evidence: First, it is no coincidence that the May 2020 clash happened after India’s construction of a feeder road in the Galwan Valley, which provides India access into Aksai Chin. Indeed, as Fravel wrote shortly after the incident, the construction of the road "helped provoke the standoff that began in May."[38] This is because, as he notes, Chinese officials viewed the Galwan Valley "as a backdoor into Aksai Chin."[39] Wang Dehua, a Chinese expert on South Asian issues at the Shanghai Institute of International Studies, corroborated this analysis. He not only argued that Aksai Chin has remained an "important issue" for the Chinese government but clarified that its significance rests, as in 1962, in the fact that it contains a transportation route that is "currently the only direct highway between Xinjiang and Tibet," which thereby gives China an invaluable access point to the region.[40] The need for access via the highway remains intimately connected with regime security concerns. As Chinese analyst Yun Sun put it, Aksai Chin is "vital to Chinese control of its ‘ethnic frontiers’ in Tibet and Xinjiang."[41]