Impasse at the LAC: An Examination of the 2013, 2014, and 2015 Standoffs

SHIBANI MEHTA

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INTRODUCTION

In June 2020, the Indian and Chinese forces clashed in the Galwan Valley, a remote area in the Himalayas along the disputed border between the two countries. Twenty Indian and at least five Chinese soldiers were killed. The incident was among a series of encounters between Indian and Chinese troops at multiple locations in Ladakh since April 2020. A suggestion of deepening mistrust between the two neighbors, this singular incident serves as a watershed.

This was the first time in decades that there were fatalities on the India-China border.1 A debate flared up about the long-term implications of the clash on the India-China relationship. However, clashes have taken place in the past as well. This study examines three standoffs between India and China in 2013, 2014, and 2015 with the view to situate the current impasse. It presents a detailed account of the three border crises and how the two countries tried to manage them. In none of the three cases were the terms of disengagement of troops made public. Therefore, it is tough to present a complete picture of considerations made by both sides. However, the study finds that the significance of these events is growing as border incidents between India and China occur more frequently and take longer to resolve. A report of how matters evolved in the three specific standoffs can be of value for Indian decisionmakers.

First, it is necessary to establish context. The de facto border, the Line of Actual Control (LAC), is a magnet for standoffs between Indian and Chinese border patrols. As the LAC is unsettled and un-demarcated, there are roughly a dozen stretches along the frontier where the two countries cannot agree on its location. These are the source of hundreds of transgressions by Chinese border patrols annually.2 Second, an elaborate series of bilateral mechanisms were developed to keep the LAC free of any fatal exchanges. However, on occasion, these devolve into more serious intrusions as witnessed in 2013, 2014, and 2015.

SELECTION OF CASES

In the past decade, border standoffs have become not only more frequent and larger in scale but also longer-lasting and harder to resolve. Nineteen rounds of high-level military talks have taken place since the Galwan Valley incident. Instead of deescalating or disengaging, both sides have only hardened their positions.

The three standoffs chosen for this study occurred over consecutive years. None of them concluded with a lasting peace where both sides came to see that their differences could be resolved. They were managed and deescalated with the underlying causes left unaddressed.

Each standoff has a brief history:

1. 2013: An incursion and a sit-in by a platoon-sized contingent of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in the dry riverbed of Raki Nala in the Depsang Bulge area.3 Indian troops responded to the Chinese presence by establishing a camp 300 meters away. Negotiations between China and India lasted nearly three weeks, during which the Chinese position was supplied by trucks and supported by helicopters. The dispute was resolved in the following month, after which both sides withdrew.
2. 2014: In the backdrop of President Xi Jinping’s India visit, Indian patrol teams discovered that Chinese troops had deployed heavy machinery to build a road within Indian territory. The standoff continued even when Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping signed twelve bilateral agreements. Finally, after twenty days, PLA troops withdrew to their pre-September position.
3. 2015: India and China were locked in a confrontation in the Burtse area of the Depsang plains in Ladakh. A Chinese surveillance tower was destroyed by Indian troops for being close to a mutually agreed-upon patrolling line. The crisis was defused after a series of meetings between Chinese and Indian commanders..

THE 2013 STANDOFF

In the Depsang Bulge area

On the night of April 15, 2013, a small platoon of around fifty soldiers from the PLA crossed the LAC at the northern edge of Ladakh in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir and pitched tents at Raki Nala, an old Indian post at an altitude of about 5,000 meters. In The Himalayan Face-Off, Shishir Gupta, a senior Indian journalist, provides a detailed account of the 2013 standoff.4 The camp was discovered by guards from the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) the next day. Aerial reconnaissance revealed that the PLA’s new position was at a significant distance from its original base. More importantly, the PLA was on the Indian side of the LAC and thus in violation of the 1996 confidence-building agreement between India and China. According to Article II of the agreement, “No activities of either side shall overstep the line of actual control,” until the boundary question is resolved. The Indian army, in turn, set up its tent camp just a few hundred meters away from Raki Nala. With the status quo altered, both sides entered into a standoff on April 17, 2013.

According to Gupta’s account, the site of the standoff was about 30 kilometers away from India’s Daulat Beg Oldi (DBO) military base, the northernmost outpost and an Advanced Landing Ground. Located in the far east of the Karakoram mountain range, DBO lies at the intersection of two disputed areas. It is on the eastern edge of the Siachen glacier, on which Indian and Pakistani troops strive to maintain their positions under extreme conditions. On the other side, a dozen kilometers away, is Aksai Chin, a region disputed between China and India. The Depsang plains lie south of DBO in a strategic area that the military refers to as Sub-Sector North (SSN). Control over the Depsang plains is vital to the defense of Ladakh as they straddle the Darbuk–Shyok–DBO road, an all-weather supply line from Leh to the final SSN outpost at DBO.

