More to Chinese retreat than meets the eye

After the protracted standoff between the Indian Army and the Chinese PLA that lasted over nine months in eastern Ladakh, the process of disengagement and pullback to previous positions has started. The military tension between the two neighbours had grabbed international attention even as the world was grappling with the Covid-19 pandemic.

The last six months saw a number of engagements between the two countries, both military and diplomatic, including long-drawn-out confabulations between commanders at the corps level, the highest field formation of the Army. The last such meeting on January 24 apparently led to this disengagement of frontline troops.

What has led to this pullback of forces? Chinese proclivity for inordinately dragging out territorial disputes and its intransigence are well-known. It is habituated to making extravagant claims, tenacious in maintaining these and cloaking them with plausibility by sheer persistence. This ‘grab what you can get and then try and grab some more’ policy, accompanied by bluff and bluster, are greatly favoured by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Consistent with this policy, China had deployed its troops in extreme winter opposite the Indian formations in Ladakh, indicating that the PLA was there for the long haul. The Indian Army formations stood steadfast, holding their ground.

With troops on either side having faced the harshness of extreme cold conditions, the PLA has now decided to pull back, especially in the north of Pangong Tso, to areas which the Indian Army had been insisting upon during various rounds of talks. The Raksha Mantri’s statement mentions “the Chinese side will keep its troop presence in the North Bank area to east of Finger 8… any structures built since April 2020 will be removed and landforms will be restored.”

Many Sinophiles would surely have been surprised by this sudden acquiescence by the PLA. While the operational orders to the PLA troops would have been issued by its western theatre command at Chengdu, it would only be at the explicit directions of the top leadership of the CCP in Beijing.

A quid pro quo is expected from the Indian troops, especially from the tactically advantageous positions to the south of Pangong Tso.

There are many reasons for this change in Chinese obduracy. First, the terrain-hardened Indian Army has matched it in every which way on the frozen soils of Ladakh — operationally and logistically. Though China may have mobilised adequate logistic resources, there have been inputs about unease among the PLA soldiers during the severe winter conditions. Plentiful supplies are worth little when the morale is low.

The Chinese decision-makers cannot but be aware of the Indian Army’s capabilities and long experience both in combat and sustaining viable fighting formations in extreme conditions. They seem to have realised that the Indian Army could not be stared down.

Even more importantly, the Indian government’s political line has been very clear and widely supported during this confrontation with the northern adversary. Optimum synergy between the Indian Army and the Foreign Ministry was apparent at all times, be it during various meetings at the LAC or in diplomatic statements. The Chinese had been effectively halted at Doklam in west Bhutan in June 2017 and the PLA got a much larger dose of the same medicine from the same Army in east Ladakh for the better part of 2020.

Apparently, China has realised that being the bigger power, continuation of this standoff would not be to its advantage. This was one battle it may not be able to win by contact warfare.

However, if the Dragon has blinked, it is also due to various reasons which are not directly related to India. The LAC situation would be a minor headache for China compared to the problems it faces to its east and south-east. From Senkaku islands to the South China Sea, it has an inimical neighbourhood. Taiwan continues as a festering sore below its underbelly.

The Biden administration has yet to spell out any tangible policy changes from the last regime vis-à-vis China, but whatever has emerged so far appears a continuation of dealing with it from a position of strength.

The deployment of the Nimitz carrier strike group to join the Theodore Roosevelt strike group, on the heels of a French nuclear submarine sailing in the South China Sea, which China has convinced itself it owns, would surely be disquieting to its leadership and a bigger military challenge than Ladakh.

The protests in Hong Kong have been a constant irritant for the CCP leaders and make for poor optics. Its heavy-handed repression of the restive Uyghurs in Xinjiang shows China’s leadership very unfavourably. The much-flaunted Belt and Road Initiative is increasingly mired in controversy in many countries, seen it is as a debt trap. With all this on its plate, the Chinese leadership would do well to put the Ladakh issue on the back burner.

However, this is definitely not the last of it. To draw a parallel with Doklam, though the PLA was stopped from its direct progress further south, in the last three years, it has managed to circumvent that area by building a road to the east, through western Bhutan, by which it can outflank the Jampheri ridge line. It has also been busy settling population in newly created border villages, near sensitive and disputed areas on the LAC in Arunachal Pradesh.

While weather and terrain may make such settlements unfeasible in eastern Ladakh, China will surely look for indirect ways and means to achieve its objectives of regional dominance by pursuing territorial claims, however unfounded they may be. These would go beyond the military and could encompass economic, diplomatic and non-contact (non-kinetic) means of warfare.

As the pullback on the LAC progresses, there will be a bevy of experts who may question the tactical and operational wisdom of vacating areas occupied earlier, especially south of Pangong Tso. Rest assured that the formation and theatre commanders of the Indian Army are battle hardened professionals, who know what they are doing.

For India, being ever wary of its northern neighbour is a given. The Army needs to be equipped and prepared for the long haul all along the 3,500-km Line of Actual Control. More importantly, coordination between Indian defence and diplomacy has to remain on an upward trajectory.