Prenez-Garde: As the World Looks Elsewhere, Communist China Is Making Moves on Its Border With India
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Could it be that the next territorial advance by Communist China is one to which few are paying attention? With the global spotlight on the growing Chinese threat against Taiwan, little notice is being given to intensifying military standoffs and Communist Party maneuvers on the Sino-Indian border. There, Beijing is deploying a suite of hybrid tactics to advance its territorial revisionism, with the risk of renewed border skirmishing and even conflict.
Just this week the People’s Liberation Army has conducted multiple drills in the Tibetan Plateau. They involved some of the PLA’s most powerful howitzers, long-range rocket launchers, and air force bombers. The Chinese communist regime has been fortifying its Xinjiang and Tibet border regions since its stealth encroachment 18 months ago on India’s Ladakh territory.
That encroachment triggered the first military clashes since 1975 between nuclear-armed nations. Dual-use infrastructure, such as railway lines, airports, and entire villages, has been emerging. Thirty new airports to facilitate PLA movements are expected next year.
All routine, one might insist, were it not for Communist China’s Land Borders Law. Adopted on October 23 and due to take effect on January 1 — Indian protestations notwithstanding — the law ostensibly maintains Communist China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity as “sacred and inviolable,” professes its “legitimate rights and interests” over transboundary regions, including waters, and authorizes the use of force to thwart “illegal” border crossings.
No doubt Beijing does have understandable worries about its borders. Backdoor handshakes with the Taliban are, after all, no guarantee against the spillover of refugees and extremists onto Chinese soil. Rumblings along its periphery with Myanmar only add to the dangers. Yet the Land Borders Law, rather than addressing particular challenges, is a sweeping assertion of Chinese claims.
How, then, should any nation negotiate any boundary matters? Could it be that with the law, Beijing has taken negotiations off the table, including with India? Sophisticated military drills and improved logistical capabilities compound a sense of looming confrontation.
By the stroke of its red pen, Communist China has again also disclosed its strategy of wielding domestic law to evade international law and advance its expansionism. A similar tactic was on display when in June 2020 it enacted a new national security law to quell Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement and force what was once one of the world’s freest cities into lockstep with its political agenda.
The Chinese regime has done so again in its most recent border agreement with Bhutan. It suggests that, rather than first embark on a military kerfuffle with Taiwan, the People’s Republic might yet activate its 2005 Anti-Secession Law against the island democracy. Military action could then follow were the island democracy to refuse to fall in line.
Such a strategy is central to Communist China’s hybrid known as “three warfares,” which blends legal, psychological, and public opinion operations with kinetic tactics. The strategy is presently being used against, in India, the world’s largest democracy while the world’s attention is elsewhere.
So with Europe embroiled on its own border matters in the face of Russian aggression and with American foreign policy in disarray, India has been left to go it alone. Aware of this and likely feeling emboldened on the heels of the Sixth Plenum’s proceedings, could Communist China decide now is the time for more action?
Ms. Gadzala-Tirziu is a foreign policy analyst, political writer, and university lecturer in international relations. @awgadzala. Image: One section of the Tibet Autonomous Region along the Line of Actual Control, NASA WorldWind, via Wikipedia.