evidence: One was the completion of the strategic DSDBO Road in 2019, which greatly enhanced communications and logistics for India’s outposts along the LAC. The PLA’s move down the Galwan Valley appears to have been aimed at establishing an overlook on to this road. The second was India’s dissolution of the state of Jammu and Kashmir on 31 October 2019. This administrative act proclaimed Ladakh, together with the Chinese-held territory of Aksai Chin, as a new Union Territory directly administered by the government in New Delhi. At the time, the PRC denounced this as placing Chinese territory under Indian administration, accused India of challenging China’s sovereign rights and interests, and described the act as illegal, null, and void. China’s moves along the LAC the following year may have been what the University of Macau’s You Ji 由冀 has called ‘one-plus retaliation’, meaning that China responds to perceived provocations by advancing its own position one step further than its adversary has.5