media figured it wasn't that big of a deal that soldiers from the two largest emerging superpowers were appearing to squabble over land.

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Three weeks ago, high in the frozen Himalayas, far from most of the world’s media and anything of actual use, 40 Chinese soldiers set up camp 20 kilometres into Indian-claimed territory. The two countries fought a war in the same spot 50 years ago, but this time around it ended – on Sunday – without a shot being fired.

Chinese “incursions” into India are actually pretty common – India claims the People’s Liberation Army has skipped across hundreds of times in the past few years. Normally these end in a few hours, but this time the Chinese outright refused to leave for the three full weeks they were there. It started with one tent, then two, then five. Eventually they bought dogs to their little campsite in the region of Ladakh, which – for some reason – really got on India's nerves. I suppose keeping pets on occupied land is where India's government draw the line. Halfway through the camping trip, in an admirable show of geopolitical trolling, the Chinese soldiers erected a banner reading: "You are in the Chinese side." For the first time since the Cold War, Indian and Chinese soldiers stood eyeball-to-eyeball.

So why did the two most populous countries in the world, each with their own nuclear arsenal, ratchet up tensions over tents, dogs and a 20 kilometre strip of frozen nothingness? The “Line of Actual Control” between the countries was drawn in 1959 and stabilised after a short but nasty war in 1962, so now seems a strange time to mess with it.

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Indian SU 30 MKI fighter jets. (Photo via

It’s possible that Beijing was whipping up nationalist sentiment to detract from corruption at home. Sina Weibo, the Chinese bootleg Twitter, was awash with anti-Indian chatter. For example, this particular Weibo user – a policeman – wanted to teach India a lesson: “I will engage in exercises at your door… little India, how does it feel?” The Chinese internet police would normally frown on tweets that snub a neighbouring country, so by allowing this kind of chatter, it seemed like they might have tacitly been encouraging it.

I called James Hardy, Asia Pacific Editor of IHS Jane’s Defence Weekly, who gave another possible explanation – that a commander of the Chinese People's Liberation Army might have screwed up or gone renegade: “We don’t really know how much control the Communist Party has over local army officers,” he said. “It could have been a training mission that got out of hand or a commander who reads too much China Daily and decided to take on India.”

Either way, this had been simmering for a while and wasn't necessarily China’s fault. James says the Indians have been sprucing up old military installations close to the border since about 2008 and that “by building up the border, the Indians have worried the Chinese, who’ve built up their side, so you’re getting into an arms race”. Luckily, James thinks the recent shit-storm was unlikely to start World War III: “If this was started to stir nationalism, it might be a good place to do it because the risk of escalation is quite low.”

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On the phone from New Delhi, Manu Pubby – a journalist at the Indian Express – had different ideas to Hardy. Speaking while the incursion was in full swing, he explained that, “This kind of thing hasn’t happened since 1986, so for the first few days we thought it was a small, localised event. Now it’s been going for more than two weeks and there’s a growing concern that we might be sitting there for a long time. This could be a new flashpoint between India and China… this time we have troops face to face for the first time since ‘86. So there’s a lot of potential for escalation.”

Indian Para Commandos, experts in mountain warfare. (Photo via)

Manu had his own theories about why exactly China bothered to invade the rocky outcrop: “It’s possible it’s a localised event around some small issue, but there’s speculation that it’s something more. The land isn't tactically useful and it’s barren, so it’s probably more of a symbolic thing. The Chinese have been protesting the Indian build-up in the area for a long time, so this might have been their way of registering a protest on the ground.”

Manu said normal Indians were expressing a lot of anger against China, but also against the Indian government who, as is the norm in situations like this, have been accused of being timid: “India tends to adopt a 'middle path' rather than using aggression,” he said, “and that can come off as weak.” Manu also told me that no one was too worried about the event sparking a nuclear war: “I think most people realise this is unlikely to turn into a full-scale war. I think both sides realise that’s a bad idea. We already had a war with Pakistan and didn’t use nuclear weapons,” he told me.

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Thankfully, the whole thing ended some time on Sunday evening, seemingly thanks to local commanders on the ground. The two sides each backed off one kilometre, according to the Indian military, following a meeting by border bosses. While the culmination of the conflict was slightly anticlimactic, It goes to show how small, localised events like this can have a profoundly large impact on international relations. The Chinese Premier Li Keqiang plans to visit India in the next few weeks, so maybe we'll find out more about what happened then.

So there you have it: the two behemoths of Asia had a small stand-off, but didn’t destroy civilisation just yet.

Follow Alex on Twitter: @alexchitty

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