The PLA troops stayed put for twenty days. Even more significant is that the troops travelled almost 19 kilometers from the LAC into what India considers its side of the border and set up their tents.5

Meanwhile, in South Block

In New Delhi, a meeting of the China Study Group (CSG) was called at the Ministry of Defence to develop a response to the incursion.6 The group recommended that a forthcoming army delegation meeting with the PLA at Chengdu be called off to send a signal of objection to Beijing. According to Gupta’s detailed account, the prime minister vetoed the move and argued that the local problem could be handled diplomatically. Subsequently, a border patrol meeting was called at Spanggur Gap, near Pangong Tso. When asked to withdraw to its original position as per the 1976 border-patrolling agreement, the PLA produced a map from 1959 to contend India’s claim. The map from November 1959 showed the LAC running parallel to the Raki Nala, thereby implying that the Depsang Bulge was within Chinese-held territory. The PLA’s preparedness at the border patrol meeting demonstrated China’s intent to change ground position.

Given the prime minister’s instruction to pursue the diplomatic route, India’s foreign secretary, Ranjan Mathai, expressed serious concern over these developments to Wei Wei, the Chinese ambassador to India. In parallel, the Indian ambassador to China, S. Jaishankar, registered India’s dissatisfaction over the current situation to the Chinese foreign ministry. On the ground, the Indian army erected a tin shed at Point 30R in Chumar to gain a clear view of Chinese movements. Deng Zheng Hua, Director-general (Boundary Affairs) at the Chinese foreign ministry, allegedly discussed the raising of the shed with Jaishankar. He is said to have argued that the tents in Depsang plains were within Chinese territory. Jaishankar pointed out that the presence of Chinese troops, tents, dogs, and vehicles had unilaterally changed the ground position in Depsang plains.

At the subsequent CSG meeting, it was decided that while the diplomatic efforts to diffuse the situation would continue, the chief of India’s Northern Army Command would tackle the situation at the border without allowing the dispute to spread to other sectors of the LAC. Beyond bilateral negotiations with China, it was agreed that diplomatic gestures in Japan by the prime minister and in Iran by the external affairs minister would send a strong message to Beijing.7 Simultaneous disengagement was discussed in an unscheduled border meeting called by the Chinese on May 4, 2013, and by nighttime the following day, both Indian and Chinese troops had withdrawn from the Depsang plains. In a veiled mention, the defence minister submitted a written reply in the Lok Sabha on May 6 confirming that, “No construction of roads by neighbouring countries has taken place in territory under possession of India.”

India’s Diplomatic Push

The plan to minimize escalation involved negotiations at multiple levels, telephone calls between senior officials in New Delhi and Beijing, as well as flag meetings between Indian and Chinese military commanders in the field. At the political level, the standoff never appeared to be evolving toward a more belligerent conflict. Both capitals repeated that they were relying on institutional channels of dialogue, notably the Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination on India-China Border Affairs (WMCC) established in 2012. However, behind the curtains, it was suggested to the Chinese that if the crisis was not curtailed, it would have a serious impact on high-level exchanges, including then premier Li Keqiang’s upcoming state visit to India. Indian parliamentarians demanded that the then external affairs minister Salman Khurshid cancel his trip to Beijing. He maintained that he was confident that the standoff will be resolved amicably through talks. Both visits went ahead as scheduled.

On May 6, the spokesperson of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Hua Chunying, announced that the troops from both countries had left the standoff zone—the standoff had ended officially. It should be mentioned that the withdrawal conditions agreed to by the two neighbors were not made public.

China’s response

China maintained a coordinated official position based on silence and opacity. In a press conference on April 22, Hua Chunying said that the Chinese troops had “carried out normal patrol on the Chinese side without ever crossing the line,” only to announce the end of the standoff and the withdrawal of all troops two weeks later. The Chinese Ministry of National Defense later—in 2014—said, “Last year there was some incident in the border region. All the issues have been properly solved through negotiations.”

