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26-01-2022
Bureau Report
BEIJING/ SRINAGAR/ NEW DELHI: China is building a bridge across the Pangong Lake in the frontier region of Ladakh in Indian-administered Kashmir, raising fresh security concerns in India.
The 400-metre-long and 8-metre-wide bridge being constructed near the Line of Actual Control (LAC), the de facto border between the two nuclear powers, was spotted through high resolution satellite images, Indian media reports said last week.
India’s foreign ministry said the bridge is being constructed in areas that have been “under the illegal occupation by China for around 60 years now”, adding that the Indian government was “monitoring” the construction activity “closely”.
“The government has been taking all necessary steps to ensure that our security interests are fully protected,” ministry spokesman Arindam Bagchi told reporters earlier this month.
India and China are locked in a military standoff along the LAC in Ladakh region since April 2020, when the two sides accused each other of trespassing.
The standoff turned deadly in June that year when 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers were killed in Ladakh’s Galwan Valley in a rare hand-to-hand combat using clubs and rocks.
The incident was followed by unprecedented mobilization of troops on both sides of the border and the two armies holding multiple rounds of talks to resolve the standoff.
Meanwhile, the tensions also led to a spike in the construction of military infrastructure on both sides of the disputed border.
According to Indian media reports, more than 100 projects were completed by India’s Border Roads Organization in 2021, most of which are closer to the border with China.
‘Standard Chinese way’
Security experts say the construction of the bridge by China is a matter of “great concern” for India.
“The Chinese are very good at building infrastructure on the border areas and this is just one example of that,” New Delhi-based security expert Ajai Shukla told media.
Shukla said the bridge is a part of Chinese infrastructure along the LAC “so that they can move well, move quickly and deploy their forces quickly”.
“That is the standard Chinese way of border management,” he said.
According to Shukla, the Chinese are “able to deploy quickly” while India “takes too much time to do it”.
“The absence of roads and tracks and motorable sort of infrastructure means India can deploy much more slowly compared with China and because of that China has an advantage.”
However, a former Indian army officer who had served for years in Indian-administered Kashmir, told media, the area where the bridge is being constructed has been under Chinese control even before the 1962 war with India.
India and China fought a war over disputed border areas in 1962. Since then, the two nations have not been able to agree on their 3,488-km-long (2,167-mile) border.
“They (Chinese) secured this area in 1959. The LAC is further 25km (15 miles) away from the bridge. It is very much in the vicinity of the old international border,” the retired official, who did not want to reveal his identity, told media.
