India and China have accused each other of military provocation and violating sovereign territory along their disputed Himalayan border, escalating tensions between the two sides which have been locked in a months-long standoff.
A statement by India’s defence ministry accused the China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of carrying out “provocative military movements to change the status quo” on the southern bank of Pangong Lake in Ladakh, which lies at an altitude of 4,200 metres (13,800ft).
India said China had moved large numbers of troops into the disputed territory over the weekend, which it said “violated the previous consensus arrived at during military and diplomatic engagements”.
India claimed to have thwarted the Chinese move and said it “undertook measures to strengthen our positions”, stating that while the Indian army was committed to maintaining peace, it was “equally determined to protect its territorial integrity”.
China claimed that it was Indian troops who had engaged in “open provocation and caused the border situation to become tense”. “The Chinese military is taking necessary countermeasures,” the People’s Liberation Army’s regional command said in a statement, accusing India of “seriously violating China’s territorial sovereignty”.
China’s foreign ministry said Chinese border troops “never cross the line of actual control”. “Both sides are in communication regarding the situation on the ground,” the Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said at a news briefing on Monday.
Commanders from both sides met on Monday in the Ladakh village of Chushul to try to resolve the issue.
The dispute between the two nuclear-armed countries began in early May when China began building up troops and artillery in the area, including along Pangong Lake. Verbal warnings and stone-throwing were reported between the two sides.
In June it escalated into a full-blown assault in Galwan Valley, the worst violence between the two sides since 1967, as soldiers engaged in hand-to-hand combat with rocks and spiked clubs at an altitude of about 4,250 metres (14,000ft), which led to the deaths of 20 Indian soldiers. The number of Chinese casualties is not known.
The two sides publicly pledged to de-escalate and move troops back to their previous positions. However, multiple rounds of diplomatic and military-level discussion have failed to make progress and India and China have remained in a deadlock.
Chinese troops remain at key Indian posts in Pangong Lake, continuing to build roads, helipads and radar towers, and in recent days China was reported to have deployed fighter jets near the border.
In response, India has continued to build up infrastructure on its side of the “line of actual control”, and continued to carry out air patrols. The provocation from China has also led to widespread calls for a boycott of Chinese goods and services in India, and the Indian government recently banned dozens of Chinese-made apps, including the popular video app TikTok, over concerns of data privacy.