The standoff occurred a month before Li Keqiang’s state visit to India. This raised doubts about whether Beijing had ordered the alleged incursion or it was the result of an unsanctioned decision by a low-level Chinese officer on the border. An account of Li’s meeting with the then prime minister Manmohan Singh published by China’s state-run news agency, Xinhua, cast an upbeat glow on relations, despite the border dispute. “My visit to India is meant to tell the world that mutual political confidence between China and India is growing, that our practical cooperation is expanding, and that our common interests far outweigh our disagreements,” Li told Singh, according to Xinhua. “Our two countries fully possess the will, wisdom and ability to together nurture a new bright spot in Asian cooperation.” The large delegation of Chinese business leaders, including bankers and executives from two Chinese telecommunications giants, Huawei and ZTE, were expected to try to keep the three-day trip focused on economic ties between China and India, which had grown rapidly over the previous decade.8 The Xinhua account of the meeting did not mention any remarks that Li might have made on the territorial dispute. However, it summarized Singh as telling him that India was “willing to work with China to promote practical cooperation and to manage and control the border dispute.” Consequently, the Chinese government enveloped the 2013 standoff into the historic border dispute between India and China. The opacity of Chinese decisionmaking meant that various theories were floated about the reason behind the unusual incursion, including the suggestion that the PLA was acting on its own.

There are no public accounts that specify the terms of the disengagement of troops. Therefore, it is tough to present a complete picture of considerations made by both sides. It is worth noting that communication between India and China continued throughout the standoff. Not only were the two governments negotiating a resolution, but they also kept to their previous commitment and held India-China talks on Afghanistan in the midst of the crisis. The Depsang standoff did not derail or even divert the relationship. However, the incident itself was a departure from the pattern of military activity since the prolonged standoff in the Sumdorong Chu valley in 1986.

THE 2014 STANDOFF

On October 23, 2013, Manmohan Singh met with Li Keqiang in Beijing to sign the Border Defence Cooperation Agreement (BDCA) aimed at maintaining peace along the LAC. While it was an addition to the existing border management instruments, certain terms of the agreement were specifically directed toward enhancing communication and minimizing misperceptions between the two border forces. Article III of the BDCA proposes meeting mechanisms across five levels—from border personnel to an India-China Annual Defence Dialogue—indicating that defense cooperation needs to occur at the military, diplomatic, and political levels. At the tactical level, troops were instructed not to tail patrols of the other side and to exercise maximum self-restraint should the two sides come face-to-face in areas where the LAC is unclear. Among other instructions, the BDCA directs border troops on both sides to hold regular flag meetings across the sectors of the LAC, conduct joint operations to tackle the smuggling of arms and contraband, and undertake small-scale tactical exercises.

According to the Ministry of Defence, India viewed the BDCA as an apparatus to establish “procedures to be followed where there is no common understanding of the Line of Actual Control.”

In the same vein, Chinese analysts held that enhanced communication between Indian and Chinese troops could reduce accidental incursions. Some Indian experts were unconvinced and argued that the ability to cite a lack of common understanding of the LAC could be misused to deliberately provoke India. On balance, the agreement ensures that in the case of an egregious incursion, such as the one in 2013, there exists a set of agreed-upon rules to diffuse the situation.

Camping in Chumar

Nearly eleven months had passed since the BDCA came into effect when the Indian army and Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) noticed a visible increase in PLA patrolling at the southern tip of eastern Ladakh. An anonymous source from the Indian army revealed to a strategic analyst that PLA patrols had begun trespassing into Indian territory. Despite the trespassing, the local commanding officer supposed that the Chinese troops would return to the existing status quo in a few days. However, after four days of constant trespassing, the commanding officer realized that Indian troops would have to respond instantly to any further attempts by the Chinese to trespass. Thus, the Indian army deployed Quick Reaction Teams close to the border.

At half past three in the morning on September 10, 2014, Indian forces found that Chinese troops had deployed heavy machinery to construct a temporary road inside Indian territory. Over the next twenty-four hours, Indian troops kept a watch on the 300 PLA soldiers, who after the initial road cutting activity, were camped in the area. Chumar, the last village in Ladakh, bordering Himachal Pradesh, has been a bone of contention, with China claiming it to be its own territory. At a height of around 15,000 feet, generally known as 30R, Chumar offers a vantage point at the apex of a ridge that gives the Indian troops a clear view of Chinese movements. The Chinese side wanted India to vacate the height, alter the frontier, and claim the area known as Tible-Mane. A journalist reported that some sources in the Indian army were puzzled by China opening up a “front” in Chumar for two reasons. First, Chumar had been undisputed till about 2013. Second, and more importantly, the frontier along Tible-Mane is recognized as the International Boundary and not as the LAC.

By September 14, the Indian army was also camping in Chumar. With only three days till President Xi Jinping’s maiden visit to India, consultations with the Ministry of External Affairs and the national security adviser (NSA) began in earnest. Having taken the prime minister in confidence, India had a full brigade of 3,000 soldiers in Chumar to counter the Chinese intrusion.

