By Dr Tenzin Tsultrim – 1 December 2021 Published in The Quint
For the past few years, the security environment in Asia has been covered by clouds of distrust and suspicion. From the Doklam stand-off to the Galwan Valley clash, China has frequently broken its promises and India’s trust.
The Pentagon report of 2021, too, confirms China’s two faces towards India. The report says, “Despite the ongoing diplomatic and military dialogues to reduce border tensions, the PRC has continued taking incremental and tactical actions to press its claims at the LAC.”
This has been a long territorial strategy of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for future claims and control. For instance, in 1995, despite numerous diplomatic engagements with the Philippines, China continued to upgrade its physical presence on the Mischief Reef.
Infrastructure & Symbolic Integration of People
The report further added, “Sometime in 2020, the PRC built a large 100-home civilian village inside disputed territory between the PRC’s Tibet Autonomous Region and India’s Arunachal Pradesh state in the eastern sector of the LAC.”
In an insightful paper written by Ron E. Hassner, ‘The Path to Intractability: Time and the Entrenchment of Territorial Disputes’, the author argues that the construction of material links (for example, roads) and symbolic links (such as temples and churches) in the disputed territory would further integrate the disputed territory in question with the occupying state.