WAY OF THE DRAGON

China’s latest provocation in the Arunachal frontier has serious implications

- SANJIB KR BARUAH

IN CHINESE FOLKLORE, the mythical dragon represents strength, nobility of intention and good luck. As China’s most recognisable emblem from the Qing dynasty (1636-1912), the dragon has negative attributes, too—arrogance and impatience.

India has been witnessing the dragon’s negative qualities of late. Arrogance, however, could signal the beginning of the end, and impatience breeds costly mistakes. That could well be the story of China’s perceptible shift in focus from eastern Ladakh in the west to Arunachal Pradesh in the east.

Bilateral ties have been deteriorating since May 5, 2020, when a border squabble on the northern bank of Pangong Lake in eastern Ladakh sparked off a fistfight between the two sides. Hostilities peaked on June 15, 2020, when 20 Indian soldiers died in a hand-to-hand night combat with the Chinese army in the cold and treacherous Galwan Valley. China reported four dead.

Two harsh winters have since passed, and a third is under way. Seventeen rounds of military commander-level talks have taken place. Both sides have agreed to a buffer zone at many points of dispute.

This has had the effect of ‘fixing’ the blurry border while blocking off Indian troops from areas that they could earlier patrol. Tricky issues such as settling the Depsang and the Demchok border were being addressed when news of fresh trouble broke on December 11, 2022. Another bout of border fisticuffs had taken place two days earlier. Many troopers were injured on the high-altitude Yangtse ridge in Arunachal Pradesh’s Tawang sector.