Sino-Indian border dispute

This article is about the Sino-Indian border dispute. For China–India relations, see China–India relations.

Sino–Indian border dispute
Part of the Kashmir dispute

Line of Actual Control between China and India (map by the CIA)
Date20 October 1962 – present
(62 years, 1 month and 1 day)
Location
Line of Actual Control
Status ongoing

The Sino–Indian border dispute is an ongoing territorial dispute over the sovereignty of two relatively large, and several smaller, separated pieces of territory between China and India. The territorial disputes between the two countries result from the historical consequences of colonialism in Asia and the lack of clear historical boundary demarcations.

The first of the territories, Aksai Chin, is administered by China and claimed by India; it is mostly uninhabited high-altitude wasteland but with some significant pasture lands at the margins.[1] It lies at the intersection of Kashmir, Tibet and Xinjiang, and is crossed by China's Xinjiang-Tibet Highway; the other disputed territory is south of the McMahon Line, in the area formerly known as the North-East Frontier Agency and now a state called Arunachal Pradesh. It is administered by India and claimed by China. The McMahon Line was signed between British India and Tibet to form part of the 1914 Simla Convention, but the latter was never ratified by China.[2] China disowns the McMahon Line agreement, stating that Tibet was not independent when it signed the Simla Convention.

The 1962 Sino-Indian War was fought in both disputed areas. Chinese troops attacked Indian border posts in Ladakh in the west and crossed the McMahon line in the east. There was a brief border clash in 1967 in the region of Sikkim, despite there being an agreed border in that region. In 1987 and in 2013, potential conflicts over the Lines of Actual Control were successfully de-escalated. A conflict involving a Bhutanese-controlled area on the border between Bhutan and China was successfully de-escalated in 2017 following injuries to both Indian and Chinese troops.[3] Multiple skirmishes broke out in 2020, escalating to dozens of deaths in June 2020.[4]

Agreements signed pending the ultimate resolution of the boundary question were concluded in 1993 and 1996. This included "confidence-building measures" and the Line of Actual Control. To address the boundary question formalised groups were created such as the Joint Working Group (JWG) on the boundary question. It was to be assisted by the Diplomatic and Military Expert Group. In 2003 the Special Representatives (SRs) mechanism was constituted.[5][6] In 2012 another dispute resolution mechanism, the Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination (WMCC) was framed.[7]

  1. ^ Aakash Hassan, Hannah Ellis-Petersen, 'Our pastures have been taken': Indians rue China's Himalayan land grab Archived 17 December 2022 at the Wayback Machine, The Guardian, 3 July 2020.
  2. ^ Hoffmann (1990), p. 19.
  3. ^ Ramachandran, Sudha (15 July 2020). "Beijing Asserts a More Aggressive Posture in Its Border Dispute with India". Jamestown Foundation. Archived from the original on 17 July 2020. Retrieved 17 July 2020.
  4. ^ Goldman, Russell (17 June 2020). "India-China Border Dispute: A Conflict Explained". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 26 June 2020. Retrieved 27 June 2020.
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference :0 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  6. ^ "Agreement on the Political Parameters and Guiding Principles for the Settlement of the India-China (April 11, 2005)". mea.gov.in. Archived from the original on 23 February 2021. Retrieved 20 February 2021.
  7. ^ "India, China to set up working mechanism on border management". The Hindu. 17 January 2012. ISSN 0971-751X. Archived from the original on 5 October 2020. Retrieved 22 February 2021.