Thread by @TenzingLamsang

Thread

From reading many articles on the LAC standoff between India & China the name of the game seems to be the strategic Galwan valley & its high vantage points that allows PLA to overlook & potentially cut off India’s new DSDBO road heading to the strategic Daulat Beg Oldie.

From all indications it looks like the PLA possibly responding to the road and a feeder road to it surprised the Indian side with large scale movement into areas claimed and patrolled by both sides.
Difference this time is structures built and massive mobilization at the back.

News reports of massive PLA mobilization and movement along the entire LAC with multiple formation back up indicate PLA preparing to prevent a tit for tat ingress by the Indian side and determination to hold onto strategic gains/movement, particularly in Galwan.

Very clear that area of ingress in the Ladakh region & targeting DSDBO road is to prevent even a remote threat to its CPEC corridor in PoK north-west of Daulat Beg Oldie and the Xinjiang-Tibet highway north-east of DBO.

Interesting that China choose this moment to make a move.

This could mean:

1. It feels threatened enough by an increasingly hostile USA and allies in the backdrop of COVID-19 & other tensions to now secure all perceived weaknesses.
2. It feels strong enough now and wants to make big moves like in S.China sea.
3. Combination of 1 & 2.

Current China is at its greatest territorial extent expanded by the Qing followed by PLA in 1950s.

Border disputes will only get worse as China feels it has bided its time & now works to stake ground claim in the entire periphery or all border nooks & crannies of this empire.

Important to factor ‘Century of Humiliation’ feeling in the Chinese establishment.

The humiliation for China (in its book) is not over despite all territorial, economic & military gains after PRC was established.

The ‘humiliation’ will only end once it gets all its claims.

Chinese nationalism & the official mindset is influenced by a cocktail of Han Chinese led Ming Dynasty, the expansionist and Manchu led Qing Dynasty, the drubbing and exploitation by Colonia powers including Japan (100 yrs humiliation) and now modern nationalism led by the CPC.

The reporting in the Indian press indicates a mindset in India that it is a rival of sorts to China.

The reading of the Chinese press even now shows an overwhelming focus on the US and its moves against China.

Clear that China only feels any real threat to it is only from US.

Chinese mindset revealed by Sun Shihai, principal research fellow at China Centre for South Asian Studies Sichuan University.

He in SCMP claims India attacked an isolated China in 1962 just after failure of Great Leap !

But same piece says 62 started with China taking Ladakh.

Same Chinese researcher ☝️in same article says “There are signs & risks emerging that some Indian officials believe they can take advantage of the tensions between China and the US, as Washington is trying to bring India into its Indo-Pacific Strategy to contain a rising China.”

US factor impt.

What people are forgetting is last couple of years has seen the most serious break-down in Sino-US ties which shift away from Nixon’s 1972 engagement process coming to an end with now open economic, military, tech, political, influence rivalry between US & China.

The breakdown was inevitable as the heart of the 1972 policy which started as a snub to the Soviets was a wistful US hope that an engaged & capitalist China would mean a democratic & liberal China taking its place but hopefully not disrupting the US led apple cart or world order.

It was always clear from day one or 1st Oct 1949 that CCP led PRC was never a status quo power that would soften up over time and play nice.

It was and is a Revisionist Power that wants to ‘Take it’s rightful place’ in a modern version of the Middle Kingdom with CCP at the helm.

In the bigger picture people have been talking of an ‘Asian Century’ but the CCP drawing from its historical empires (real and imagined) wants it to be a ‘Chinese Century’ at best or an ‘Asian Century led by China’ at the top in the worse case scenario.

No room for two suns.

Coming back to the ‘100 years of humiliation’ bit.

The ‘humiliation’ was not just about the unequal treaties, opium wars, bullying by colonial powers or a brutal Japanese aggression but a deeper sense that the Middle Kingdom had lost its ‘historical place’.

So you now get a combination of a historical sense of empire ( real & imagined), modern aggressive nationalism, huge national wealth and power, a one party state feeling domestic vulnerability & going back to a one leader system since Mao & big fight for Asian & global dominance.

Coming back to bit on China being a Revisionist Power.

It is a Revisionist Power that wants to re-establish what it sees as a historical status quo (real or imagined) for the Middle Kingdom.

This partly explains Chinese actions & position in S.China sea rejected by UN Tribunal.

People tend to blame CCP entirely for China or PRC’s territorial claims &actions.

However, even ROC or Taiwan has similar position on Tibet (relating to LAC) & South China Sea & along with China rejected UN Tribunal ruling on S.China sea citing lack of historical & legal claims.

So Middle Kingdom notions do not originate in CCP but preceded it in the modern era.

Problem is that modern Chinese equate soft suzerainty of Middle Kingdom with sovereignty now.

Also blind to modern treaties between great powers (UK & Russia) that greatly benefitted China.