Taiwan in his sights, Xi pauses on India

A pause does not mean that Xi Jinping has abandoned his impossible objective of occupying more territory at the cost of India.

- M.D. NALAPAT

Prime Minister Naren-Bhutan, which is why Prime Minister Narendra Modi sent troops into Doklam and stopped the Chinese road construction effort. After that came the Galwan clash between units of the PLA and the Indian Army which began in May 2020. At the cost of twenty precious lives of our jawans, and many times that number on the Pdra Modi and Exter- Chinese side, the effort to nal Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar know that Xi Jinping has only pushed the Pause button and not the Stop button on aggressive action against India. Despite the agreement on disengagement reached between the two sides at long last after the Doklam incident. PLA soldiers marched into the Bhutanese territory in June 2017 in order to provide cover for a crew that was building a road across it. Such a move would have severely compromised Indian security, apart from trampling on the sovereign rights of forcibly occupy Indian territory was abandoned by the PLA. However, clashes took place in 2021 and 2022 as well. While the Chinese side was building roads and creating military infrastructure on the side of the Line of Actual Control (LOAC) occupied by them, Beijing objected to the network of roads, tunnels and bridges that were being built on the Indian side since Prime Minister Modi came to office in 2014. They were not used to such assertiveness on the Indian side, and from that time onwards, saw Prime Minister Modi as an obstacle to their plans of occupying Arunachal Pradesh and parts of other states in India.