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# The India-China Line of Actual Control
- URL: https://www.geopolitic.world/the-india-china-line-of-actual-control/
- Published: 2023-12-06T01:41:54.000Z
- Updated: 2023-12-06T01:41:54.000Z
- Description: and where to fix one's gaze...
- Author: Holger Edquist
- Tags: Newsletter, #Migrated-1788189989500, #Import 2026-08-31 17:27

The relationship between India and China has, for a few years, been more tense than usual. These two major rising powers constitute the two most populous countries in the world and combined they hold more than a third of Earth’s population. Separated by the great Himalayas they have through time been kept from clashing in serious large scale armed conflict and have been given different spheres in which to develop facing two different oceans. From these different shores they proudly modernize at home and expand abroad, both nurturing the thought that the future belongs to them.

After the armed conflicts between them in the 1960s a calm was kept for some time in regard to deadly clashes. With development and rivalry the two nations swelled within to finally make contact even in the most inhospitable regions separating them. In 2017 there was a tense standoff between troops from the two countries on the Doklam Plateau. While defending Bhutan’s, and by extension, its own interests India confronted China on disputed territory. The area is close to “the chicken’s neck” or the Siliguri Corridor, an area of utmost strategic importance, connecting the Indian subcontinent with its eastern states. The standoff ended with both sides pulling back their troops.

In 2020 blood was spilled when soldiers from the two nations in several different clashes in Ladakh, the Galwan valley and other parts of the border west of Nepal basically beat each other to death with sticks and rocks but refrained from using firearms. After this, many keep their eyes on this part of the border expecting more violence to flare up. Before and accelerated after the clashes both countries constructed considerable amounts of infrastructure and military installations in the area.

China has in this arena been the actor and India the reactor. Basically, China decided it was time to consolidate this part of the border. They made an as hard push they could without risking a war, exploring the porousness, and after India pushed back hard enough they fortified their positions. This is not the point of future clashes, it is for now, the defensive stabilisation of a borderline by digging in.

The push was made. Possible gains within the risk-frame explored. The objective in this part is mainly no longer offensive, with a possible exception being the Ngari area. China however wants the western part of the border to be defensively rock-solid should conflict arise elsewhere, for example in a Taiwan contingency.

**Expect the part of the LAC west of Nepal to remain stable and not erupt in deadly clashes for the foreseeable future.**

In the areas around Sikkim a similar exploration has been conducted and is basically, for now, completed. This area is different given its strategic position and would in a serious armed conflict not be a place to hold but a place to flow. China also, at this point in time, does not take India’s conventional offensive capabilities, in an attacker’s nightmare like this, seriously.

East of Bhutan lies the part of the LAC one should keep its gaze on. China considers their claims to South Tibet to be valid and valuable for a number of reasons. I am not going to go into them in detail but one factor is, very broadly, that the areas east of the Siliguri Corridor are in some regards comparable to Pakistan prior to 1971.

**Expect the part of the LAC east of Bhutan to be the one most likely for future flashes to occur.**

To the south of India’s eastern states lies Myanmar. Although the current situation is very clouded it holds more than directly meets the eye. The same is true for a number of incidents along the India-Myanmar and the Bangladesh-Myanmar border. Very briefly, Myanmar holds a potential strategic value for China that is game-changing.

**Finally, while China will search for Indian weakness with the same relentlessness as the ocean waves hit the shore this part of its borders is, for now, mainly of defensive concern. Should China decide to run fast it does not want its heels to be exposed.**

*Update 2024-08-21*

With the evolving situation in Myanmar one can focus even less on only the de facto border between China and India to assess where significant developments will take place. Briefly, recent developments in Bangladesh are also interconnected with a wider struggle, although it is at this point unclear to what degree and effect.

Rakhine state in northwestern Myanmar, which the Arakan Army mostly controls, could now be considered a proxy territory. Another place to fix one’s gaze in Myanmar related to the India-China LAC is Putao and its surrounding valley situated in the very northeastern corner of Myanmar.

**How, not if, the state of Myanmar will break up is now the right question to pose**. **Expect how this settles to have major geopolitical ramifications.**

**In some scenarios the word “major” will in retrospect be considered a major understatement.**

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*Update 2026-08-21: Corrected grammar and spelling (going through old posts using a new tool). The content of the text was not changed in any way.*