HIMALAYAN MISADVENTURE

The Galwan clashes and the Ladakh standoff may have validated China’s mobilisation doctrines ahead of the Chinese Communist Party’s centenary, but they also exposed the PLA’s several weaknesses and have brought India into the mainstream of China’s security narrative

- NAMRATA BIJI AHUJA

It was May 2015— early summer in Beijing—when Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his host, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, attended a tai chi and yoga show at the Temple of Heaven. The tai chi symbol, known to most Indians as Doordarshan’s yin-yang logo, is seen as the epitome of balanced energy. As Li and Modi stepped into the square in front of the temple’s Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests, 400 tai chi and yoga experts from China and India made perfect poses, depicting a balance of strength.

Fast forward to May 2020. The summer breeze turned into a storm and the yin-yang balance got upset when Chinese troops, squatting in the Galwan valley in Ladakh, pounced on a platoon of unarmed soldiers of India’s Bihar Regiment, and beat 20 of them to death with nailed rods, pikes and poles.

Though a minor skirmish for two armies that are among the world’s largest, the incident upset the equilibrium which had been maintained for decades and reinforced with the border agreements of 1993 and 1996. It was restored soon—so to speak— when, on Beijing’s own admission, another battalion of the Indian Army pounced on the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troopers and killed battalion commander Chen Hongjun and troopers Xiao Siyuan, Wang Zhuoran and Chen Xiangrong. Later, the Chinese Communist Party’s (CPC) Central Military Commission (CMC), headed by President Xi Jinping, honoured them. According to some sources, 45 soldiers were killed.