Xi in India

As Xi and his wife arrived in Ahmedabad on September 17, 1,000 more PLA troops arrived in Chumar. Troops near Chepzi, on the Chinese side, were also noticed. To avoid humiliation and maintain appearances, public functions honoring China’s first couple went on as planned while the border flag meetings were held between local commanders in Chushul, a border personnel meeting point in Ladakh. In New Delhi, the NSA received regular updates from the army chief. Modi authorized the NSA to induct additional troops into Chumar, and overnight, two more brigades were airlifted into the area.

At a private dinner with Xi in Ahmedabad and again during one-to-one talks at Hyderabad House in New Delhi, Modi is said to have expressed his concerns about events unfolding along the frontier. The prime minister’s official statement said that he had “raised our [India’s] serious concern over repeated incidents along the border” with Xi and requested that the process of clarifying the LAC be resumed. Xi assured Modi that the PLA troops had been asked to retreat to their original positions. With no indication of PLA withdrawal after twenty-four hours, Modi told his guest that “a little toothache can paralyze the entire body,” demonstrating that the border incidents underscored a fundamental tension in the bilateral relations. Scholars have argued that using the summit to publicly complain to China was a sign of India’s “stiffening attitude” toward the border dispute. The statement also challenged Beijing’s long-standing assertion that the border question should be left to future generations.

Deliberate provocation

The withdrawal of troops from Chumar began on September 26 and was completed over the next few days.9 During a border commanders’ meeting at Spanggur Gap on September 30, both sides agreed to restore the status quo ante as on September 1. Additionally, it was agreed that a meeting of the WMCC would be convened in India the following month. China’s foreign ministry confirmed that the process had been completed as planned. “On Sept. 30, the frontier defense troops of the two countries completed simultaneous withdrawal according to the steps formulated by the two sides and restored peace and tranquility in the area,” the ministry stated in a press release.

It is unclear whether it was the confluence of tactics or a particular act that delivered the disengagement of troops in Chumar. On one hand is India’s intensive diplomatic intervention. Besides Modi’s repeated assertion, media sources reported that External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj also discussed the border when she called on Xi during his visit. India seized another diplomatic opportunity to negotiate the matter. Swaraj and her Chinese counterpart met on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, where “both nations sat down and resolved the matter.” Media reports also suggested that the PLA had conveyed that it would not extend its road from Chepzi into Chumar if India were to demolish a recently built observation hut and not build any further bunkers. Demolishing the observation hut would imply forgoing a tactical surveillance point. It has not been possible to verify whether the hut was demolished. While the standoff ended without any major incident, its timing did question the sincerity of Xi’s outreach to New Delhi. Modi included a stern reference to the border issues in his official remarks, and it was conveyed to the Chinese side that India would see the intrusion at Chumar coinciding with Xi’s visit as an act of “deliberate provocation.”

Beyond bilateral diplomacy, India sought to expand its bargaining power with China by signaling shared interests with allies like the United States. The prime minister made a specific reference to the South China Sea dispute in his first bilateral summit with the United States. According to the joint statement, “The two leaders urged the concerned parties to pursue resolution of their territorial and maritime disputes through all peaceful means, in accordance with universally recognized principles of international law, including the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.” In the past, India had avoided specifically mentioning the dispute considering China’s sensitivities. The statement was a simultaneous signal of India’s pursuit of balance and willingness to contribute toward larger diplomatic issues.

THE 2015 STANDOFF

The LAC remained largely quiet, an outcome Indian officials attributed to frequent border personnel meetings following the previous crisis. At the diplomatic level, India bolstered the case for establishing a hotline between the military headquarters of India and China at various forums, including during the visit of the chairman of Chiefs of Staff Committee to China in July 2014 and the seventh meeting of the WMCC in New Delhi on October 16–17, 2014.10 For its part, the Indian government expanded the financial capacity and administrative power of the Border Road Organisation (BRO). According to the defense minister’s written reply in Parliament, “Along the Indo-China border, BRO has been allotted 61 strategic roads for construction, out of which 17 roads have been completed, connectivity has been achieved in respect of 26 road stretches and works are under progress on 16 roads.”

