NEW DELHI, Sept 20:
Incursion by PLA troops during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s just concluded visit to India could well be an attempt on the part of Beijing to test the new leadership of India, says a China watcher.
Though violation of the Line of Actual Control(LAC) took place ahead of the visit of Chinese Premier Li Kiqiang last year too, this time, the neighbour got a clear message from India that it could not be business as usual any more, says Rajshree Rajgopalan, a China scholar with think tank ORF. Last year, a 21-day face off had been triggered by the incursion by PLA troops in Depsang in Daulat Beg Oldie sector of Ladakh just before Mr Li arrived in India, but the strong stand taken by India this time round even though the Chinese President was here was missing then. “This time, it is significant that Prime Minister Narendra Modi made it a point to declare India’s reaction in the press statement in a very strong and clear tone,” the ORF scholar said.
The Prime Minister, in a media statement, said, “I raised our serious concern over repeated incidents along the border. We agreed that peace and tranquility in the border region constitutes an essential foundation for mutual trust and confidence and for realising the full potential of our relationship. This is an important understanding, which should be strictly observed.”
He said he also “suggested that clarification of LAC would greatly contribute to our efforts to maintain peace and tranquility and requested Mr Xi to resume the stalled process of clarifying the LAC.”
Though Mr Xi, in his statement that immediately followed Mr Modi’s, tried to play down the issue of incursions, the curt message of Mr Modi, made in public, must not have been lost on the Chinese leader, she said.
Ms Rajgopalan said the issue of violation of LAC had earlier been raised during the talks, but was not so clearly declared in public.
Mr Modi first raised the issue in Ahmedabad, then took it up on the next day of their formal talks when the standoff in the Chumar sector was still continuing, Mr Modi again sought to caution China, saying, “Yeh chhoti chhoti ghatnayen bade se bade sambandhon ko prabhavit kar deti hain. Agar daant ka dard ho to saara sharir kaam nahin karta hai. (These small incidents could impact even the most cordial relationships just as a little toothache can paralyse the entire body). Chumar, is the last village in Ladakh area bordering Himachal Pradesh on which China has been laying its claim and to which it has been sending its helicopter every year. It was the scene of the standoff between the India Army and PLA last year when the Chinese side had objected to overhead bunkers erected by the Indian troops.
The last year’s standoff had taken intense diplomatic efforts to be defused before Mr Li’s visit, but this time it happened just when the Chinese President was starting his visit and continued all through his stay in India and after. Besides the border incursions, India took up the other sensitive matters like China issuing stapled visa to Indian travellers from Arunachal Pradesh in a bid to question India’s sovereignty over the area and also the issue of trans border rivers on which China was reported to have constructed many dams upstream that could affect the flow of the rivers on the Indian side.
However, it was for the first time that any Indian Prime Minister strongly expressed his concern over these issues while holding a joint media event with a visiting Chinese President. “This has been done by the new government to send a clear message to China that now the business as usual will not do,” says Ms Rajgopalan.(UNI)
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