India and China, the world’s two most populous nations, both with nuclear warheads, are at loggerheads over a territorial dispute in the eastern Ladakh area that borders both countries.
“I would say the situation is stable and under control, but unpredictable,” Indian Army Chief of Staff General Manoj Pande told reporters on Thursday. “We have adequate forces. We have adequate reserves in each of our sectors to be able to effectively face any situation or contingency”.
As The Associated Press reported, Pande made his comments after a nearly two-and-a-half-year standoff between tens of thousands of soldiers from both countries.
The Indian army chief said countries continue to talk at both diplomatic and military levels, but the Indian armed forces maintain a high level of readiness.
Indian Border Security Force soldiers patrol a road as an Indian Army convoy passes on a road leading to Leh, on the border with China, on June 19, 2020, in Gagangir, India.
(Yawar Nazir/Getty Images)
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The two sides had a serious border clash in 2020 when 20 Indian soldiers were killed and four Chinese soldiers were killed as a result of the skirmish.
India says China occupies 38,000 square kilometers (15,000 square miles) of its territory on the Aksai Chin plateau, which India considers part of Ladakh, where the current standoff is taking place.
“How dangerous this is depends on Beijing. India is currently in a defensive posture, but if China strikes again and looks weak, India could push its advantage,” said Cleo Paskal, a non-resident senior fellow at the Defense Foundation for the Democracies. focusing on the Indo-Pacific region, she told Fox News Digital.
He continued: “In addition, this area could come into play during a Taiwan crisis. It is worth remembering that China’s attack on India in 1962 coincided almost on exact days with the Cuban missile crisis.”
“At the same time, China’s attack is also likely to have elements of asymmetric warfare. After the 2020 standoff, the conflict shifted to less obvious scenarios. India banned 59 Chinese apps, including TikTok and WeChat, and then there was a cyberattack in Mumbai. power grid that was reportedly traced back to China,” Paskal added.
India says that any unilateral change to the border status quo by Beijing is unacceptable.
Local People’s Armed Police Force soldiers pay their respects to one of the four soldiers who died during a June 2020 border clash with India at a martyrs’ cemetery on February 24, 2021 in Lanzhou, Gansu province of China.
(Hou Chonghui/VCG via Getty Images)
The Line of Actual Control separates Chinese and Indian controlled territories from Ladakh in the west to the eastern Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, which China claims in its entirety. India and China fought a deadly border war in 1962.
In December, Fox News Digital reported a violent clash between Indian and Chinese soldiers in the territories, which resulted in injuries to both sides.
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At the time of the December standoff, a Chinese military spokesman blamed India for illegally blocking border guards patrolling the Beijing side of the Line of Actual Control.
“We call on the Indian side to strictly control and restrain the front-line troops and work with China to maintain peace and tranquility on the border,” the spokesman was quoted as saying by The Associated Press.
India expert Siddhartha Dubey, an adjunct professor of journalism at Northwestern University in Illinois, told Fox News Digital: “It’s an incredibly expensive proposition to keep militaries on a frozen border on heightened alert, especially for India, which has fewer resources than Porcelain.”
An Indian Army convoy carrying reinforcements and supplies travels towards Leh through Zoji La, a high mountain pass bordering China on June 13, 2021 in Ladakh, India.
(Yawar Nazir/Getty Images)
He added that the situation is “far from stable. It is an unpredictable situation… There are thousands of armed forces and considerable air power facing each other.
“China seized territory two and a half years ago, and negotiations have given India nothing. It’s a border dispute brought up by an outgoing colonial power, Britain, which did a bad job.”
The Indian military chief also added that the Russia-Ukraine conflict has affected the supply of spare parts for the Indian army, but did not provide further details. He also spoke about India’s dependence on the teams from those countries.
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“Sustainability of these weapon systems, equipment in terms of spare parts, in terms of ammunition, is an issue that we have addressed,” he said.
Experts say as much as 60% of India’s defense equipment comes from Russia, and New Delhi is in a bind amid a standoff with China over a territorial dispute.
An Indian fighter jet flies in the sky towards Leh on the border with China on June 19, 2020 in Gagangir, India.
(Yawar Nazir/Getty Images)
The Times of India newspaper reported on Thursday that India is having trouble transporting back one of its diesel submarines after a major repair in Russia, which has been hit by sanctions over the Ukraine war.
India will soon surpass the population of China, according to a new United Nations report. India will replace China’s population in April, reaching nearly 1.7 billion people by 2050, in contrast to China’s expected population of 1.31 billion.
China reportedly has 350 nuclear warheads, while India, the world’s largest democracy, has 160 nuclear warheads.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
