The Chinese intrusions into the Indian territory in Arunachal Pradesh is not a break from the past, rather it is part of a pattern that has developed over the years.
In the latest such incident, an Indian army patrol on December 26, detected a road leveling exercise undertaken by the Chinese side that had entered into the Indian territory, possibly two to four hundred metres, near the border village in the Upper Siang district in Arunachal Pradesh. The army immediately stopped the Chinese party from carrying out any further activity and seized their road construction equipments.
The equipment is still lying there and a flag meeting over the issue, sought by the Indian side, is yet to take place, sources said.
The incident happened four months after the stand-off at Doklam, near the strategic India-Bhutan-China tri-junction. The Indian and Chinese armies were locked in one of the longest stand-off in recent times, with troops deployed eyeball to eyeball for over two months in Doklam Plateau in Bhutan. The stand-off ended after China agreed not to construct a road through the Doklam plateau and both troops decided to pull back on September 28 last year – a few days before the BRICS Summit.
The fresh incident has set off speculation as to whether the Chinese are making a concerted effort to build roads at key strategic locations that may be worrisome from the Indian strategic security point of view.
Sources in the security establishment also said, the Chinese army will keep doing little incursions, especially in those areas which it considers disputed to keep alive its claim over it.
However, they said there is a well established mechanism between the two forces to deal with the stand-offs. Around 300 to 350 such face-offs take place between the troops of the two countries every year at Line of Actual Control or LAC, the de-facto border between the two countries.
But what worries the Indian security establishment the most is that some of these stand-offs are getting intense and growing longer in duration.
In August last year, the ITBP troops and the Chinese army personnel were involved in a nasty scuffle in Pangong lake area of Ladakh region.
