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Chinese Warning to India on Central Sector: Unveiling the Double-Speak

The Chinese spokesperson’s dignified remarks regarding the Indian Army’s proposal to restructure its Central Command under a new Corps Headquarters to safeguard 565 kilometers of the Line of Actual Control with Tibet in the Central Sector expose Beijing’s hypocrisy, given that the PLA has already dispatched no fewer than six combined armed brigades throughout Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh in October 2022. On Friday, a spokesman for China implied that if India were to send additional troops into the Central Region, border tensions would rise, even though the PLA was dedicated to de-escalating along the boundary. Since the PLA’s violations in East Ladakh in May 2020, both nations have held 21 rounds of military negotiation; nevertheless, in the Demchok area’s Depsang Plains and Charding Nullah Junction, the first phase of disengagement is still incomplete.

India has made it plain that it wants the PLA to withdraw, return its forces to their barracks, and then defuse the situation along the border. Currently, the PLA is engaged in military upgrades throughout the 3488-kilometer LAC up to Kibuthoo in Arunachal Pradesh. About 50,000 troops have been deployed, except heavy combined armed brigades that are kept in reserve across the LAC in East Ladakh. Though there have been reports in the media about India bolstering its troops in the Central Sector, the idea is still only in the proposal stage. To lower the tooth-to-tail ratio, the Indian Army intends to cut one lakh troops from its workforce. China is waging war on the Barahoti plains and the Palam Sumda area in the central sector, and it sends PLA forces there on purpose to indicate its presence.

Though the Indian Army is ready to counter any PLA incursion along the length of the Lebanon-Arabia Canal, it has no plans to unilaterally escalate the conflict into the Central Sector. Because the Central Sector is so close to the Capital, the idea of establishing a new 18 Corps with its headquarters in Dehradun is to restructure the formations in the area currently known as Uttar Bharat without adding more troops. This will enable a better reaction to any emergencies in the Central Sector. India needs to be ready for PLA aggression. Since May 2020, China has unilaterally declared war on India in East Ladakh under the pretext of a coronavirus outbreak that originated in Wuhan, China. The primary goal of the May 2020 attack was to unilaterally alter the LAC’s cartographic boundaries to impose PM Chou En-Lai’s 1959 line, which has already been rejected, in East Ladakh.

Beijing has covertly deployed six CABs (each brigade has 5000 troops with accompanying armor and artillery elements) across the Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim LAC in October 2022, before the 20th National Party Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, even though a Chinese foreign spokesperson has reportedly warned India not to increase one battalion’s worth of troops in the Central Sector. The Indian assessment initially stated that the troops had been moved to the eastern sector to put down any internal unrest in Tibet while Xi Jinping was ‘elected’ for a third term as president of China. However, this proved to be untrue, as the CABs are still stationed throughout important regions, such as Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh and the Siliguri corridor in the Sikkim sector.

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The Middle Kingdom’s bullying tactics towards what it considers to be tributary states such as Pakistan or the Maldives are reflected in the self-righteous comment made by the Chinese spokesperson. Furthermore, given that the PLA is fully deployed on the ground along the LAC, with rocket units, artillery weapons, and fighter planes in the hinterland, it stinks of classic Chinese double-speak. The sole purpose of China’s warning is to put pressure on India to accept the status quo and take steps to normalize relations with Beijing. The administration of Narendra Modi finds this scenario intolerable.