5 July 2024

Poised along the Indian border, Chinese troops are there for the long haul


The bloody combat operations occurring in Ukraine and Gaza, plus the tensions heating up in the South China Sea, dominate news headlines and make it easy to forget that the People's Liberation Army (PLA) - China's armed forces - continues to strengthen its position along China's southern border with India.

In the Annual Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community, published earlier this year, border tensions between China and India merited only a single paragraph amidst all the other conflicts, threats and tensions that currently abound in the world.

Nonetheless, the report assessed that "The shared disputed border between India and China will remain a strain on their bilateral relationship."

It continued, "While the two sides have not engaged in significant cross-border clashes since 2020, they are maintaining large troop deployments, and sporadic encounters between opposing forces risk miscalculation and escalation into armed conflict."

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