India’s armed forces are locked in multiple ongoing face-offs with the Chinese army along the border in the northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, the head of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) has said. Shatrujeet Kapur, the force’s director-general, made the remarks late last week. The ITBP guards the Himalayan frontier with China.
The comments come about four months after local civil society groups in the remote region told that Chinese forces were increasingly encroaching on Indian territory and blocking Indian troops from patrolling points. Local anger has grown over the reported access restrictions. Kapur’s remarks are the most senior official confirmation of ongoing confrontations, and they land at a delicate moment in ties between New Delhi and Beijing.
Decades-old dispute and the 2020 Galwan clash
The India-China border dispute is rooted in a British-drawn boundary known as the McMahon Line. India has treated that line as its border with China since gaining independence in 1947. China, which came under communist rule in 1949, rejects it, arguing that Tibet lacked the authority to sign the 1914 agreement that set it out. Beijing claims the whole of Arunachal Pradesh, which it calls “South Tibet” or “Zangnan”, and it also controls Aksai Chin, a slice of the Kashmir region that India and Pakistan both claim in full.
In 1962, the two countries agreed to treat the Line of Actual Control (LAC) as a de facto boundary while they negotiated their wider differences. Those differences were never resolved, and the frontier has remained a recurring flashpoint. The region’s Upper Subansiri area saw an early clash in August 1959, which killed at least two Indian soldiers.
The most serious recent confrontation came in June 2020, when Indian and Chinese troops clashed in the Galwan Valley in eastern Ladakh. Both sides accused the other of crossing the LAC. At least 20 Indian soldiers were killed, and China later acknowledged four deaths among its own troops. Satellite imagery and several accounts, including some from within the Indian security establishment, have since pointed to China effectively controlling parts of land that was previously disputed, a claim the Modi government has not accepted. Officials have not conceded that India gave up any territory.
Government silence and political pressure in New Delhi
Five days after Kapur’s comments, the Indian government had not confirmed the nature of the current tensions. Instead, it offered further general criticism of China. Kapur, who is due to retire this week, also used a felicitation ceremony for his force’s personnel to say that commandos had been active in the continuing confrontations. He recalled the 2020 clash and described a specialised training programme meant to prepare personnel for a Ladakh-like situation. He also warned that China’s frontier military capabilities had advanced, and that Indian forces may not be able to respond to a fight head-on using traditional methods.
Opposition politicians have long pressed the government over its handling of China. After 2020, critics raised questions about restrictions on parliamentary scrutiny, whether intelligence agencies had detected the Chinese troop build-up, and how little operational detail was disclosed. Bosiram Siram, the opposition Congress party’s leading figure in Arunachal Pradesh, said Chinese troops had intruded nearly 50 kilometres (31 miles) deep into Indian territory in Upper Subansiri. He said a party delegation that visited border areas in August had seen Chinese personnel stationed there. “You can see the [Chinese] Army. They are on top of the mountains, while we are down below,” Siram said.
India’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Randhir Jaiswal, responded to Kapur’s remarks by saying that the situation “gets disturbed from time to time when Chinese forces diverge from established patrolling patterns”. He did not comment on the ongoing face-offs. Analysts have pointed to earlier contradictions in the government’s position. In 2020, the foreign ministry said Chinese forces had sought to build a structure on the Indian side of the LAC, while Modi said on social media that no one had entered Indian territory and no one remained there. A clarification from Modi’s office later said he meant that no Chinese troops were still on Indian land after the clash, but critics say the core questions were never fully answered.
Diplomatic channels and the fragile path ahead
Relations have shown signs of a cautious thaw. Chinese President Xi Jinping visited New Delhi for the BRICS summit, where he met Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the sidelines. The thaw is partly driven by the trade war launched by United States President Donald Trump, which has pushed the two nuclear-armed neighbours closer. Yet the reported incursions suggest that tensions along the 3,500-kilometre (2,200-mile) border could still undermine efforts to normalise ties.
Since 2012, the two countries have used an official channel, known as the Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination on India-China Border Affairs (WMCC), to keep border disputes from escalating. It involves officials from both sides and runs alongside military channels. Its latest round, the 36th, was held on August 6, about a month after the reports of Chinese incursions first emerged in Arunachal Pradesh. In September, a first-ever commander-level meeting was held in the state.
Praveen Donthi, a senior analyst at the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, said border tensions during the thaw appear to be “part of a pattern”, adding that they were “likely a pressure tactic by Beijing”. He warned that because the border is undemarcated, “stand-offs are bound to occur from time to time, some of which may go out of hand”. BR Deepak, a professor of Chinese studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, said the continuing face-offs showed that diplomatic efforts had not removed the friction. He argued that meetings at military or local level could ease tensions but could not by themselves settle the dispute. Without clear political guidance in both capitals, he said, border arrangements would “remain fragile and reversible”, as seen in Ladakh and now in Upper Subansiri.
