How India is building up against China with 90 border infra projects

The news that Chinese president Xi Jinping would skip the G20 Leaders’ Summit in New Delhi from September 9-10 dashed hopes of a bilateral meeting between him and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, where they could have further exten­ded their discussion of a fortnight ago. Meeting on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in Johannesburg on August 24, Modi and Xi agreed to intensify efforts for “expeditious disengagement and de-escalation” of troops along the Line of Actual Control in Ladakh, where the Indian military and China’s People’s Liberation Army have been involved in a protracted standoff since May 2020. Whatever Chinese leaders may say, Indian military observers believe that China’s infrastructure build-up belies expectations of complete de-escalation and the restoration of the pre-April 2020 status quo, as India has been demanding. “China’s infrastructure development in border and depth areas allows for faster deployment and logistical support, while providing better control over remote, earlier unpopulated, forward areas,” geospatial intelligence researcher Damien Symon tells india today. “This line is further integrated with the upcoming wider Tibetan railway network, which runs parallel to the Indian border across Tibet and reaches Hotan in Xinjiang, passing through the disputed Aksai Chin,” says an officer in the Indian military establishment.