Smaller but significant

Much smaller in scale compared to the 2014 crisis, another incident took place between Indian and Chinese forces at Burtse in the Depsang plains in 2015. Indian satellite imagery from September 10–11 showed a PLA installation close to India’s side of the LAC. Burtse, a rest stop on the historic caravan route between Ladakh and Xinjiang, lies at the southern end of the Depsang plains, where the Depsang Nala joins the Burtse Nala. Chinese surveillance of the area could expose an ITBP camp and the DBO airbase, not far from the site of the border standoff in 2013. Secondly, Burtse is close to the G314 highway that is better known as the Chinese part of the Karakorum highway, one of the major arteries through which Chinese aid and personnel are said to reach Pakistan. The watchtower-like structure was demolished by a joint convoy of the army and the ITBP. Indian troops also seized the camera and other material and refused to return them till the PLA soldiers had retreated to their original positions. This prompted the PLA to call for reinforcements in the region. The Indian forces responded with additional deployments and following procedure established by the 2005 confidence-building measures, displayed banners in Chinese asking the PLA to return to its side.

Two flag meetings and a joint military exercise

Even though unease had gripped the border forces on both sides, a flare-up was avoided. After high-level flag meetings at DBO and Chushul sectors on September 15, 2015, the two sides agreed that there would be no constructions in the disputed territory close to the LAC and that they would both retreat to their old position in Burtse. The standoff thus ended within a week by local army delegations, and unlike the previous two instances, did not require any political intervention.

As a display of mutual effort, the Indian and Chinese armies decided to conduct a twelve-day counterterrorism exercise in Yunan in China. Operation Hand-in-Hand was documented among the achievements of the Indian Ministry of Defence that year. General Zhou Xiaoxhou, deputy commander of Chengdu Military Region, noted that the joint exercise was a step toward instilling confidence between two militaries. An Indian practitioner-scholar pointed out that while the objectives of the exercise were noble, they were misplaced. He argued, “Given China’s military assertiveness on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) and repeated transgressions into areas that are clearly under Indian control, there appears to be no possibility of undertaking joint operations with the Chinese any time in the foreseeable future.”

Again, there are no means to verify the conditions that led to the resolution of the standoff. However, it seems plausible that the border management mechanisms and protocols were effective and prevented an escalation of the crisis.

CONCLUSION

The locations of these three standoffs—the Depsang plains, Chumar, and Burtse—are of strategic significance. The Indian army has always identified the Depsang plains as its most vulnerable region in Ladakh. The SSN’s flat terrain of Depsang and DBO, which provides direct access to Aksai Chin, is also suited for mechanized warfare. However, it is located at the end of the only long and tenuous communication axis for India. China, in turn, has multiple roads providing access to the area. This leaves the SSN highly vulnerable to capture by the PLA, with a few thousand square kilometers from the Karakoram Pass to Burtse likely to be lost. Nowhere else in Ladakh is the PLA likely to gain as much territory in a single maneuver. Finally, PLA activity in the Depsang plains invokes memories of the 1962 war when Chinese troops had occupied all of the plains. The war was viewed as a military and political debacle for the Indian government and changed the leadership’s fundamental belief that China would do “nothing big.”

Studying the Indian government’s attitude, approach, and actions during these specific crises, it can be inferred that India sought to exert diplomatic pressure on the Chinese government, while the military adopted a defensive posture. It is difficult to infer whether decisions made during a crisis were influenced by the choices made previously. Conversations with experts reveal that decision-making apparatus in India is translucent. Formal bodies like the Cabinet Committee on Security and informal groupings like the CSG are entrusted with taking the major decisions in a border confrontation. However, it is observed from the cases studied that the buck stops with the prime minister. It appears that all the key advisers, whether from the civilian bureaucracy or military, deferred to the head of government. Expert interviews have disclosed that there are specific levers that traverse the landscape of economic, diplomatic, and military actions to negotiate with China. These are passed on to successive governments and decisionmakers through individuals. Institutional knowledge relies on classified documents and the expertise of individual actors.

Whether the approach taken by the Indian government accelerates progress toward a final border settlement with China remains undetermined. Its inability to accurately assess China’s motivation for troop presence across and near the LAC adds intense suspicion. This indicates a degree of fear of escalation that colors New Delhi’s moves, diplomatic or military. Domestic politics emerges as another significant calculation. The Indian government, irrespective of political philosophy, endeavors to claim an honorable resolution. Meanwhile, public opinion is shaped by limited information from government statements, which tend to be performative. China, on the other hand, underplayed the issue and demonstrated neither distress nor overt hostility in any of the three cases studied.

This study attempted to present the Indian government’s choices during border standoffs with China. Given the limited primary sources, absence of archival material, and excessive focus on outcomes and implications, only a limited study of policymaking processes could be conducted. It is clear that the diplomatic process is assisted by military support to prevent escalations at the LAC. However, it is not possible to gauge the decisionmakers’ preference for actions or the process by which they are selected or rejected.